Music and Spoken Text
the complete and unaltered poem
Aaron Jay Kernis’s Goblin Market is singular among all the musical settings in the complete, intricate, and precise treatment it gives to Rossetti’s poetic form in details ranging from the macro- to the micro-scale. Kernis incorporates Rossetti’s complete and unaltered 567-line text (the only musical setting to date to do so), and the score of this major work fills 358 pages and runs 45 minutes in performance. When the work was released as a commercial cd, the complete text of the poem was included in the cd’s liner notes, altered from the original text of the poem only by the insertion of section divisions that correspond to the section divisions in the score and the tracks on the cd: Introduction; Part 1, divided into 4 scenes; Part 2, divided into 3 scenes; and Epilogue (Kernis, Goblin Market, liner notes).
spoken narration
The text in Kernis’s score is spoken, preferably performed by a female narrator, and is continuous throughout the setting. Thus, the language of the poem is not translated into a new medium and does not become sung as music—as occurs in a song, cantata or operatic setting. Nevertheless, the spoken narrative is very intimately and intricately linked to the musical score: the narrator never speaks unaccompanied by music, and the rhythm of every word and syllable is strictly placed in the context of the musical score. In fact, the text is so integral to the score that the Narrator is listed in the Instrumentation alongside the strings, woodwinds and other orchestral instruments. There are also very few unnarrated musical passages as the narration runs through most of the composition. The resulting integration and synergy of music and text is intricate and seamless, truly an impressive achievement. As conductor Rebecca Miller says in an interview on her 2011 cd release of Goblin Market, “The spoken word and music has always fascinated me. This work truly integrates the two: it’s not an alternation of spoken voice and music, but true chamber music. The words and the music react to and inspire one another in a truly unique manner” (“Goblin Market: Aaron Jay Kernis”).
merging musical and literary idioms
There is a significant merging of musical and literary idioms in Kernis’s use of musical notation to render his interpretation of Rossetti’s poetic metre and in his integration of the poem precisely into the orchestral score. While Victorian art critic John Ruskin had read “Goblin Market” in manuscript and famously said in a 24 January 1861 letter to Dante Gabriel Rossetti that the poem was unpublishable due to its “offences against correct form” (Vol. 36, pp. 354-55), Kernis gives full and respectful attention to Rossetti’s irregular poetic form with its varying metre and line length. Each individual syllable of Rossetti’s complete poem is strictly rhythmically notated according to the natural rhythm of the spoken text—using quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, dotted rhythms, triplets and quintuplets, tempo markings, and time signatures that change bar-by-bar at times and include hybrid time signatures, as in this brief excerpt where we see the time signatures move from 4/4 to 3/4 to 5/8 to 5/4 time in a quick succession of musical measures. The sensitivity to the language and close attention lavished on it is everywhere apparent in Kernis’s score, and the execution of these precise rhythms makes the narrator’s performance particularly demanding.
rhythmic notation of text
The section divisions that Kernis adds demonstrate his attention to the larger structure of Rossetti’s poem; meanwhile, Kernis also scrupulously rhythmically places and rhythmically notates in his score every syllable of every word of Rossetti’s lengthy poem, as in this excerpted passage of narration.
Sources:
"Goblin Market: Aaron Jay Kernis." YouTube, uploaded by Signum Records, 21 Jan. 2011. www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPMaOk_BnAE.
Kernis, Aaron Jay. Goblin Market. Lyrics by Christina Rossetti, performance by The New Professionals Orchestra, conducted by Rebecca Miller, narrated by Mary King, Perivale, Signum Records, 2011.
Ruskin, John. The Works of John Ruskin. Edited by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn. London, G. Allen, 1903-1912. 39 vols.