Poem, Music & Language

On Wings of Song

When in the course of our education, we were profoundly influenced by some books or music which etched and imprinted in our mind. They become part of us as we grow up. It is easy to communicate among people about a book and its influence. But it is harder to do the same for music. Language is a basic skill in education and our society. Music is not as it is not a prerequisite to enter a college. Yet music is so popular in our society, be it classical or non-classical music. Everybody sings and everybody listens to music. But if we want to dig in a little bit more, we usually encounter some difficulty. We used to have music books which can't sing for us and so it is hard to convey or describe the meaning or feeling of the music. When time goes by and technology advances, we gradually made some improvement in discussing music among people. First, movie and TV gives us a tool that combines music (audio) with video. If the lyrics is shown with the video while music is playing, people can follow the music easily. However, in most cases the lyrics is not provided on the video, people tend to get lost while music is in progress. With the advent of Internet, it ushers in a new breed of tools and some website like YouTube which behaves like a public library of music with video time line. Although this is some kind of evolution of the technology, it exerts a great influence to the way we listen to music and the way we appreciate music. Here is a good example that I'd like put it in practice. In the blog "Palo Alto Rock" (July, 2013), I provided the links of the music and its lyrics (German, English, Mandarin). If we open two windows on the laptop computer, one is the music on YouTube and the other is the Excel file of the lyrics with time line data. Now we can listen to the music in sync with the lyrics even without the lyrics shown on the video. It is a living music book, a big improvement over the good old silent music book.

Music: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hc4QC35LfhU

Lyrics with time line data

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3Kwp81ksqfMaVBJbXVFQXo3dFk/edit?usp=sharing

In this example, the music is 'Auf Flügeln des Gesanges' ('On Wings of Song') by Mendelssohn. The lyrics is German accompanied with translation in English and Mandarin. In Excel the lyrics is listed in three columns with the text of lyrics in one-to-one correspondence. The original music was composed in German (Heine's poem). We can see the text is arranged in pair with rhyme just like traditional Chinese poem. For instance, Gesanges/Ganges, fort/Ort, Garten/erwarten, Oondenschein/Schwesterlein, kosen/Rosen, empor/Ohr, lauschen/rauschen/, Gazelin/Well'n, niedersinken/trinken, Palmenbaum/Traum are all paired in rhyme. It is the same for the text of English translation. Here we can see the similarity between German and English. As to the Mandarin translation, it is not in rhyme. Instead it is a direct translation of meaning of the poem with lucid and fluent Mandarin style without taking in consideration of rhyme. It is just as romantic, artistic and beautiful as the German and English poem. Here we can appreciate the nuance and shade of different language in conveying the same message. 

In Excel file, the C column is the music time line. The repeated German text is shown with * and listed in the Time Line as such. In the last line of the text, 'Und traumen seligen Traum' is repeated once and 'seligen Traum' is repeated one more time to end the song. 

PS: It is easier to access the blog twice with a browser (Google Chrome or AOL browser). With two windows on the screen (by click & drag the window tab outside of the browser), you can access the music (YouTube) in one window and then access the lyrics in other window. You can then arrange two windows in the screen to fit your taste and convenience. While you play the music, you can cross reference the lyric time line with the time line of the video. This is easy to do for most laptop computer. It may not be feasible for mobile device such as iPhone or iTouch.