ABSTRACT
Tristan Tzara sings his poem strophically, using the same tune three times. The tune sets the poem quite traditionally, respecting the rhythms of the verse, and setting one musical phrase to each line of poetry, with pauses after lines. Indeed, the music is much less adventurous, less through-composed, less artful and playful, than the songs performed at Dada soirees with music composed by Hans Heusser, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, Georges Auric himself, and others. The music that frames Dada scope and links its scenes is similarly all tonal. The overwhelming effect that Hannah Hoch so eloquently described is unconditionally artistic, not anti-artistic, and it is an effect which music had aimed to create since the dawn of Romanticism: a feeling of divinity, of wholeness, of power. The Dada verbal aesthetic of contestation and fragmentation, of antirationalism and provocation, could not prevail in the face of Dada music.
