Musical Form and Poetic Stress

Abstract

The definition in my last chapter is unscientific and untestable, but is quite close to Coleridge′s familiar description of the relation between a poem′s individual moments of sound and the overall artistic form (Coleridge, 1920):

If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with it. They must be such, as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention to each part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and sound are calculated to excite . . .[A poem] . . . is discriminated by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with a distinct gratification from each component part.