Musicality of Klopstock’s poetry

Abstract

The article analyzes the semantic and structural features of the poetry by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock, collectively demonstrating the affinity of the entire work of the outstanding German poet and music. The changing attitude towards symphonic and vocal music from the middle of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th century and the spread of musical and aesthetic views in related fields of science had a significant impact on Klopstock’s work. The complex multidimensional musicality of his works was misunderstood by his contemporaries who perceived only the superficial layer of Klopstock’s poetry, the plot. Researchers started studying the compositional affinity of his religious epic poem, the Messias, and the symphony only in the 20th century; they suggested the concept of a plot of feelings as opposed to the usual interpretation of the plot as a chain of events. The structural similarity of Klopstock’s epic to the symphony and the use of dissonance are undoubtedly manifestations of musicality. However, we can point out a deeper sign of musicality which is the German poet’s desire not to portray nature in his odes and hymns, but to convey an attitude towards it. Franz Schubert managed to reflect the rich palette of feelings contained in Klopstock’s poetry; today Schubert’s songs based on Klopstock’s poems are still a part of the vocal repertoire. Schubert succeeded in overcoming the obvious difficulties of Klopstock’s poetry, namely the lack of rhyme and regular syllable stress.