University of Oregon

Nineteenth-Century Musical Agogics as an Element in Gerard Manley Hopkins's Prosody

Author(s): Christopher R. Wilson
Source: Comparative Literature, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Winter, 2000), pp. 72-86
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the University of Oregon
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1771519
Accessed: 19-01-2018 12:39 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

University of Oregon, Duke University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,
preserve and extend access to Comparative Literature

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 CHRISTOPHER R. WILSON

Nineteenth-century
Musical Agogics as an
Element in Gerard Manley
Hopkins's Prosody

CRITICS HAVE IN GENERAL found it difficult to assign Gerard Manley

Hopkins (1844-89) a comfortable place in literary history.1 His poetic
style is so unusual and idiosyncratic that it seems to belong to the modern
rather than Victorian era (Giles). Many critics have tried to place him, as
H. Wendell Howard notes, "between particular literary practitioners and
schools of thought before him and countless poets after him" (137), but, as
E.E. Phare asserts, there is no group of poets with whom Hopkins is inevitably
associated. "With whom shall we compare him?" she asks (2). On the other
hand, critics such as Wendall Stacy Johnson are quite certain that Hopkins
belongs to the Victorian age, even though they find his literary style difficult
to place.2 In his authoritative biography Norman White perhaps presents the
most balanced assessment, suggesting that even though Hopkins was a "man
out of his time," his "powerful and original temperament" belonged to the
Victorian tradition (vii).
Hopkins himself was somewhat ambivalent about specific literary influences
on his work. He rejected Robert Bridges's suggestion that he was indebted to
Walt Whitman and was noncommittal in acknowledging indebtedness to cer-
tain other poets.3 He was least equivocal about Milton: "I have paid much
attention to Milton's rhythm ... His achievements are quite beyond any other
English poet's, perhaps any modern poet's" (quoted in Abbott, Letters 37-38).
Among the Tudor poets, he preferred Surrey to Wyatt: "I have not studied
Wyatt, but Surrey I used to read: he, I think, is a greater man. He was an
accomplished rhythmist... He has a very fine style free from Euphuism."4
1 In addition to specific citations in the text, see North's and Moore's edition of the proceed-
ings of the Hopkins conference held at the Wilfrid Laurier and Waterloo Universities, 1981.
2 On Hopkins and Victorian traditions see also Sulloway, MacKenzie, "Hopkins Among the
Victorians," Milroy, Wain, and Hollahan.
3 See, further, Heywood 16-17. Gardner, Gerard Manley Hopkins, p. 107, points out there are
resemblances, not derivations, which Hopkins does not deny.
I Letters 106-7. In fact, Hopkins did come to know some of Wyatt's poetry; see MacKenzie,
"Hopkins and the Prosody of Sir Thomas Wyatt."

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/73

He was prepared to admit some debt to Dryden: "And my style tends always
more towards Dryden. What is there in Dryden? Much, but above all this: he
is the most masculine of our poets; his style and his rhythms lay the stronge
stress of all our literature on the naked thew and sinew of the English lan-
guage" (quoted in Abbott, Letters 267-68). There are also extensive reference
in Hopkins's writings to Old and Middle English, in particular to Chaucer
Indeed, the use of alliteration in Old English poetry and in Piers Ploughman
might also have influenced his poetic style.
My primary purpose in this essay is not, however, to extend this discussion
of Hopkins's specific literary models. Nor do I attempt to locate Hopkins
poetic style in any literary tradition. Rather, I am interested in exploring his
references to and use of nineteenth-century musical agogics-that is, to the
widespread use of rubato, rhythmic flexibility, pauses, and accents that is char
acteristic of Romantic music.

That agogics were integral in the performance and interpretation of R

music has been affirmed both by contemporary practitioners and twe
century commentators. How and exactly where they were applied
certain. For information on nineteenth-century practice we have to r
the most part on written commentary. Romantic musicians appear to
that rubato "colors" or heightens expression. Hugo Riemann argues that
out agogics music would be "machinelike" (11), and Wagner asserts tha
would be "colourless and lifeless" if played strictly as written (22). To
tain how agogics were employed we would of course need to have reco
live or actual performances, but there are no sound recordings of ninet
century performances. Early twentieth-century recordings of Romanti
do, however, exist; and, as Robert Philip argues, these recordings
particular relevance to the study of performance practice in the nine
century. Many of the musicians heard on early recordings were brough
the late, or in some cases mid, nineteenth century, and their performin
can be seen as remnants of nineteenth-century style" (1). He conclude
"given the clear links between the performance practice on early reco
and the descriptions of the late nineteenth century, we can also be su
early recordings take us quite close to the practice of Mahler, Brahms, D
Wagner, and Tchaikovsky" (235)."
Philip deduces from the evidence provided by early recordings that
"was general agreement about the need for flexibility in performance
only in overall tempo, but also in more detailed phrasing"(8)-a flex
that considerably exceeds that practiced today and which is in fact al
late twentieth-century taste. Before introducing evidence from selecte
recordings, Philip refers to written commentary. The violinist Achille
(1865-1940), for example, states that "Rhythm is elasticity of movem
[which] should be felt in every bar" (44). H.C. Colles comments, writing
Elgar, "Such things as the pauses and accents, directions for rubato...
their authoritative interpretation only from him. He knows where to

5 Early recordings of Debussy playing the piano do in fact exist.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/74

the emphasis in each phrase, so as to give it eloquence" (quoted in Moore

779). Similarly, "Mahler," Philip argues, "as well as requiring frequent change
of tempo, was rhythmically very flexible in his conducting" (37). Mahler w
closest to Wagnerite practice and ideals in rhythmic flexibility. Philip warn
however, that while references to rhythmic freedom are common they "gi
no positive information about what actually happens to the rhythm during
rubato passage" (38).
Both nineteenth and early twentieth-century writings and early soun
recordings indicate that there were three kinds of tempo rubato: "the use o
accelerando and rallentando, the use of the tenuto or agogic accent, and the
rhythmical independence of a melody from its accompaniment ('melodi
rubato)" (Philip 38). While these three are separately identifiable, they rarel
occur in isolation. Philip notes that Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musica
Terms (1898 edn) defines tempo rubato as "robbed or stolen time. Time occa
sionally slackened or hastened for the purposes of expression" (439). Oth
sources imply the same. The influential piano pedagogue, Tobias Matthay
for example, refers to two types of rubato:
The most usual is that in which we emphasise a note (or a number of notes) by giving more tha
the expected Time-value, and then subsequently make-up the time thus lost by accelerating th
remaining notes of that phrase or idea so as to enable us accurately to return to the pulse ... I
the opposite form of Rubato ... we begin with a pushing-on or hurrying the time. This we mu
necessarily follow up by retarding the subsequent notes of the phrase. (70-71)6

The idea of localized rhythmic adjustment is commonplace in writings abou

rubato. According to Philip,
Hugo Riemann, in Musikalische Dynamik und Agogic (1884) was the first writer to develop a theory
of "agogics," by which he meant the use of small modifications of rhythm and tempo (as oppos
to dynamics) for expressive performance. He uses the now familiar term "agogic accent"
describe the lengthening of a note for purposes of accentuation. Notes to be lengthened includ
particularly "notes which form centres of gravity" within a phrase, and "more especially, in su
pensions whereby the harmonic value is rendered clearer." Riemann published editions of stan
dard keyboard works in which agogic accents were marked with the sign ^. His instruction bo
for pianists, which illustrates the use of agogic accents, reached its eighth edition in 1922. (41

Philip further notes that the pianist J. Alfred Johnstone reinforced Reimann
theory of lengthening and shortening adjacent notes even though they are
written equally, when he referred in his Essentials in Pianoforte Playing an
Other Musical Studies (1914) to the use of agogic accents as "quasi temp

6 The notion that "stolen time" should be paid back is prevalent in nineteenth- and earl
twentieth-century theory, although, as Philip notes, the musicologist A.H. Fox Stangways
refutes the idea in his article in Grove's Dictionary I1 (1927-28): "The rule has been given a
repeated indiscriminately that the 'robbed' time must be 'paid back' within the bar. That
absurd, because the bar line is a notational, not a musical, matter. But there is no necessity
pay back even within the phrase: it is the metaphor that is wrong. Rubato is the free element i
time, and the more it recognizes the norm the freer it is. The law which it has to recognize is t
course of the music as a whole; not a bar but a page, not a page but a movement. If it does not
this it becomes spasmodic and unmeaning, like correspondence which is too much underline
(IV. 465). In practice, Fox Strangways is being overly academic. Strict rules of compensation ar
rarely advocated in writings or observed in performance. However, no matter how much pe
formers may try to eliminate the effect of the bar (des Taktes), its presence is essential in phra
structure and rhythmic organization. The bar line will always exert a theoretical if not an aur
influence on performing.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/75

rubato," an important principle of expressive interpretation. (41) Particularly

relevant to a discussion of Hopkins's expressivity is Philip's observation that
Several writers liken this rubato by agogic accents to declamation in speech. Henry T. Finc
(1909) writes that Paderewski's playing differs from that of other pianists particularly in this
greater number of rhetorical pauses ... The pause is either a momentary cessation of sound or a
prolongation of a note or chord. Finck also quotes Busoni's advice: "The bar-line is only for the
eye. In playing, as in reading a poem, the scanning must be subordinate to the declamation
you must speak the piano."
This declamatory aspect of rubato is emphasised by several writers on singing. M. Sterlin
Mackinlay (1910) describes tempo rubato in terms of rhythmical adjustment, "the lengthening
of certain syllables being equalised by the shortening of others. It is a style of singing princi-
pally useful for the interpretation of strong feelings, being governed by the accent which i
given in ordinary speech." Gordon Heller (1917) advises the singing student that "He must
look upon each phrase as a sort of music sentence," and he gives specific advice about the
placings of agogic accents... W.H. Breare (1904) gives more general advice to singers which
implies the need for agogic accents: "there is nothing more unattractive than the slavish obser-
vation of strict time. To execute any passage with grace, it becomes necessary to make a distinc
tion between accented and unaccented notes." (42)7

Melodic rubato occurs where "tempo rubato frees a melody from strict note
values, either by agogic accents or by accelerando and rallentando ... so that
the melody is momentarily out of step with the accompaniment" (Philip 42).
Thus, in his Technique and Expression in Pianoforte Playing (1897) Franklin Taylor
argued that "It should be observed that any independent accompaniment to
a rubato phrase must always keep strict time, and it is, therefore, quite pos-
sible that no note of a rubato melody will fall exactly with its corresponding
note in the accompaniment, except, perhaps, the first note in the bar" (73).
Frederick Niecks likewise advised that "Where there is an accompaniment
rhythmically distinct from the melody, the former should be in strict time
whilst the melody, within certain limits, may proceed on her course with the
greatest freedom" (29). As Philip demonstrates,
this style of rubato had a long tradition, and in particular was associated with Chopin's playing
Marguerite Long's description of the "suppleness" of Debussy's playing . . .was "fully preoccu
pied with Chopin's method, particularly Chopin's phrasing ... In his music this all adds up to
series of nuances that are not to be defined unless they are felt, and which are represented by
rubato that is as much part of the interpretation of Debussy as of Chopin ... This delicate rubat
is difficult to obtain in both Chopin and Debussy. It is confined by a rigorous precision, in
almost the same way as a stream is the captive of its banks. Rubato does not mean alteration of
time or measure, but of nuance or elan." This description is not without ambiguities-a "nuance"
can be dynamic, agogic or tonal-but it does seem as if Long is describing a style of rubato i
which freedom in a melody does not affect the pace of the accompaniment. Similarly, Lon
writes about the rubato recommended by Faur6, "Rubato in Faur6 is close to Chopin, and derive
from freedom in the rounding of the phrases and respect for the underlying pace." (Philip 44)8

Hopkins was familiar with some of the music of the German Romantics
from Weber to Wagner, and from his own playing and concert-going he would

7 The books Philip cites are: H.T. Finck, Success in Music and How it is Won (1909); M.S
Mackinlay, The Singing Voice and its Training (1910); and W.H. Breare, The Voice in Song an
Speech (1917).
8 Philip here refers to M. Long's Au Piano avec Claude Debussy (1960; English trans., 1972) and
Au Piano avec GabrielFaurd (1963; English trans., 1980).

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/76

also have been accustomed to late Romantic performance practice.9 Indee

Hopkins was an enthusiastic amateur musician.'1 Like Hart Crane, he played
the piano-though not very well. He composed songs on his and other's poetr
(see Stevens). And he studied counterpoint, in particular species counter
point and fugue. Hopkins even wrote to Robert Bridges that in his later year
he found greater solace in music than in poetry: "Every impulse and spring
of art seems to have died in me, except for music, and that I pursue under
almost an impossibility of getting on" (Abbott, Letters 124). Given statement
such as this, it is not surprising that the first editor of Hopkins's letters and
journals, Claude Abbott, wondered whether he had reached "that stage i
poetry when music rather than words seemed the natural creative
continuation? ... my feeling is that music would have absorbed him had he
lived" (Abbott, Letters xxxiii).
I believe that Hopkins's mode of thinking and talking about poetry, his
"mindset," was that of the musician (see, further, Wilson). He perceived syl-
lables or words as musical notes, metrical "feet" as bars, lines or sentences as
phrases, paragraphs or stanzas as movements or sections of movements. That
is why he states that
rhythm, i.e. verse ... is the recasting of speech into sound-words, sound-clauses and sound-
sentences of uniform commensurable lengths and accentuations. The foot is the rhythmic word
with its strong beat for the emphatic accent, the metron or bar the rhythmic sub-clause, the verse
or stanza the rhythmic sentence. And music is the recasting of speech used in a wide sense, of
vocal utterance, into words, clauses, and sentences of pitched sounds having uniform etc as
above. The musical syllable is the note, the musical foot or word the bar, the bars in double time
stand for double feet or metra and for, say, unverbal sub-clauses, the strains or phrases for wing-
clauses, the passages or melody down to the cadence for the sentence, the movement for the
paragraph, the piece for the discourse. One may add that the modulation into another key
stands for the suspension, the return to the first key for the recovery. Also rests are allowed for
in the verse of the ancients and, though not professedly, in ours (there are instances collected
from Shakespeare) like the rests in music. (House 273)

9 In a letter of 22 October 1879, Hopkins expresses a taste for Weber's music (Abbott, Letters,
98), and in a letter of 18 May 1883, he refers to Germanic musical expressivity: "The Germans
are great and I believe unsurpassable in expressing mood and feeling" (Abbott, Letters, 180).
10 J.F. Waterhouse (227) reports that Hopkins had a "good ear" for melody, and G.F. Lahey
describes Hopkins's life-long love of music in detail: "His correct ear and clear, sweet voice
made him an easy and graceful master of the traditional English, Jacobean and Irish airs. This
love for music never left him, and years afterwards, in the Society of Jesus, he used often to
appear at their musical entertainments to sing, like William Blake, the songs he had composed
and put to music. All his life he was composing songs and melodies, and until he studied musi-
cal theory under Dr. R.P. Stewart, at Dublin, he used to bring them home for his sister, Grace, to
harmonize for him" (2). Hopkins started taking violin lessons at the Edgbaston Oratory in
1867, but made little progress. At Stonyhurst in 1875 he began playing the piano. A little later
he began to study harmony and counterpoint; he used John Stainer's Primer of Harmony andJ.F.
Bridge's tutor on counterpoint. While Professor of Greek at the Royal University, Dublin, he
studied under Dr. R.P. Stewart, who does not seem to have had a high opinion of his pupil,
though he appears to have been encouraging. Hopkins's vocal compositions are reproduced
with commentary in Stevens's, "Gerard Manley Hopkins as Musician," Appendix II in Journals
and Papers. In "G.M.H. as Artist and Musician," Appendix III of The Correspondence of Gerard
Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon, C.C. Abbott regards Hopkins as a more accomplished
musician than most commentators.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/77

It is a mistake to translate the musical terms and concepts Hopkins app

to poetry in too strict or literal a fashion. This is the problem with H. We
Howard's attempt to equate Hopkins's "chromatism" with, for examp
diatonicism and chromaticism in Dido's aria, "When I am laid in earth," from
Purcell's opera Dido and Aeneas (137-54).
Despite Howard's best endeavors, the application of chromaticism in music
to Hopkins's poetry is not at all clear. Nowhere does Hopkins indicate precisely
what he means when he uses this term. He simply says that "chromatism"
implies "gradation, intensity, climax, tone, expression (as the word is used in
music), chiaroscuro, perhaps emphasis" (House 85). Furthermore, although
he certainly knows what linear chromaticism in music is-"The diatonic
scale.. . leaves out, the chromatic puts in, the half-notes" (House 104)-he
does not explain how this might work in poetic practice. It is thus more likely
that Hopkins's chromatic and diatonic parallelisms are related to the effect
of music, to its rhetoric, rather than to its technicalities. Chromaticism height-
ens expression in music, and it is in this sense that Hopkins employs the ter-
minology in relation to poetry.
Similarly, to assume that Hopkins's prosodic term, "counterpoint," carries
with it a precise musical meaning is misleading. It is of course possible to see
a musical analogy here when a superimposed or "mounted" rhythm is "counter-
pointed" against a fundamental metrical norm. There are many examples of
this technique in Milton's verse (particularly in Paradise Lost), and Hopkins
appears to follow Milton's practice. But the counterpointed rhythms in poetry
do not act and interact simultaneously as they do in music. G.N. Leech is
therefore wrong to explain Hopkins's "sprung rhythm" in musical terminology,
even though he correctly recognizes that Hopkins's musical prosody belongs
to the age in which he lived: "in his metrical experiments, Hopkins was not so
much a precursor of the modern age, as a child of his own age: an age in
which the parallels between music and poetic metre were explored with a
new interest and adventurousness by many poets [he cites Browning, Clough,
Swinburne, Hardy, and Bridges] and by Hopkins above all" (213). It is in the
use of Romantic musical agogics-tempo modifications, rhythmical inflec-
tions, and emphasis (including dynamics)-that Hopkins's poetic voice is most
obviously musical.
While writing to Robert Bridges about "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves," Hopkins
refers to the essential aural quality of his poetry, a quality that is, he says, a
key to understanding the rhythmical nuances of his own creative process:
Of this long sonnet above all remember what applies to all my verse, that it is, as living art
should be, made for performance and that its performance is not reading with the eye but
loud, leisurely, poetical (not rhetorical) recitation, with long rests, long dwells on the rhyme
and other marked syllables, and so on. This sonnet shd. be almost sung: it is most carefully
timed in tempo rubato. (Abbott, Letters 245)"

Hopkins says this sonnet is in sprung rhythm with "a rest of one stress in the
first line." He indicates some of the stresses in the manuscript sources of the

" On the aural qualities of Hopkins's verse see Ferlita 47-54; Milroy The Language of Gerard
Manley Hopkins 114-53; and Wintors, 433-47.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/78

poem (Bridges MSS A and B; see, also, Gardiner and MacKenzie 284), and
marks the caesura or pause in each line. The octometric (eight stress) groun
rhythm is firmly established in the first two lines:

Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, vaulty, voluminous,... stupendous

Evening strains to be time's vast, womb-of-all, home-of-all, hearse-of-all night.

In succeeding lines, the rhythms of the verse become increasingly fluid an

variable. And these are best understood in musical terms, as tempo ruba
with metrical onrush and relaxation. In fact, Hopkins seems to imply melod
rubato where a rhythmically fluctuating melody is "carefully timed" against
regular, isochronistic bass. The regularly timed pattern is the eight stress recu
rence; the tempo rubato is the rhythmical variation of syllables in between. T
mid-line caesura is equivalent to the phrasal break in music, a strong charac
teristic, for instance, of Chopin's melodies.
/ x / x / xx /x xl /x x// x x / x
Earnest, earthless, equal, attuneable, vaulty, voluminous, ... stupendous
/ x / xx / / /xx / xx / xx /
Evening strains to be time's vast, womb-of-
x / xx / x / x x/ x / xx / x / x /
Her fond yellow hornlight wound to the west
/ x / xx/ / x / /xx xx / /
Waste; her earliest stars, earlstars, stars principal, o
/ /x x /x x/ I x/ x / x /xxx/ x
Fire-featuring heaven. For earth her being has u

/ xx/ x x x / x x/ / x / /
stray or aswarm, all throughther, in throngs; self in self steeped

/x/ xx / / x xl/x / x / x /
Disremembering, dismembering all now. Heart, you round me right

x / / xx/xx / x / / / x / x
With: Our evening is over us; our night whelms, whelms, and will

/xx / x / /xxl /x x/ x / x /
Only the beakleaved boughs dragonish damask the tool-smoo
/xx / xx / x x/ xxxl / x / x/ x/
Ever so black on it. Our tale, O our oracle! Let life, wane
x / x / x / x/xxl x / x / x / x /
Off her once skeined stained veined variety upo

x x /x/ x / x / x / x x /xx/ x /
Now her all in two flocks, two folds-black, white; right, wrong
x / x /xx/ x / x / x / xx/ x xx /
But these two; ware of a world where but these tw
x / x / x / x / x xl / x/ x / x /
Where, selfwrung, selfstrung, sheathe- and

The rubato in "Spelt from Sibyl

in Chopin's music, which Hopkin
described Chopin's expressive me
tossing on a surf of accompanim
of rubato characteristic of the n

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/79

undulating vocal melody and regular piano accompaniment.12 As a song writ

himself, it is hardly surprising that Hopkins thought of rubato in this way. This
he seems to confirm when he says, "No doubt my poetry errs on the side
oddness. I hope in time to have a more balanced and Miltonic style. But
air, melody, is what strikes me most of all in music and design in painting,
design, pattern or what I am in the habit of calling "inscape" is what I abo
all aim at in poetry" (Abbott, Letters 66).
Although it occurs in the first line of "Spelt from Sibyl's Leaves," the rest
one stress is not repeated in subsequent lines and so is less structural th
rhetorical. If it were the former, the first line would be equivalent to a "the
in a piece of music, where rests play an integral part in the thematic structu
of the melody and are repeated in subsequent appearances of the theme. Bu
there are also other examples in music where the rests are not essential an
have a local rather than a large-scale effect, as, for example, in Elgar's "Enigm
theme in his Variations, Op. 36:
Andante.
legato e soslenuto

Violini iT _ I j/s" I e dim. ,

If the rests are omitted, as they are in Variation IV (W.M.B.) and Variation IX
("Nimrod"), the intervallic thematic properties of Elgar's melody are not
changed, even though the rhythmic changes act as important variational
devices. Hopkins's rest is, therefore, I believe, equivalent to Elgar's expres-
sive silences, and in this sense rhetorical.
While Hopkins obviously included rhythmical variables in order to facilitate
the reading (out loud) and understanding of his poetry, he had great diffi-
culty conveying his intentions. He could not assume that a reader or critic
would grasp the unusualness and special, idiosyncratic effect of his verse merely
by observing the words on the page. More than in music, agogics in poetry
require extra notation to indicate their application, a problem he clearly
recognized: "Either I must invent a notation applied throughout as in music
or else I must mark where the reader is likely to mistake" (Gardner and
MacKenzie 235).
Hopkins employed a large number of notation marks or diacritics in his
manuscripts in addition to detailed explanations and commentary, generally
in his letters to Robert Bridges. He was anxious, for example, to annotate
possible ambiguities and the submerged spoken lines over-running the punc-
tuation of written lines by using the symbol -. The earliest surviving exam-
ple occurs in "God's Grandeur" (Feb.-March, 1877):
12 See Kravitt, "Tempo" 497-518. He cites as an example Bernhard Scholz's (1835-1916) account
of performing with the famous singerJulius Stockhausen: "[Stockhausen] requested me to play
strictly in time, even when he took liberties; for he would compensate for them. [Stockhausen]
sang with consummate freedom, but upon the strict rhythmic background [that I provided]. It
was through him that the true character of the "tempo rubato" was first made clear to me: freely
phrased [melodic] passages upon a steady rhythmic foundation. Actually this is also what Chopin,
according to his pupil, Mikuli... required in the performance of music" (quoted in Kravitt,
"Tempo" 498).

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/80

The world is charged with the grandeur of God,

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared, with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod....
Hopkins also says that this poem and the next, "The Starlight Night" (May,
1877), should be read "slowly, strongly marking the rhythms and fetching out
the syllables"(notes in Bridges MS A). In the most rhythmically complicated
line of "The Starlight Night" (line 9), Hopkins adds - and "rallentando" to
the second half of the line: "Buy then! bid then!--What?-Prayer, patience,
alms, vows." Similar diacritics are found in the manuscripts of all ten sonnets
that he composed in Wales in the Spring of 1877. It is possible Hopkins
intended these poems for music and made fair copies of at least some of
them for his sister, Grace, so that she would be clearer about the stresses and
rhythmical intentions in her song settings. Hopkins describes "Spring" as
"unfolding rhythm, with sprung leadings: no counterpoint" (Gardner and
MacKenzie 264). The "sprung leadings" are indicated by large colons at the
beginning of the line, which signal a strong stress on the first syllable:
:Nothing is so beautiful as Spring-
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
:Thrush's eggs look like low heavens, and thrush
:Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
:The ear,...

The first nine lines are tied with a curved stroke in the left-hand margin
marked "Staccato." Immediately preceding lines 10 and 14 "Rall" (Rallentan
is written. "In the Valley of the Elway" has "Rall" indicated before lines 9
14, and "Sf." (Sforzando) before line 10. "Sprung rhythm" is indicated in
1 and 9 by ':
I remember a house where all were good
To me, God knows, deserving no such thing:

Lovely the woods, waters, meadows, combes, vales,...

The corrected manuscript (Bridges MS B) has many other scansion ma

indicating unusual stresses and rhythmical variations (see, further, Gardn
and MacKenzie 265). Hopkins describes "Hurrahing in Harvest" as "spr
and outriding rhythm" and explains that "An outriding foot is, by sort of
tradiction, a recognized extra-metrical effect; it is and it is not part of t
metre; not part of it, not being counted, but part of it by producing a ca
lated effect which tells in the general sense."'" The "outrides" are marked
13 Abbott, Letters 45. For a discussion of Hopkins's "outriding" effect, see Gardner, Gerard Ma
Hopkins, chap 3. Hopkins may have attempted to compose a melody line for "Hurrahin
Harvest," but unfortunately it has not survived (Stevens 489). In referring to the music he
in a letter ofJune 1880: "I wish I could pursue music; for I have invented a new style, some
standing to ordinary music as sprung rhythm to common rhythm: it employs quarter tone
am trying to set an air [melody] in it to the sonnet "Summer ends now" (Abbott, Letters 103

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/81

the manuscripts by a curved stroke under the syllables to which they app
in lines 1-2 and 8-9:
Summer ends now; now, barbarous in beauty, the stooks rise

Around; up above, what wind-walks! what lovely behaviour ...

Rapturous love's greeting of realer, of rounder replies?

And the azurous hung hills are his world-wielding shoulder...

The most metrically complex and ambiguous of this "musical" group of poems
is "The Windhover," which Hopkins regarded as "the best thing I ever wrote."
Here, Hopkins contrasts smoother "falling paeonic rhythms" with more heavily
stressed "sprung and outriding" rhythm. Hopkins marks the outrides, leaving
the reader to interpret the remainder. Gardner suggests the following metri-
cal reading (Gardner and MacKenzie 266):
x/ x / x / x /x /
I caught this morning morning's min
x x / x //x x x/ x // x
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon

x x/ x
in his riding
xx x xx / x //x xx / x
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and

/x
striding
// x x x / xxx / xx/ x x
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing

"The Windhover" is already so "musical" that it is hard

setting faithfully representing the poem's expressivity an
setting, which he composed in 1942, is the most emp
David Matthews it "perfectly matches the poem's rhyth
the attempt to capture the bird's ecstacy in poetry Hop
his extraordinary rhythmic technique and mastery of l
have what is basically a five-stress line . .. the proliferati
bles in irregular groups between the stresses make the li
hence "sprung rhythm." There is a similar "feel" to ma
dies, and especially where he uses the same technique
does in poetry, adding beats to, or subtracting them fr
make the tune dance more exuberantly."'4 Ian Kemp,
Tippett "was so bewitched by the idea of capturing the f

14 Matthews 27-28. Tippett's setting and "The Source," based on a

were a pair of madrigals Tippett wrote for his choir at Morley Co
lished settings of "The Windhover" include those by Earl George for
John Paynter, for unaccompanied Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass (SATB) c
Berkeley, for unaccompanied part-song SATB (1968). Settings of oth
so numerous as one might think. The Online Computer Library Ce
including some duplicates but with a few omissions as well (for exam
Reizenstein, and Martin Shaw).

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /82

attention to word-setting and word-painting is carried to almost obse

lengths" (179). Clearly, a good musical setting would have to take on a lif
its own without endeavoring to enhance the "music" of the poem. But a re
tion of the sonnet that is sensitive to the variable stresses, pauses, tempo modif
cations and inflections of the verse is arguably the most musical representa
of Hopkins's poetic voice.
One of the most heavily annotated poems by Hopkins is "Harry Ploughm
(1887), which Abbott once described as "almost a piece of modern orc
stration" (Letters xxxiii). Hopkins provides seven different reading-marks
detailed commentary. The short "burden-lines," he says, "might be recite
a chorus." "The rhythm of this sonnet," he continues, "which is altogether
recital, not for perusal (as by nature verse should be), is very highly
studied.... perhaps it will strike you as intolerably violent and artificial"
(quoted in Gardner and MacKenzie 292-93). Gardner summarizes Hopkins's
practice as follows:
The "highly studied" rhythm is brought out by seven reading-marks analogous to musical
notation, including the hurried feet and outrides seen in earlier poems: there are (1) / =
"metrical stress"; (2) A = "strong stress"; which does not differ much from (3) Cr = pause or dwell
on a syllable, which need not, however, have the "metrical stress"; (4) r = "quiver or circum-
flexion, making one syllable nearly two"; and (5) - = "slur," tying two syllables into the time of
one; (6) - over three or more syllables gives them the time of one half foot; (7) - = "the
outride; under one or more syllables makes them extrametrical: a slight pause follows as if the
voice were silently making its way back to the highroad of the verse." The following lines illus-
trate their use:

Line 1: "Hard as hurdle arms, with a broth of goldish flue"

/ / A / /---//
1.4: "Head and foot, shoulder and shank-" (B has "shoulder")

1.6: "Stand at stress ..."

,---, // /7
1.8: "Soared or sank-" (B has "or")

11.9-10: "Though as a beechbole firm, finds his, as at a rollcall, rank

And features in flesh what deed he each must do-"

1.12: "He leans to it, Harry bends, look.., waist

In him, all

SA

1.16: "Churl

(n / /
1.17: "Them-broad in bluff hide .. ." (Gardner an

The equivalent musical agogics, I sugge

or dynamic intensity; (2) "strong stre
(3) "pause" = tenuto but not necessarily a
= lengthening, rubato; (5) "slur" = duple

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/83

(6) "[slur] over three or more syllables"= triplets, or marked hurrying o

rhythm; (7) "the outride"= rubato, followed by an expressive hesitation, a
tinctive mannerism of Romantic interpretation, equivalent to the Luftp
or "breath-pause."
Similar analyses identifying equivalent musical agogics could be don
many of Hopkins's poems. In addition to those poems already menti
the manuscript sources of "The Wreck of the Deutschland," "Binsey Popl
"Duns Scotus's Oxford," "Henry Purcell," "The Bugler's First Commun
"Felix Randal," "To what serves Mortal Beauty?," "(Carion Comfort),
"Tom's Garland," all contain numerous diacritic marks for which musical
equivalents could be deduced. Following the text of "The Leaden Echo and
the Golden Echo" in Bridges MS A, Hopkins wrote: "I have marked the stronger
stresses, but with the degree of stress so perpetually varying no marking is
satisfactory. Do you think all had best be left to the reader?" This statement
echoes the point made in his note (in Bridges MS A) on "The Wreck of the
Deutschland": "Which syllables however are strong and which light is better
told by the ear than by instruction that could be in short space given." Both
comments suggest that Hopkins's reading-marks function as general guides
only: their precise meaning varies between poems and versions of poems.
Consequently, diacritics typically have been omitted from modern editions of
his poems. As MacKenzie points out, Hopkins "himself was doubtful about
the wisdom of confronting readers with such an array [of reading-
marks] .. and every subsequent editor has limited himself to those cases
where the intended rhythm might otherwise be misinterpreted. Moreover,
the various MSS. of a poem may differ among themselves in the precise distri-
bution of outrides, slurs, and accents, so that all the various readings would
have to be supplied to create a full picture" (Gardner and MacKenzie xl-xli).
As in music, so in Hopkins's poetry: the agogics or tempo rubato are imprecise.
They are not, however, incidental, acting as some sort of rhetorical ornament.
They are very much part of his style and poetic mode,just as they are essential
to the performance of Romantic music. From the perspective of nineteenth-
century literature, Hopkins's poetry is indeed idiosyncratic and hard to
place. But, like Whitman, his musical mode of thinking and writing, his
"musicality," resulted in "a new type of metrical contract being drawn, in which
the commitment is made not to convention, but to the poetic self" (Hollander
204). As such, his poetry should be viewed as one of the "specialized conse-
quences of Romanticism" emanating from Romantic musical expression
(Hollander 203).

The relationship between poetry and music, where it can be identified,

operates on differing levels of sophistication and connectedness. To seek to
explain certain characteristics and events in a poem, be they linguistic or
prosodic, in specific musical terms and procedures is invariably misleading
and inconclusive. A poet creates poetry according to verse parameters. Music
may have meaning, but it is an imprecise language, a language of suggestion
and imagery rather than verbal description. The most obvious and poten-

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/84

tially the closest link between music and poetry is in song. But even in
case musicians usually set poetry as musical compositions-art songs-
sung verse. The poem acts as a catalyst for music and rarely governs its i
tion.'5 Many twentieth-century critics have endeavored to find a specia
tionship between (English) poetry and music, from the sixteenth centur
the present day, attempting to explain that illusory union betwixt the
"sphere-born harmonious sisters." But, as C.S. Lewis once remarked, in
cussing the expressivity of Thomas Campion, the quintessential musi
of the English Renaissance:
To approach Campion's art without a consideration of his music is not so risky... How
happily married to their "notes" in the end, the poems had a rhythmical life of their own
it is their "music" in that sense that the literary critic is concerned with... His poetr
nearly passionless as great poetry can be. There are passions somewhere in the backgroun
a passion, like a metre, is to Campion only a starting point: not for moral or intellectual a
but for the creation of a new experience which could only occur in poetry. (553-56)

In the nineteenth century, connections between poetry and music were i

sified in certain contexts: in Germany, especially in the Lied (see Kravit
Lied), and in England, to a lesser extent, in Victorian song (see Bush
Bush and Temperley). In neither was the shape and content of a poem d
mined by its musical setting, even when a poet supplied verses specif
for music, as Tennyson did, much to his subsequent regret, for Sull
multi-art song cycle, The Window.'6 But, in an age of new expressio
"neu-romantik" of poetic fantasy, it is hardly surprising that composers
find inspiration in literature, and that poets would have recourse to mu
When Berlioz wrote symphonic poems "after" Scott, Byron, or Shakespe
he did not attempt to "set" his literary sources, but rather to convey an
native ideal. This is also the case for numerous literary symphonic piece
the nineteenth century by Mendelssohn, Liszt, Schumann, Tchaikovsky,
others. Romantic poets were as aware and anxious as composers to find n
forms of expression. Indeed, it is not difficult to see parallels between
two arts without suggesting a close inter-dependence."
Much nineteenth-century music and poetry, therefore, can be appreci
on its own terms without recourse to the kind of analogies I have been
sidering. Where problems arise, as for example in Berlioz's symphony "R
etJuliette" (1839), or in Hopkins's poems, we can find the most satisfact
explanations of the unconventionality of these works by exploring the dr
force behind their artistic motivation, rather than looking for plausible
imprecise analogs. Perhaps more than any other Romantic composer, Be
found inspiration for his music in literature. "Romeo" is a problem
from a musical point of view, but if we approach its rhythms, movemen
colors from the perspective of its literary associations we can begin to
cover the essence of its creativity. Although characteristics which strictly spe

15 Exceptions might include Medieval formes fixes and later sixteenth-century Florentine m
16 Tennyson tried to suppress the publication of the work, having taken a dislike to his own offe
17 In Music and Poetry Lawrence Kramer seeks to identify parallels between Beethov
Wordsworth, Chopin and Shelley, and Whitman, Rilke and Beethoven (among others).

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HOPKINS AND MUSICAL AGOGICS/85

ing belong to music-key structure and its logicality, texture, etc.-can

and should not be explained in poetic terms, considerations such as m
and sonority, which affect key and texture, can and should-in the case o
work like "Romeo"-be related to that work's poetic inspiration.
Conversely, when it can be shown that a poet is thinking as a "compos
then unusual and idiosyncratic events in poetry can be explained, no
specific musical terms, but by suggesting creative influences and par
Such relationships can be found in poetry from Chaucer (as Hopkins
mates) to Auden, Larkin and Hughes. And in music from Machaut to
Birtwistle. Only in exceptional circumstances, as in Sidney's Certain Sonnets
or Baif's verse mesuree, does music exert a specific effect on poetry. Hopkins's
"agogics" are the result of a creative impulse, his compositional "mindset,"
and not the consequence of radical prosodical procedures unique to a cer-
tain kind of poetry.

The University of Reading, UK

Works Cited

Abbott, Claude C., ed. The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges. Vol. 1. London
Oxford University Press, 1935. 2 vols.
--. The Correspondence of Gerard Manley Hopkins and Richard Watson Dixon. London: Oxfor
University Press, 1935.
Bridges, Robert, ed. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Oxford University Press, 1918.
Bush, Geoffrey. "Songs." The Athlone History of Music in Britain: The Romantic Age 1800-1914. Ed
Nicholas Temperley. London: Athlone Press, 1981. 266-87.
---, ed. Songs 1860-1900. Musica Britannica 56. London: Stainer and Bell, 1989.
Bush, Geoffrey and Nicholas Temperley, eds. English Songs 1800-1860. Musica Britannica
London: Stainer and Bell, 1979.
Ferlita, Ernest, S.J. "Performance: Hopkins' 'Sine Qua Non.'" Gerard Manley Hopkins: Tradition
and Innovation. Ed. P. Bottalla, G. Marra, and F. Marucci. Ravenna: Longo, 1991. 47-54.
Gardner, W.H. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889): A Study of Poetic Idiosyncrasy in Relation to
Poetic Tradition. London: Secker and Warburg, 1949.
Gardner, W.H. and Norman H. MacKenzie, eds. The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London:
Oxford University Press, 1970.
Giles, Richard F., ed. Hopkins Among the Poets: Studies in Modern Responses to Gerard Manley Hopkins.
International Hopkins Association, Monograph 3, 1985.
Heywood, Terence. "Gerard Manley Hopkins: His Literary Ancestry." English 3 (1940):16.
Hollahan, Eugene. Hopkins Against History. Omaha, Nebraska: Creighton University Press, 1995.
Hollander, John. Vision and Resonance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1975.
House, H., ed. TheJournals and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Completed by G. Storey. London:
Oxford University Press, 1959.
Howard, H. Wendell. "The Influence of the Music of Henry Purcell on the Poetry of Gerard
Manley Hopkins." Hopkins Quarterly 8.4 (1982): 137-55.
Johnson, Wendell Stacy. Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Poet as Victorian. New York: Cornell University
Press, 1968.

Kemp, Ian. Tippett: The Composer and His Music. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press,
1987.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE/86

Kramer, Lawrence. Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After. Berkeley: Unive
California Press, 1984.

Kravitt, Edward F. "Tempo as an Expressive Element in the Late Romantic Lied." Musical Quarterly
59.4 (1973): 497-518.
---. The Lied: Mirror of Late Romanticism. New Haven and London: Yale University Press,
1996.

Lahey, G.F. Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Oxford University Press, 1931.
Leech, G.N. "Music in Metre: "Sprung Rhythm" in Victorian and Georgian Poetry." Dutch Qua
Review ofAnglo-American Letters 14.3 (1994): 200-13.
Lewis, C.S. English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. New York: Oxford Univ
Press, 1954.

MacKenzie, Norman H. "Hopkins among the Victorians: Form in Art and Nature." English Studies
Today: Third Series. Ed. G.I. Duthie. Edinburgh: University Press, 1964. 155-68.
---. "Hopkins and the Prosody of Sir Thomas Wyatt: A Chapter in the Ancestry of Sprung
Rhythm." Hopkins Quarterly 8.2 (1981): 63-73.
---, ed. The Poetical Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Oxford English Texts. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1990.

Matthay, Tobias. Musical Interpretation. London:Joseph Williams, 1913.

Matthews, David. Michael Tippett: An Introductory Study. London: Faber, 1980.
Milroy, James. "Hopkins' Victorian Language." Hopkins Quarterly 1.4 (1975): 167-81.
--. The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Andr6 Deutsch, 1977.
Moore, J. Northrop. Edward Elgar, A Creative Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984.
Niecks, Frederick. "Tempo Rubato from the Aesthetic Point of View." Monthly Musical Record 43
(1913): 116-18.
North, John S. and Michael D. Moore, eds. Vital Candle: Victorian and Modern Bearings in Gerard
Manley Hopkins. Waterloo, Ontario: University of Waterloo Press, 1984. The proceedings of
the conference, "Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Poet in his Age," held at Wilfrid Laurier and
Waterloo Universities, 1981.

Phare, E.E. The Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.
Philip, Robert. Early Recordings and Musical Style: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance,
1900-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Riemann, Hugo. Musikalische Dynamik und Agogik. Hamburg: Rahter, 1884.
Rivarde, Achille. The Violin and its Technique. London: Macmillan, 1921.
Stainer and Barrett's Dictionary of Musical Terms. Rev. John Stainer. London: Novello, 1889.
Stevens, John. "Gerard Manley Hopkins as Musician." The Journals and Papers of Gerard Manley
Hopkins. Ed. H. House, completed by G. Storey. London: Oxford University Press, 1959. 457-97.
Sulloway, Alison G. Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Victorian Temper. London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1972.
Taylor, Franklin. Technique and Expression in Pianoforte Playing. London: Novello, 1897.
Wagner, Richard. Bericht an Seine Majestdt Konig Ludwig II von Bayern. Munich: Christian Kaiser,
1865.

Wain,John. "Gerard Manley Hopkins: An Idiom of Desperation." Proceedings of the British Academy
45 (1959): 173-97; repr. in G.H. Hartman. Hopkins: A Collection of Critical Essays (Twentiet
Century Views). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966. 57-70.
Waterhouse, J.F. "Gerard Manley Hopkins and Music." Music & Letters 18.3 (1937): 227-35.
White, Norman. Hopkins: A Literary Biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Wilson, Christopher R. "The Idea of 'Musicality' in Hopkins' Verse." Hopkins Quarterly 26. 1-
(1999): 27-55.
Wintors, Yvor. "The Audible Reading of Poetry." Hudson Review 4.3 (1951): 433-47.

This content downloaded from 191.133.76.103 on Fri, 19 Jan 2018 12:39:50 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms