ABSTRACT
In the early modern period, the development of print culture fundamentally altered the relationship between music and poetry, and the link grew progressively more vestigial. While the nature of this ancient connection between words and song may remain inaccessible to us in its original Greek form (Johnson 1982: 26-27), it can still be discerned in the often vaguely applied adjective ‘lyrical’ (Lindley 1985: 23-24). Lyrics designed to be sung or recited produce different effects from a ‘private’ reading of poetry on the page, but enduring links between lyric and music can be traced through, for example, the Provençal troubadour tradition, popular ballads, the rich combination of music and text in the Elizabethan period, the hymn tradition from the seventeenth century onwards, the folk songs of Woody Guthrie, Pete and Peggy Seeger, Ewan MacColl and Bob Dylan, and in the resurgence of performance poetry that is tied to various musical traditions in the later twentieth century. This chapter considers the residual connections between poetry and musical performance in the history of lyric. It shows that poetry and music have been combined
for overtly politicised, as well as celebratory, purposes in both ‘high’ and popular culture. In doing so, it illustrates a central theme of this book: rather than presenting the spontaneous feelings of a private individual, lyric is a self-conscious form of address that must negotiate with a world beyond the self.
