Northrop Frye’s Musical Dimensions

Northrop Frye felt that literary critics should envy music critics because the latter deal more in structures and relationships, which is what literary critics like Frye would like to do, rather than getting bogged down in style and content. To appreciate fully the inseparability of literature and music in Frye’s life, one must start at the beginning – with the experiences that shaped his taste in and understanding of music, both as a listener and as a musician himself. The evolution of Frye’s relationship with music, from his early childhood to his later career, describes an arc that passes through all of his major fields of study: from literature to religion, to visual arts and culture, to pedagogy and educational psychology.