"Where are the bizarre chords in the middle?" A search for the sound of imaginary music

Abstract

Disciplinary background A. Musicology has always relied on the notion of an epistemological gap between music and language. Even though New Musicology has attempted to rethink and underline the importance of different types of discourse about music (Kramer 2003), the topic of "music in literature" remains, with some exceptions, somewhat unexplored by musicologists. Disciplinary background B. In turn, Literature has fostered many different reflections about the importance of music in literature. These studies are intrinsically connected to the development of the field of Word and Music Studies, which has motivated the emergence of terminology such as ‘verbal music’ (Scher 1970), and the 'musical novel' (Petermann 2014). Abstract This paper seeks to contribute to the study of 'music in literature' and to analyse fictional 'verbal music' (Scher 1970) from a musicological perspective, by approaching the reader as co-creator and listener, thus aiming to understand how the verbal description of imaginary music in a novel can interact and alter the way we perceive, interpret and think about music. As a literary description of a piece of music that does not exist or cannot be identified, imaginary music presents itself as a kind of empty space, or a blank canvas, that fosters communication, participation and, consequently, the proliferation of meaning. I will focus on the novel Kafka on the Shore (2002) by Haruki Murakami and analyse the case of imaginary music included in the text, as well as different attempts to transpose this inaudible verbal description to the musical medium. On Youtube, there are seven different musical interpretations of the song "Kafka on the shore". Although they are all based on the lyrics presented in Murakami's novel, each song choses a particular language, instrumentation, melodic gestures and tempo, which, in turn, motivate different reactions from the users that have read Murakami's work. These intermedial transpositions and the debates that they stimulate allow us to better understand the importance of language