Music into Fiction: Composers Writing, Compositions Imitated by Theodore Ziolkowski (review)

Theodore Ziolkowski revisits a familiar canon of nineteenth- and twentieth-century composers and authors from a fresh perspective in his study Music into Fiction. Looking at the intersections and interactions of musical and literary forms, Ziolkowski spends the larger portion of his work shedding light on an impressive selection of lesser-known literary works by well-known composers. After tracing an artistic overlap between music and literature from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, he isolates literature that makes use of common musical forms, finally turning to modern attempts to musically render the fictional compositions in Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus (1947). Perhaps the most significant and impressive contribution of Ziolkowski's text is the vast collection of largely unexamined literary works that expand beyond a strictly German context.

Emulating the very subject it examines, the book itself is organized in terms of musical form: prelude, movement one (including a transition), movement two, finale, and a brief coda for the conclusion. Ziolkowski concludes that the use of musical structure in the literature he examines is "purely metaphorical and does not imply the conscious effort to imitate a musical form in literature" (172). In the prelude, Ziolkowski introduces the two topics at the heart of his study: composers who write and the appropriation of music into literature. Readers coming to this book for a theoretical discussion of the musicality of literature or representations of musical figures in literature will be disappointed, as the chapters that follow offer strictly what Ziolkowski considers "practical criticism and analysis" of literary works by relying on musical form (2). After all, as a guiding principle of the study posits, form and structure serve as the foundation of both musical and literary analysis.

The first movement tackles the question of composers who write. This section is divided into five chapters, spanning from the early nineteenth-century works of Weber to the twentieth-century works of Burgess. Specific composers serve as the title for each chapter, making the expected and necessary caesura at Wagner, before transitioning into a singular group of "post-Wagnerians." Apart from chronological considerations, however, Ziolkowski often leaves the reader unsure of any formal, stylistic, or social connection between composers grouped by chapter. The characteristics that link every composer in the first section of the book are their prominence in the musical canon coupled with their absence from the literary canon despite sustained literary efforts. The obvious exception to this is E.T.A. Hoffmann, who, contrary to Ziolkoski's desired topic, represents a writer who composed rather than a composer who wrote. This section offers abundant close readings of individual and specific literary works from each composer. Ziolkowski's study highlights the shift from a complete separation of the artists' "double talents in literature and music" to—from Wagner on, as one would expect—composers' attempts to combine their literary and compositional efforts in a single work (9).

The second movement, "Compositions Imitated," seems at first glance to more fully capture the aim of the book, that is, music turned into fiction. Ziolkowski's study in this section differs from scholarship that considers musical techniques, such as counterpoint or leitmotif, in their literary iterations, looking instead to the larger organizing structure of musical form. The first chapter is divided into sections based on the formal categories of fugue, chaconne and passacaglia, rondo, suite, sonata, and symphony. Each section looks to a handful of texts that explicitly call on the respective musical form. However, readers unfamiliar with musical form might find difficulty with this chapter, which focuses chiefly on literary analysis at the expense of fully elucidating the individual musical forms. The second half of this section relies on brief sketches of literature that draw inspiration from specific compositions. Overall, this section contributes a strikingly comprehensive list of literary works that draw inspiration from musical form, specific compositions, or, at times, both.

Looking at modern attempts to create the music of the fictional composer...