“A poet could not but be gay,
|
It is at this point, once the listener has been familiarized with the flow of the piece, that something unfamiliar emerges, which leads to a drastic volta in the mood of the piece to demonstrate the poem’s hidden sublimity. By the time the listener expects to hear the main motif of the piece being played a fourth time (0:55), the harmonies change unexpectedly, leading to a sudden shift from D♯ major to D♯ minor (1:02), which creates a darker atmosphere. This is followed by a crescendo, where a series of diminished chords move up melodically (1:14) just to culminate in a series of chromatically descending octaves (1:17), which nonetheless lead back to an ascent (1:24) and a sudden pause. This set of complex modulations moving up and down the piano, keeping a high level of intensity and a quick tempo, turn out to be overwhelming and intimidating for both the player and the listener. This almost frightening feeling highlights the poem’s speaker’s ulterior sublime experience, which can be seen in their trance-like inability to evaluate “what wealth the show to them had brought” (18) and in their use of words in the semantic field of infinity–“milky way,” “never-ending,” “ten thousand” (8–11)–to describe the scenery earlier in the poem. This “spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (56), then, exposes the listener to the intensity of the poet and the pianist’s great excitement (as all the octaves and chords are, indeed, very fun to play), though the excitement and joy themselves have not entirely reached the listener just yet, only their intensity.
To do that, the piece smoothly descends into the piano's lower register and spends some time (1:50–2:37) focusing on a rather repetitive pattern meant to represent the poet’s “vacant or…pensive mood” (20) by which they may recall this special occasion. The atmosphere here shifts from dark and powerful to a rather mysterious one given the parallel use of minor and major chords. The mystic tone of this section evokes the mystery involved in subjectivity and the process by which the mind absorbs, processes, and creates information. The alternated crescendos and diminuendos too are reminiscent of brainwaves. This section continues until the piece acquires enough vigor and explodes back into the joyful motif of the beginning (2:45). This explosion musically mimics the process Wordsworth describes by which an “emotion is recollected in tranquility…contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced and does itself actually exist in the mind” (144–148). However, the main motif of the piece is now played rallentando (slower than expected) and rubato (disregarding the tempo), which gives the impression that playing this passage requires great effort. These dynamics suggest that the same phrase cannot be used to effectively communicate the poet’s (and the pianist’s) intense emotions. So, to finish, the piece instead switches to a much quicker tempo and features a variation of the original theme (3:06), which feels even more joyful and which, thanks to its intensity, is able to join the overwhelming power of sublime sentiments conveyed in minute 1:14 with the gleeful essence of the beginning phrases. Thus, the piece ultimately argues that to create poetry and art, in general, the feeling the artist must invoke to effectively involve the audience must be much more intense than the original sentiment, such that, once it gets diluted by the medium of communication (whether that is music or text), the original feeling is what reaches the audience “And [their]…heart[s] with pleasure fills” (23).
Having taken the place of both the composer and the listener in crafting this piece, I have realized that, in the end, the artist will always be ahead of the audience in feeling, having to harness sentiments of great intensity so as to make their shadows sufficiently impactful experiences that may accurately communicate to audiences the vivacity of the memory in question. It seems, then, that it is only through direct experience that one may catch up to the artist as there is an element of nature’s sublimity that seems to be inevitably lost in trying to communicate its wonders artificially.
Works Cited
Wordsworth, William. “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.” Claire Dawkins, Wonders and Sublimity, Stanford Online High School, Jan 2023, https://spcs.instructure.com/courses/6897/files/1121181?module_item_id=149183. Accessed 19 April 2023.
Wordsworth, William. “Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads.” Claire Dawkins, Wonders and Sublimity, Stanford Online High School, Jan 2023, https://spcs.instructure.com/courses/6897/files/1121204?module_item_id=149182. Accessed 19 April 2023.