Musical Narratology: An Outline: Ałgorzata Awłowska

MAŁGORZATA PAWŁOWSKA
(Krakow)
Musical Narratology: An Outline
The story of narratology becomes as much an auto-reflexive as a postmodern tale.

Christine Brooke-Rose
Introduction
Musical narratology is currently undergoing a phase of dynamic develop-

ment. It is part of the expansion of narratology that we have observed with-
in the last few years in the interdisciplinary sphere that has resulted, among
other things, in the creation of the European Narratological Network
(ENN) and the organization of its conferences. As Anna Łebkowska, a
Polish author, writes: “the ubiquity of narrative has become fact” (2006:
181). Similarly, Márta Grabócz, a musicologist who has worked on musical
narratology since the early 1990s, observes the following:
Today […] I find myself confronted with the problem—or rather exceptional
opportunity—that narrative studies encounters: namely an e x p l o s i o n , a light-
ning renaissance of narrative theory and analysis. (2008: 19, my emphasis);
By “musical narratology” I understand the study of the relation between
narrative and music, expressed in the persistent debate on whether music
can be narrative or not, as well as analyses of musical pieces as narratives,
from the perspective of narratology.
As we know, postclassical narratology is “an interdisciplinary endeav-
our”, and narrative is treated as a “many-sided phenomenon” (Herman
and Vervaeck 2008: 450). Therefore, the question of the relationship be-
tween “narrative and music” has become a part of narratological investiga-
tions, as seen, for example, in the writings of Werner Wolf, or in Marie
Laure-Ryan’s Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling, in which a
whole section is devoted to music. At the same time though, many
narratologists, including the aforementioned, deal with the subject of the
relation between narrative and music with great caution. Among the varie-
ty of media to which the concept of narrative is applied, music seems to
be the most controversial. The question arises of whether we should not
leave music as a completely abstract phenomenon. As Walter Pater writes:
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198 Małgorzata Pawłowska
All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music, because, in its ideal,
consummate moments, the end is not distinct from the means, the form from the
matter, the subject from the expression. (1986: 135)
Despite the complexity of the issue, the phenomenon known as “musical
narratology” has made itself perceptible in the humanities. In this paper, I
will examine the question of narrative and music relation mainly in the writ-
ings of music specialists who draw on narratological concepts (such as, inter
alia, Byron Almén, Marta Grabócz, Fred Everett Maus, Jean Jacques
Nattiez, and Eero Tarasti). It is the work of these—the “narratological mu-
sicologists” (Ryan 2004: 270)—that constitutes “musical narratology” as a
separate subdiscipline.
The term “narrative” is often used in relation to music—both in col-
loquial expressions and in scholarly discourse. The expansion of the term
in the theory of music (together with a whole set of other terms derived
from literary narratology) was connected to a paradigm shift. In the 1970s
and 1980s, as a reaction to post-Hanslick formalist tendencies (that is, to
treat music as “sonorous forms in motion”1), issues concerning expression
and meaning in music began to reappear—along with the flourishing of
musical semiotics. Since the mid-1970s the subject of narrative has held a
significant position during annual meetings of the American Musicological
Society. In 1991 an issue of Indiana Theory Review was devoted entirely to
musical narrative. The problem of musical narrative is also discussed dur-
ing the recurring International Congress on Musical Signification.2
What sealed the phenomenon of “musical narratology” was the ap-
pearance of the entry Narratology, Narrativity (by Fred Everett Maus) in
2001 in what is considered by many to be the world’s most important
music encyclopedia, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. It pre-
sents, however, a rather scattered account of the literature (containing
mostly articles) which, in a fragmentary way, introduced mainly the fierce
debate on whether the existence of narrative in music is possible. In re-
cent years the field of musical narratology has developed greatly. Two
books which address the issue of narrative in music have appeared in
recent years: A Theory of Musical Narrative by Byron Almén (2008) and
Musique, narrativité, signification by Marta Grabocz (2009).
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1 The original German phrase is “tönend bewegte Formen.”
2 The ICMS is a biennial conference that provides a platform for presentations and discus-
sions of recent developments and future trends in Musical Semiotics. It has been held since
1986 as part of the International Project on Musical Signification.

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Musical Narratology: An Outline 199
The Musicological Debate on Narrative in Music
As I have already mentioned, since the 1970s a debate on whether

narrativity can exist in music often appears in musical writings. Central
questions have been posed: Is the term “narrativity” in music used in a
metaphorical sense, as derived from literature? Is narrative possible in
music—especially in instrumental music without text or literary program?
I will only present briefly some chosen, exemplary attitudes to the prob-
lem. As we shall see, authors advocating for, respectively, a positive or
negative answer to the question of whether music can be narrative take up
very diverse concepts in their arguments. This diversity results inter alia
from differences in the understanding of the very term of narrative and
from different ideas about which elements are to be regarded as crucial for
the existence of narrative.
Among the first authors to take up this subject and advocate for a
positive answer to the question of whether music can be narrative were
Edward Cone and Anthony Newcomb.
In his works from 1970s, Cone proposed perceiving music as a lan-
guage of gestures. He posed a question: who speaks to us through a musi-
cal work? He used such terms as virtual persona, virtual agent, virtual idea—we
can identify them, but cannot strictly define them. He treated repetitions
in music (for example da capo) as being of the past tense, “remembered”
by the persona. Cone’s writings therefore launched the debate on whether
musical compositions can be treated as stories told by someone.
Following Cone, Anthony Newcomb (1984, 1988, 1994, 1997) noticed
that when listening to music we can recognize action, tension and dynamics
similar to those which we experience while reading a literary text. So he pro-
posed an analysis going beyond the formal level to the level of functional
elements in the temporal span of the work. This series of functional events
constructs a musical narrative. Newcomb also searched for plot archetypes
and paradigms in musical works, with reference to the work of Propp and
Todorov, but in a much more general sense. (Example scheme: suffering
leading to redemption—Symphonies No. 5 and No. 9 of Beethoven, Sym-
phony No. 2 of Schumann).
An outstanding contribution to the theory of narrative in music has
been that of Eero Tarasti, who in his book A Theory of Musical Semiotics,
published in 1994, clearly stated that narrative units can be observed in
music. Tarasti became famous for his narratological analyses of Chopin’s
Polonaise-Fantasy Op. 61 and Ballade in G minor op. 23. According to him, we
can perceive narrative programs in the structure of music itself, without
referring to literature. He draws on the Greimasian model: the idea of the
semiotic square, isotopes, modal categories, and actants. Tarasti also

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showed how the performance of a musical work is crucial for bringing out
its narrative elements, and has recently presented a theory of three kinds
of narrativity: conventional, organic and existential.
Conventional narrativity takes shape following the Proppian functions as clearcut
narrative programs in which the musical subject appears as actors and “does”
something. [...] Organic narrativity, on the other hand, exceeds borderlines; it re-
sists clear segmentation as it strives for continuous growth in accomplishing mu-
sical telos [...] The operatic principle or organic narrativity is to let the music ap-
pear ‘by itself’ [...]. Finally, existential narrativity crystallizes in those moments that
constitute unique situations of choice, from which a paradigm of virtualities is
opened. In such moments one gets free from the power and necessity of both
conventional [...] and organic-corporeal processes [...]. (2008: 112)
At the same time, the concept of musical actants was taken up by Joseph
Kerman, according to whom the study of musical narration should begin
with the concerto genre. In his article Representing a Relationship: Notes on a
Beethoven Concerto Kerman writes:
While plenty of exceptions exist [...] in general one knows exactly who is who in a
concerto and who is doing what. There is a soloist and an orchestra, and there is
usually quite a sharp sense of character, of ‘the powerful and multicolored or-
chestra and its weak but high-spirited adversary’ as Tchaikovsky once put it. The
agents exist in some kind of relationship, and what is traced in a concerto is the
course of a relationship. (1992: 97–98)
Kerman—alluding to the change of paradigm in music theory—postulates
an attempt to decipher extra-musical meanings, because on some level
they are evident and intersubjectively verifiable. The reception of a work
as it develops in time is significant in the context of musical narrative. In
the linear course of time the listener uses the function of memory; he
compares earlier passages with future ones, he anticipates, he is taken by
surprise, he is being led by the musical narration.
The possibility of music being narrative is postulated also by authors
such as Robert Hatten, Marta Grabocz, Byron Almén, Karol Berger, Vera
Micznik, Susan McClary and Raymond Monelle.
Among skeptical voices addressing the possibility of musical narrative
we find: Jean Jacques Nattiez, Carolyn Abbate and Fred Everett Maus.
Nattiez, for instance, argues that music is unable to narrate in the past
tense, that music lacks a subject, as well as lacking the subject—predicate
relation and causality. He claims that we need a literary reference point to
understand a musical work as narrative. Without it we can only speak
about narrativity in music metaphorically. So to Nattiez music can only
suggest a narrative or be similar to a narrative. Formal syntactic relations
developing in time can create an illusion of narration, but only in the mind
of a listener. Nattiez quotes Theodor W. Adorno, writing about Mahler,
that music is “a narrative which relates nothing” (1990: 149–319). Where-

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as, following Hayden White, he uses the distinction between the verbs to
narrate and to narrativize. The second verb does not mean narrating in the
strict sense, but making an illusion of it—so for Nattiez music narrativizes
(1990: 249). Because of its imitative ability music can imitate narrative
style.
Carolyn Abbate shares the critical attitude of Nattiez. According to
her, through music we can hear the voice of narration, but we do not
know what it is talking about. Music therefore imitates a narrative mode.
She strongly opposes narrative interpretations which, in her opinion, trivi-
alize music.
Fred Everett Maus claims that music is more similar to drama than to
narrative (1988, 1991, 1997). Maus thinks that literary language is fully
justified in the interpretation of music, but on a high level of abstraction,
which means for example that actants should not be identified. He con-
cludes: “the exploration of instrumental music as narrative remains a tan-
talizing, confusing, problematic area of inquiry” (Maus 2001).
The books by Byron Almén (2008) and Marta Grabocz (2009) were
partly reactions to the critical attitudes mentioned above. In his book
Almén debunks these critical arguments one by one, as we shall see later.
Puzzling Definitions
It is easy to observe that in this “debate” many discrepancies are caused

by differences in the understanding of the very term narrative, by mixing
and blurring the notions of epic and narrative, and by different ideas
about which elements are to be regarded as crucial for the existence of
narrative. No wonder, since even among narratologists there is no single
concept or definition of what narrative is.
I would therefore like to focus on the definitions and ways of thinking
presented by authors who to some extent have organized this chaotic
terminology. By doing this, these authors have simultaneously refuted the
abovementioned arguments “against” musical narrative.
Karol Berger, in his text Narrative and Lyric (1993), tries to organize no-
tions connected to narrative, epic, lyric and drama, with reference to Aristo-
tle, Genette and Ricoeur. The most important among his proposals is the
introduction of a dyad—narrative and lyric—instead of a triad. As Berger
notes, Genette has traced the ways in which modal and thematic categories
have been mixed through the history of these terms. The narrative category,
in Berger’s understanding, contains both epic and drama, and it is character-
ized by what it presents, that is by storyline, plot. The difference between
epic and drama lies in their modes of presentation, though both present the
same thing. (In this light, Maus’s argument—that music is more similar to

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drama than to a narrative—loses its point, because it seems that Maus has
equated the narrative with the epic). Narrative and lyric are, according to
Berger, types of form. Whereas narrative is a temporal form properly suited
to representing human actions, lyric is an atemporal form representing
states of mind. Berger explains, however, that:
To be clear I would like to add that all music and all literature happen in time.
Yet the notion of form with which we deal here does not concern either the ways
of existence of a work of art in the real world or the ways in which it is experi-
enced, but it concerns the temporal or atemporal structure of the world present-
ed in the work. (1993: 54)
In narrative there is a sequence of parts which succeed one another in a
determined order, governed by relationships of causation and resulting
from necessity or probability. Such a narrative form implies an active and
synthetic hearing, in contrast to the lyric form which encourages rather a
passive kind of hearing by evoking a certain atmosphere. Berger, referring
to the essay of Heinrich Besseler Das musikalische Hören der Neuzeit (1959),
points to the moment in the history of music in which active synthetic
hearing reached its height: the end of the 18th century, i.e. the times of
Hochklassik. This is the very moment in which the musical theme—an
entity returning throughout the piece of music and subject to modifica-
tions—adopted individual features, became original and expressed the
unique personality of a particular author. The musical work, united by the
main theme which preserved its identity despite all its transformations,
was understood as an expression of constant individual moral “character”.
While listening to such a composition (for example of Haydn, Mozart or
Beethoven), one synthesizes its consecutive phases so that it emerges as
an integrated entity in which something has “happened”. A composition
evoking a state or moment, however, for example in the musical impres-
sionism of Debussy, is not narrative music. This is why we sometimes
have the impression that there can be music that evidently does not try to
tell us any story, while sometimes when listening to music “we might sigh
and say: ‘How narrative!’” (Tarasti 2004: 287).
Byron Almén, in his book A Theory of Musical Narrative (2008), de-
bunks one by one the critical arguments concerning the existence of nar-
rative in music (i.e. the arguments of Nattiez and Maus), proving that the
existence of narrative does not require a meta-linguistic discourse that
presupposes causality, narrator and referentiality. He arrives at the conclu-
sion that narrative in music is possible, that it is not a secondary phenom-
enon taken from literature, and that it can manifest itself through the in-
teraction of musical elements. He indicates that the definition of narrative
is the source of confusion:

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Because narrative was first conceptualized in relation to literature, we have largely

failed to recognize the distinction between narrative proper and narrative as man-
ifested in literature. (2008:12)
Among the existing definitions, he distinguishes between those which are
based on a descendant model and those on a sibling one. Almén writes:
To use a genealogical metaphor, I prefer a sibling model rather than a descendant
model for articulating the relationship between musical and literary narrative. The
descendant model presupposes a conceptual priority for literary narrative, while the
sibling model distinguishes between a set of foundational principles common to all
narrative media and principles unique to each medium. (2008: 18)
According to Almén, narrative categories—such as the four mythoi distin-
guished by Northrop Frye, of comedy, romance, irony/satire and trage-
dy—are present in music. They are the outcome of particular sequences of
narrative formulas. The author gives his own definition of musical narra-
tive: “Musical narrative is the process through which the listener perceives
and tracks culturally a significant transvaluation of hierarchical relation-
ships within a temporal span” (Almén 2003: 12).
As we can see, it is possible to claim that music can be narrative if we
accept rather general, broad definitions of narrative such as those quoted
above. If, however, we base our analysis on the definitions proclaiming
the existence of a narrator or representation specified in semantic details
of the plot as a necessary condition of narrative, we will not be able to
claim that music can be narrative. For example, according to Marie-Laure
Ryan “a narrative text must create a world and populate it with characters
and objects” (2004: 8), and according to Gerald Prince, the presence of at
least one narrator is necessary for narrative (2003: 58). In this case—
referring to Marie-Laure Ryan’s distinction (2004: 9)—we would rather
say that music can’t be narrative, but can have narrativity, because it is able
to evoke narrative scripts in the mind of the audience.
A Narratological Perspective in Music Analysis
In music, there is no narrator or concrete fictional world filled with ob-

jects and characters, but musicological narratologists claim that there can
be a subject of mental processes and signification present in musical utter-
ance itself. If we try to abstract the manifestations of what is regarded as a
narratological perspective in musicological works, they will be:
Structures of musical signification, such as, inter alia:

‒ Musical Gestures
This term refers to ‘energetic shaping through time’, grounded biologically and
culturally in communicative human movement. Musical gestures are expressed

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within the conventions of a musical style, whose elements include both the dis-
crete (pitch, rhythm, meter) and the analog (dynamics, articulation, temporal pac-
ing) (Hatten 2004: 224).
‒ Topics
A topic is a complex musical correlation originating in the kind of music. (Hatten,
1994: 294–295). From its contacts with worship, poetry, drama, entertainment,
dance, ceremony, the military, the hunt, and the life of the lower classes, music in
the early 18th century developed a thesaurus of characteristic figures. They are desig-
nated here as topics—subjects for musical discourse (Ratner 1980: 9).
‒ Modalities
Modalities are general human ways of evaluation. As a series of emotional states,
modalities account for the way the listener unites a musical text with human val-
ues. (Tarasti 1991: 136). The prevalent modalities of music are ‘being’ and ‘do-
ing’, in addition to the normal temporal process of music, which I call ‘becom-
ing’. Being means a state of rest, stability, and consonance; doing is synonymous
with musical action: event, dynamism, and dissonance. The basic modalities of
being and doing are sur-modalized by several others: will, the so-called kinetic en-
ergy of music, its general direction, its tendency to move toward a goal; know, the
information conveyed by music, its cognitive moment; can, the power and effi-
ciency of music; must, the control exercised by the rules of genres and formal
types; believe, the epistemic values of music. One can also speak of modalities—
that is to say, a process of modalization—in the performance or listening to mu-
sic (Tarasti, 2004: 295–296).
‒ Intonations
Intonation signifies formulas, types of specific musical sonorities which transmit
a human and social meaning, represented by the characters set out in the entire
composition; their destiny is shaped in large musical and dramaturgical units like
the characters observed in dramas, and plays its part in revealing the complex
world of artists (Ujfalussy 1980, after Grabocz, 2008: 26).
‒ Semes, Classemes, Isotopies
These are categories helping to “distinguish the extent of the different dimen-
sions of the signified (the smallest is the seme, the largest the isotope, while the
classeme would correspond to the level of the phrase and the musical period in
the Classical and Romantic eras” (Grabocz 2008: 27). The term “isotopy” refers
to “a set of semantic categories whose redundancy guarantees the coherence of
sign-complex and makes possible the uniform reading of any text” (Tarasti 1994:
291–292).
Moreover, in certain pieces of music one can detect actants.
Musical narratology also deals with:
The organizing strategies of the signified
‒ On the micro-level: binary oppositions, functions and directions of
action, such as enclosure, disruption, subversion, counteraction, with-
drawal, interruption, realization, together with all possible transfor-
mations.

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‒ On the macro-level: musical forms and plot archetypes, narrative

schemas, narrative programs, arrangement of topics and isotopies
through time
The narratological tools derived from literary theory which have been
most frequently used in music analyses are those of Propp (with his func-
tions), Greimas (with such narrative units as actants, predicates, modali-
ties, isotopies, the semiotic square, narrative programs and canonical nar-
rative schema) and Todorov (with his narrative schema).
Musical Narratives versus Literary Narratives
If analytical tools for examining musical narrations are taken over from
the theory of literature, what elements of the systems are then analogous
for literary and musical narrations? Both music and language can be per-
ceived as systems of utterance, which enable interpersonal communica-
tion, with a sender and a receiver. Here we have to add that this “utter-
ance” in the case of music is far remote from linguistic pragmatics. They
both have a temporal, linear structure. Therefore both in the perception
of literary and musical narratives, Husserl’s categories of retention (an
intentional awareness of a past event as past ) and protention (an intention-
al awareness of a future event as about to happen) are essential (see Polony
2005: 81). Of course, the experience of time is different in the perception
of literary and musical narratives. Both language and music are systems of
conventional, phonic signs. In both cases we observe the use of grammar
understood as rules enabling the formation of an unlimited number of
new structures. As part of the grammar in both systems we find syntax.
Therefore in both cases the formal relations established between elements
in time—like consequence, transformations, repetitions—are significant.
In musicology, Schenkerian analysis 3 and the generative theory of tonal
music by Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff (1983) (inspired by Noam
Chomsky) focus on musical syntax. Todorov claimed that in literary narra-
tives “spatial” relations, such as antitheses, gradations, and repetitions, are
very important. We can observe that these relations in music are, in fact,
even emphasized. Finally, both literary and musical narratives can be un-
derstood as processes, as dynamic and energetic structures.
Apart from the obvious difference concerning the mere material of
literary and musical narratives, the biggest dissimilarity seems to emerge in
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3 This means the method of musical analysis of tonal music based on the theories of Hein-
rich Schenker, first presented in Harmonielehre in 1906.

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the sphere of semantics. Music cannot make a proposition (Micznik 2001:

218), there is no link between subject and predicate in music; moreover,
“what music lacks, is vocabulary” (Rosen 1971: 38; qtd. in Micznik 2001:
211). Nevertheless, in musical narratology many misunderstandings (as
part of the already mentioned “debate”) result from the use of the term
“narrative” in reference to only one of its two levels, which are: story and
discourse. Such adversaries of the narratological approach to music as
J. J. Nattiez and C. Abbate, while criticizing the use of the term narrative,
seem to admit in a way that musical works can fulfill one of the two as-
pects of narration: discourse. (Here let us remember Adorno’s quote, used
by Nattiez: music is “a narrative which relates nothing” and Abbate’s
claim, that through music we can hear the voice of narration, but we do
not know what it is talking about). Seemingly, to these researchers music
lacks the capacity to carry a story, to become a narrative.
However, the problem of the ability or otherwise of music to tell a
story is more complex. There is no doubt that literary narrations provide
full semantics—we follow a particular plot. There is a possibility that mu-
sic conveys a particular story—in program music, or together with a liter-
ary text. The same story can be told by means of literary and musical nar-
ration—then we talk about intersemiotic transpositions or about
transmutation.
The question is: What about narration in instrumental works without
text or program, so called absolute music? Can we, with reference to those
works, talk about narrative with its two components, discourse and story?
Two extreme attitudes to this question are presented; on the one hand by
the proponents of the literal transfer of particular stories to the music we
listen to, and on the other hand by autotelists, who think that music can
only be syntactic—without semantics. Yet there exists an entire spectrum
of shades between the two extremes.
Musical signifié ?
Musical gestures, modalities, topics etc. refer, after all, to meaning which is
not purely musical. It is rather ‘abstract meaning’ which, however, indi-
cates some semantic fields. Marie-Laure Ryan recalls an anecdote about
the composer Aaron Copeland, who was reportedly once asked: “Does
music have meaning?” “Absolutely,” he replied. “Can it be put into
words?”; “Absolutely not” (2004: 267). If we agree that semantization can
be a phenomenon of various degrees and does not have to represent spe-
cific objects which have names, faces and shapes, but just general phe-
nomena which can—but do not have to—undergo specification or elabo-

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ration in the mind of the listener, we will have to admit that music can tell
a story.
Semantics in music is like an algebraic formula, giving possibilities for
the substitution of particular elements with more or less strictly specified
designators. The ones specified will be a result of the cognitive process of
the music perceiver, in the form of a construction of images. But the most
general ones are intersubjectively verifiable and encoded and present in
the very music, whether based on natural or cultural musical signs. As
Werner Wolf argues:
Narrativity is […] considered to be a gradable quality whose constituents [...] and
characteristic features can be best illustrated with verbal stories (be they factual or
fictional) as prototypical narratives. But narrativity is, of course, by no means re-
stricted to such stories. (2008: 324)
Therefore: if in the Ballade in F major by Chopin we have Andantino and
Presto con fuoco, we recognize a binary semantic opposition—a structure of
sounds that is calm, gentle and—as its contrary—one that is restless and
abrupt. No one would say that it is the opposite (although one might use
slightly different words to describe this elementary meaning), so it can be
intersubjectively verified. The clash of these two qualities constructs some
sort of “event”. Furthermore, we can correlate these contrasting qualities
with more specific semantic designations: war and peace etc. Similarly, in
music we can hear masculine and feminine actants, but we do not have to
say that they are Tristan and Isolde. The general meaning contained in the
very musical structure suggests the nature and direction of images. As
Vera Micznik writes:
The description of musical materials with all their multiple levels of meaning, in-
cluding the semantic level, offers a solution to the objection that music cannot be
narrative because it does not have meanings as literature does: it has its own mu-
sical meanings which, hence, qualify its materials broadly speaking as ‘events’.
(2001: 219)
We can ask ourselves whether claiming that a specified story applies to our
“algebraic formula” does not lead to a trivialization of music. Maybe it
does. But musical narratologists do not encourage that. They do not en-
courage the creation of a specific story with a group of characters with
distinctive features. They use the concepts of semic opposition and semi-
otic square, functions, transformations, plot archetypes, isotopies and
modalities to discover the deep narrative structure of a given work—
assuming that “musical signification” is another type of meaning.

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Narrative in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet
Let us have a look at the symphonic poem Romeo and Juliet by Peter Tchai-
kovsky (1880). I chose an example of programmatic, although purely in-
strumental, music on purpose—it is namely a special case in between vari-
ous types of relationship between word and music. On the one end of the
scale there would be a work of music with text, like a song or an opera
(say “Romeo and Juliet” by Gounod, Bellini); at the other end is autono-
mous, “abstract” music (for example Brahms’s symphonies). There are
some possibilities between these extremes, connected with the most gen-
erally understood program music—without texts, referring to ideas be-
yond music, determined explicitly by the composer, which can be suggest-
ed by the title (for example Schumann’s Dream), or by a story written as a
part of the score (for example Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique).
1. The Story Level4

Romeo and Juliet by Tchaikovsky certainly alludes to Shakespearean drama, but
the original plot is decomposed. Tchaikovsky extracts and abstracts basic
narrative units—first of all the juxtaposition of the idea of love and hate as
well as the actant of Helper (Friar Laurence).5 In the course of the narrative
we can also hear the evocation of the idea of death, fate and tragedy.
The first theme—the classeme of hatred—in a minor key, consists of
short, abruptly ending motifs with a dense rhythmical structure and dotted
rhythms, with repeated notes and rapid scales, sharply articulated, with
loud dynamics, usually in tutti, with emphasized sharp timbres of instru-
ments, and with sudden percussion strokes. The contrasting second
theme—the classeme of love—consists of open phrases in a slow, stable
movement (long note values), cantilena-like melody, rather quiet dynam-
ics, legato articulation, with the use of soft and warm instrumental timbres
such as English horn, con sordino strings, harp. The composer here wrote
expressive performance indications: amoroso, espressivo, dolce.
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4 As proposed by Vera Micznik in 2001 and appropriated by Byron Almen in 2008, in musi-
cal analysis the description of the story level concerns the identification of coherent music
units (thematic material, musical events, musical actants) as a kind of a static structure
whereas the description of the discourse level is connected with meanings resulting from
the syntagmatic, relational aspect of how the musical events are linked together and how
the musical material is transformed.
5 We have the evidence of associating some musical themes with respective ideas of hate,
love and Friar Laurence from the correspondence of Peter Tchaikovsky with Mily
Balakiriev. But these associations are intersubjectively verifiable, which was proved by my
experiments with students listening to this piece and guessing which ideas from Shake-
speare’s play correspond to respective musical sections.

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Figure 1: Analysis of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

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The exposition is preceded by a slow introduction with the theme of

Friar Laurence—a chorale-like topic. The archaic sound quality here may
constitute the mythical seme, a term applied by Tarasti in his book Myth
and Music (1979: 69).
Both love and hatred are sorts of centrifugal movements, a flow of
high temperature. Ortega y Gasset notes that:
In love, we feel united with the object of our love. While hatred, even though it is
constantly heading towards the hated one—it separates from the object, keeping
its distance, opening an abyss. (1989: 17)
While hatred in musical expression is always a struggle for separation, in the
expression of love we can observe here two modalities—one of them is
connected with the lovers’ aiming at reunion, the other with the state of
unity or symbiosis. Those are the two most basic modalities distinguished by
Tarasti: musical ‘doing’ and musical ‘being’. Tarasti explains it as follows:
According to Greimas the basic situations of any narration are SvO and SΛO,
that is, a subject is disjuncted from or conjuncted with an object [...]. One can say
that in music the first-mentioned state would equal the musical ‘doing’. Thus the
state of disjunction, the lack of some object, is experienced as tensional, and cata-
lyzes the action. Correspondingly, the latter state, conjunction, means a resolution
of tension and thus musical ‘being’. (1995: 60)
Moreover, these terms can be placed in a semiotic square as follows:
Figure 2: Adaptation of Tarasti’s model of main modalities in music (semiotic square).

‘Semantics of love’ is my interpretation.

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The semantics of love as it appears in Tchaikovsky’s work can be read

in the light of this structure. As Tarasti writes, upon ‘doing’ and ‘being’
there can appear other surmodalizations; in the case of love these could be
respectively ‘desire’ and ‘have’.
The first one—SvO, modality ‘do’, surmodality ‘desire’—is connected
with aspiring to ecstasy and reaching it but not forever. Musically it mani-
fests itself through the use of a full scope of means within a given style,
melos ascendens, ff dynamics, accelerando as well as such categories as
appasionato and espressivo. The other one—SΛO, modality ‘be’, surmodality
‘have’—is connected with the comfort of the lovers’ union, which is
shown by means of the symbiotic symbols of the unison type, but also by
creating a general atmosphere of intimacy: usually a slow tempo, pp dy-
namics, the use of a “soft”, muted timbre of instruments—con sordino
strings, woodwind instruments, harp. Among the expressive specifications
given by composers we find amoroso, misterioso, dolce, sensibile. The indirect
modalities (‘to be going to be conjuncted’, ‘to be about to be disjuncted’)
appear in transition passages as junctions between these modalities.
2. The Discourse Level6

The entire narrative of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is a process full of
transformations. It aims dynamically towards the inevitable finale. There is
a tendency to apply anticipations, as well as to apply stretto and to surprise
the listener with explosions of sound. It corresponds with Shakespeare’s
drama: Juliet often mentions that she has bad feelings. These anticipations
are connected with obsessive semes of death (e.g. played by gran cassa).
Clashes between contrasting sections are very emphatic in the whole
symphonic poem, but in the course of the narrative trajectory they be-
come stronger and change with increasing rapidity.
The themes return each time in new configurations. For instance the
theme of Laurence returns in a new context in the development and reca-
pitulation—together with the topic of hatred, evoking an atmosphere of
terror, fighting with fate, and warning, as well as in the closing coda with
the reinforced dimension of the sphere of the sacrum, as if transcendent.
Not only does music, in a more direct and intensive way than the literary
medium, show all kinds of transformations in a narrative, but it can also
simultaneously evoke more than one phenomenon, superposing one or
more layers.
In the case of the topic of love we deal with organic narrativity (one of
three types of narrative distinguished by Tarasti.) Ildar Khannanov claims
_____________
6 See footnote 4.

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(after Viktor Bobrovsky), that this theme is a “compositional modula-

tion”, changing in form in the course of its unfolding, growing in size
towards the end. According to him, the love theme represents the idea of
organic unity and dynamic development; it is unpredictable, yet very per-
suasive in its logic (Khannanov 2003: 28).
Through an unusual relation of distant keys in which the main themes
of hatred and love appear in exposition and recapitulation (breaking the
schematic rules of sonata form), Tchaikovsky emphasizes the gap between
the two musical topics.
What is interesting is that there is no love theme in the development
section—only those of hatred and of Laurence, as well as obsessive motifs
that might evoke the premonition of death; as if the entire struggle over
the lovers’ fate took place far away from them without them having any
influence over it. In the recapitulation the theme of love will appear sud-
denly, in an even more direct clash than in the exposition. Here the ex-
pression gets intensified—the texture becomes denser, the instrumenta-
tion becomes more massive and the dynamics rise. At the end of the
recapitulation we can hear the gran cassa that symbolizes fate. The coda
(after the recapitulation) seems to transcend this world entirely and
transport us to a different one. The expression here is more intimate,
contemplative. Chorale-like topics appear, along with the transformed
theme of love which is initially in a minor key—as if the love has been
conquered. But in the course of the narrative in the coda the harmony
brightens up and we can hear the process of transformation of the love
theme into a surprisingly triumphant ending.
The analysis of the modalities of musical discourse as distinguished by
Tarasti (1995) may here help us recognize the “subcutaneous” power of
music in its dimension as a process.7 The table (Fig. 1) shows a detailed
graph of the intensity (or type) of each modality in the course of the work.
3. The Deep Narrative Level

In the deep narrative level of Shakespeare’s play and the whole legend of
Romeo and Juliet there are clearly present basic semic oppositions of love
and hate, peace and war. Tchaikovsky chose a musical form in which this
basic semic opposition could be best expressed and even accentuated. The
_____________
7 Eero Tarasti adapted the Greimasian concept of modality to the analysis of musical dis-
course in the interpretation of Frédéric Chopin’s Ballade in G minor, Op. 23 (Tarasti 1995).
The general “translations” of respective modalities into music are quoted after Tarasti
above in the section ‘Narratological perspective in music analysis’. The intensity of each
modality in the course of the work is indicated as follows: ‘++’ means excessive, ‘+’ suffi-
cient, ‘0’ neutral, ‘-’ insufficient, and ‘--’ deficient.

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sonata is a type of form based on two contrasting musical themes. What is

more, the sonata form consists of several main sections logically unfold-
ing. As Berger states:
Only some types of musical forms (the model form being the classical sonata
form) use fully the fact that music, happening in time, organizes the succession of
the work’s phases and the causal logic of mutual relations between the phases,
which is of great importance [for narrative: MP]. (1993: 56).
As shown in Figure 1, in the succession of ‘musical events’ of Tchaikov-
sky’s composition we can find on a deep level the classic narrative schema
leading from an initial order to the final order through its disturbance and
the main intrigue (series of trials) (see Greimas 1966, Todorov [1990: 29],
Braningan [1992: 4], Grabocz 1999, Prince [2003: 63]). In Tchaikovsky’s
poem the initial situation (introduction with chorale topic) is “disturbed”
by the clash of hate and love classemes (in exposition), after which there
appear a series of musical events (in development and recapitulation),
transforming the meanings presented in the first two stages, and then a
new order is reached (in the coda).
We could say that the archaic sound quality of the introductory choral
chords function here “as it were as an unfoldment of the mythical world,
that which was called in Propp’s theory an ‘initial situation’, serving to
launch the story” (Tarasti 1979: 67).8
In the narrative of this work, we are undoubtedly dealing with
transvaluation,9 stressed by Byron Almén with reference to musical narra-
tive, which becomes clear at the end. In the coda—by means of substan-
tially developed musical material which we already know—a completely
new type of expression is reached. After some dramatic passages, there are
reminiscences of the love theme which—together with the “remote” cho-
ral topic and accompanying harp—can be interpreted as a sign of tran-
scendence. Especially since the harmony lightens up at the end and the
very ending is triumphant: played tutti, in a pure B major chord. In his
correspondence with Tchaikovsky, Balakirev unsuccessfully tried to per-
suade him to change the ending; he felt that it was unaesthetic and con-
tradictory to the drama of Shakespeare.10 Yet even in Shakespeare’s play
_____________
8 These original words by Tarasti refer to the opening of Bedrich Smetana’s Ma vlast.
9 Almén takes over the concept of transvaluation from James Jakób Liszka’s The Semiotic of
Myth: A Critical Study of the Symbol, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Quoting
Liszka, Almén agrees that transvaluation is “a rule-like semiosis which revaluates the per-
ceived, imagined, or conceived markedness and rank relations of a referent as delimited by
the rank and markedness relations of the system of its signs and the teleology of the sign
user” (Almén 2008).
10 “A quoi bon ces accords assenés dans les dernières mesures ? C’est contraire au sens du
drame, autant qu’inesthétique”; a letter from 22 January 1871, quoted after Sophie Co-

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the ending can be considered ambivalent. The return of the highly trans-
formed themes in the coda creates the illusion of a large distance in time.
The discrepancy between the time of the piece and the time of the story
which is told becomes clear; as Christian Metz writes (about Genette’s
theory), “one of the functions of narrative is to invent one time scheme
within another time scheme” (Micznik 2001: 194).
Friar Laurence in Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo and Juliet” appears to be a
key actant in the unfolding of the narrative. Tchaikovsky does not tell the
story of Romeo and Juliet by following the course of events from Shake-
speare’s play. Laurence’s “presence”, from the very beginning of the sym-
phonic poem through the whole narrative trajectory, emphasizes his role
in the narrative: we can say that he is an actant-helper who unwillingly
turns into an actant-opponent as a result of misfortune. He is thus a tragic
hero and a symbol of a tragedy—from the very first chords.
Would all these meanings be clear to us if we did not know that the
work was Romeo and Juliet? If the piece was titled simply “Symphony” we
would probably understand general meanings, but would not associate
them with the characters of Shakespeare’s drama. We would still recognize
the struggle between two forces—good and evil (and probably even more:
love and hate). We would recognize the evocation of the sacred sphere.
We would “hear” fate and tragedy. We would recognize the triumphant,
transcendent ending. We would feel the musical “being” and the musical
“doing”—we would know in which moments the inner subject is pursuing
his goal and in which he reaches it.
Could this “Riddle” Be Solved?
The mystery, the ambiguity and the semantic enigma of musical narratives
is extremely intriguing and they might provide even more possibilities of
expression than literary narratives. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet we
find the following words: “Let the sweet music tongue unfold the
imagin’d happiness”, in a situation in which words are insufficient to ex-
press the excess of happiness. According to Lévi-Strauss:
Since music is a language with some meaning at least for the immense majority of
mankind, although only a tiny minority of people are capable of formulating a
meaning in it, and since it is the only language with the contradictory attributes of
being at once intelligible and untranslatable, the musical creator is a being compa-
rable to the gods, and music itself the supreme mystery of the science of man, a
_____________
met, “Introduction au Roméo et Juliette de Tchaïkovski. Un romantisme modéré mais effi-
cace“ Hera’s Peacock no 3: Roméo et Juliette. Ed. Laurence le Diagon-Jacquin, 137.

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mystery that all the various disciplines come up against and which holds the key
to their progress (in Rieger 2009).
If we agree that narrative can be a sort of phenomenon preceding the
choice of medium, a certain human need, a competence, then authors can
create narratives by means of various means. From this point of view—
which can seem paradoxical—narrations are not adopted from literature
to music, but were simply “discovered” in literature first. What is adopted,
however, are the tools necessary if the interpreter wants to take a look at a
work of music from the narratological perspective. Could this “riddle”
and mystery of musical narrative be solved in the process of narratological
analysis? Probably not entirely, and most musicologists are aware of that.
They describe musical works in a technical way or by means of one of the
multiple methodological approaches for getting closer to the truth about
them, without ever wholly unraveling them. Their interpretations can be
enriching, but sometimes, faced with music, they… fall silent.
Narrative and Music: Conclusion
Narrative, as a concept that comes before the means are defined, can be
realized in music as well. Being a gradable quality11, narrativity can occur
in music to a lower degree that in literature or film, for instance. (As I
wrote earlier, music lacks some of the elements that literature possesses,
like full, concrete semantics). Moreover, music itself can be more or less
narrative, or can be not narrative at all.
But musical pieces can introduce narrative constituents, such as:

‒ presenting a set of events or elements in a time-ordered structure
Even though music does not present concrete meanings in a literary sense,
it “has its own musical meanings which, hence, qualify its materials broad-
ly speaking as ‘events’” (Micznik 2001: 219). Music not only happens in
time, but is able “to invent one time scheme within another time scheme,”
as Christian Metz puts it (qtd. in Micznik 2001: 194). It is able to evoke,
_____________
11 Gerald Prince writes about the degrees of narrativity: “The degree of narrativity of a given
narrative depends partly on the extent to which that narrative fulfills a receiver’s desire by
representing oriented temporal wholeness [...], involving a conflict, consisting of discrete,
specific, and positive situations and events, and meaningful in terms of a human(ized) pro-
ject and world [...]” (2003: 65). Vera Micznik in her article (2001) claims that in music we
also deal with different degrees of narrativity; she compares the first movement of the Pas-
toral Symphony by Beethoven with the first movement of the Ninth Symphony of Mahler
to draw the conclusion that Mahler’s piece is more narrative than Beethoven’s.

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for instance, a “mythical past” (Tarasti 1979) and to give an intersubjective

perception of different time distances;
‒ presenting the relations between elements or events
Not only can music present time structured elements (events), but it can
also present relations between them. The specific kind of relations for
narrative are causal relations, which can be most easily observed in music
with a tonal syntax. However, when we speak about causal relations with
regards to music, there arises the tantalizing question of whether these
relations are in the music itself, or whether they are constructed by the
listener. Most probably, they are “coded” in music, but need the active
mind of a receiver to be extracted from it. Byron Almén claims that the
problem of causality in literature is also controversial, and states that:
There is no qualitative distinction [...] between the way narratives are constructed
in literature and the way they are constructed in music. In each case, we must in-
fer connections (2008: 31);
‒ presenting a change, transformation, transvaluation
Musical pieces can show the process of hierarchical transvaluation; as
Jakób Liszka writes,
narrative [...] unfolds a certain, somewhat ambivalent, resolution to the crisis, de-
pending on the pragmatics of the tale: the disrupted hierarchy is restorted [...] or,
on the other hand, the hierarchy is destroyed [...]. (after Almén, 2008: 73).
The main thesis of Almén’s book A Theory of Musical Narrative is that
through musical narratives the listener perceives and tracks culturally sig-
nificant transvaluation;
‒ being a significant wholeness with at least a beginning, a middle and
an end
This Aristotelian concept is applied to music as well (and does not need
explanation);
‒ possessing a “voice” characterized by human expression
This “voice” is a subject of mental processes presented in a musical piece;
we can have one “voice”—a kind of inner narrator (it is called “persona”
by Cone) or multiple “voices” in the pieces that are closer to the dramatic
than the epic (called “agents” and “actants” by, inter alia, Hatten and
Tarasti). Even if this “voice” is not always identified nor mentioned in
music analysis, the tracking of musical “modalities” (Tarasti) or calling
motives “musical gestures” (Hatten) presumes that there is a human factor
as a subject of these musical processes. The performer of music can
modalize the piece too and underline its narrativity.

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Musical Narratology: An Outline: Ałgorzata Awłowska

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MAŁGORZATA PAWŁOWSKA

Musical Narratology: An Outline

The story of narratology becomes as much an auto-reflexive as a postmodern tale.

Musical narratology is currently undergoing a phase of dynamic develop-

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The Musicological Debate on Narrative in Music

As I have already mentioned, since the 1970s a debate on whether

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It is easy to observe that in this “debate” many discrepancies are caused

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Because narrative was first conceptualized in relation to literature, we have largely

A Narratological Perspective in Music Analysis

In music, there is no narrator or concrete fictional world filled with ob-

Structures of musical signification, such as, inter alia:

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‒ On the macro-level: musical forms and plot archetypes, narrative

Musical Narratives versus Literary Narratives

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the sphere of semantics. Music cannot make a proposition (Micznik 2001:

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Narrative in Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

1. The Story Level4

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Figure 1: Analysis of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet

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The exposition is preceded by a slow introduction with the theme of

Figure 2: Adaptation of Tarasti’s model of main modalities in music (semiotic square).

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The semantics of love as it appears in Tchaikovsky’s work can be read

2. The Discourse Level6

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(after Viktor Bobrovsky), that this theme is a “compositional modula-

3. The Deep Narrative Level

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sonata is a type of form based on two contrasting musical themes. What is

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Could this “Riddle” Be Solved?

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Narrative and Music: Conclusion

But musical pieces can introduce narrative constituents, such as:

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for instance, a “mythical past” (Tarasti 1979) and to give an intersubjective

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2008 “Classical Narratology and Narrative Analyses in Music”, in

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2005 “Classical Instrumental Music and Narrative”, in James Phelan,

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