![]() ![]() “The Raven” depicts a mysterious raven’s midnight visit to a mourning narrator, as illustrated by John Tenniel (1858). ![]() “’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door- Only this and nothing more.” Leonard Slatkin: The Raven Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore- While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. And you can immediately sense that supernatural atmosphere in the first of 18 six-line stanzas. I read that the narrative poem “The Raven” is often noted for its musicality, stylized language, and supernatural atmosphere. 25 (Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra Adrian Leaper, cond.) Joseph Holbrooke: The Raven (Poem for Orchestra), Op. As the musicologist and conductor Leon Botstein writes, “The sense of affinity between Poe’s writings and music perhaps rests in the amorphous, abstract, yet psychologically powerful qualities of Poe’s dramatic illustrations, which seem to resemble the qualities of music itself.” A good many composers looked at Poe’s mix of the supernatural and symbolic as a source of musical dramatization. Poe takes us into the realm of psychology, and his influence is strongly felt in the music. The Raven and Other Poems, Wiley and Putnam, New York, 1845 ![]()
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