Discussions of musical narrative have often focused on whether or not music can be narrative, to what extent the literary models apply to music, and how musical events can create a narrative without the same linguistic structures that allow for narrative in music.1 “A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight” by American composer David Del Tredici is an interesting example, fulfilling several requirements for literary narrative, most notably a past tense. While this is a song, the title of the song, rather than the text, proves to be important for its meaning and narrative function. The elements from the title are represented mimetically in the music in such a way that they take on a diegetic role. The music, then, sets a context by telling rather than using mimetic representation. This article looks at Del Tredici’s “A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight” from a narrative perspective with particular attention given to how the music describes the song title.

[2] Although he was born in 1937, scholars often place Del Tredici among a group of composers referred to as the “Generation of ’38.”2 This group includes many of the American neo-romantic composers who began their careers writing in an atonal idiom and switched to more tonal styles mid-career. Others in this group, referred to as the “Midtown composers” by Kyle Gann,3 include Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Corigliano, John Harbison, and William Bolcom. While his earlier works, often songs on poems by James Joyce, are atonal, Del Tredici is best known for his tonal works on texts by Lewis Carroll, specifically Alice in Wonderland.4 These later tonal works, such as Child Alice, Final Alice, Vintage Alice, etc. garnered greater attention, in part because of their more accessible sound, resulting in the award of the Pulitzer Prize to Del Tredici in 1980.5

[3] “A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight” is the second of two songs in (1965) on texts by James Joyce. Night Conjure-Verse, a cycle of two songs, sets two poems from Joyce’s Pomes Penyeach,6 “Simples” and “A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight,” for soprano, counter-tenor (or mezzo-soprano), string quartet, and wind septet. At first glance, the music and text appear to be somewhat opaque to analysis. The music is atonal, dissonant, disjunct, and rhythmically complex; there is no apparent adherence to any sort of strict serial procedure. Unfortunately, there is little existing research on Del Tredici’s music, particularly on his pre-Alice compositions, to elucidate his compositional process or provide guidance for analysis.

[4] Robin Holloway, a composer and writer for The Spectator, discusses Del Tredici’s pre-Alice music in his book, Essays and Diversions, II. However, because Holloway originally wrote the description as liner notes for a CD recording of Del Tredici’s early music, his discussion of the work does not provide detail beyond basic aural effect. Concerning Joyce’s poem, he states that Del Tredici was

fascinated by its mirror-imagery, so central to his technique already. It suggested the setting for two voices, a principal soprano and her reflection (counter-tenor or mezzo-soprano), also the layout of instrumental forces in two “choirs”, string quartet and wind septet…. The overall effect, though violent and frightening is also one of extreme control. The Players’ harsh actions and these actions’ multi-fold reflections are held in the tight bond of a jack-in-the-box; coiled to spring.7

Although Holloway does not mention the mirror imagery within the poem itself, in his program notes to Night Conjure-Verse, Del Tredici states that he understood the poem as “a mirror commenting on what has been reflected in it.”

[5] The body of Joyce’s poem also suggets a mirror in a few respects. His choice of pronouns is interesting, specifically the use of the second person, which seems to support Del Tredici’s reading of the poem (i.e. “Your lean jaws,” “Your itch”). Line 2, “The thirteen teeth,” has a symmetrical structure, beginning and ending with the same consonant sound “th,” as well as the first four letters [t, h, e, t] returning in retrograde (a type of mirroring) at the end of the line. Although an additional e is added and the phonemes are not all the same, the visual effect remains.

[6] The pairing with Joyce’s poetry is quite apt; the modernist text of Joyce’s poem does little to convey the meaning or idea of its title. Rather, the title creates a context for the poem. In a similar manner, the music, together with its interactions with the poem and the title, functions as a third-person narrator—even fulfilling the requirements for narration set by Caroline Abbate.8 In particular, my analysis demonstrates that “A Memory…” has a past tense and is diegetic. This narrator sets a musical context that reflects imagery from the poem’s title. In this narrative, the music portrays each of the specific elements present in the title of the song: memory, players, a mirror, and midnight.

I: The Mirror

[7] Some of the most salient musical features, visually and aurally, are inversive relationships between the two singers or between pairs of instruments, and the use of retrograde to form palindromic structures. Indeed, in his program notes for Night Conjure Verse Del Tredici explains the different manifestations of mirror imagery in his work:

When I began to compose, the idea of mirror reflection expanded into technical means; that is, both poetic image and technic [sic] became, in my mind, the same — a symbiosis I find necessary before I can set any poem. To be specific: musical passages are followed by their mirror versions, in both small details and over long sections; two opposing sonority groups — string quartet verses [sic] wind septet employed behind the two opposing voices; extremely high tessitura in general is used in all parts to suggest flashes of light from a mirror. There is frequent splintering of syllables of the text and retrograding of the text.9

[8] Table 1a gives a formal overview of the entire song as it splits into three parts: Section 1 (stanza 1 of the text), the cadenza (stanzas 1 and 2), and Section 2 (stanza 2). While the song as a whole is not truly palindromic, the framing of these large sections with similar musical material hints at symmetry. The strings, bassoon, and horn parts from mm. 1–17 return in retrograde at the very end of the piece (mm. 327–343), closing the song with a partial retrograde of rhythm and pitch class. Additionally, in the cadenza, the bassoon brings back its opening and closing material, which is itself a palindrome at the center of the piece.

[9] Tables 1b and 1c show more detailed charts of Sections 1 and 2. These sections on either side of the cadenza share similar textural patterns. In the first section, there is an instrumental introduction followed by the sopranos with the text. The sung text increasingly fragments as the instruments become more prominent until the singers are left behind and only the instruments remain. Section 2 follows this pattern in retrograde: the instruments begin, the voices enter in fragmented entries until m. 244 where the sopranos take control to deliver the text, and the piece concludes with an instrumental coda.

[10] The opening twenty-four measures of Section 1 present a clear example of inversive relationships between voices. Example 1a (mm. 1-4) shows the violin and viola parts paired in inversion. The inversion is almost perfect, but “wrong” notes appear in mm. 2, 5–6, and 8 that change the index of inversion.10 Another example is given in mm. 19–24 with the clarinet and bass clarinet (Example 1b), and in mm. 24–34 with the soprano and mezzo-soprano (Example 1c). Again, the index of inversion is each instance, however, the inversions are quite audible, even though they are inconsistent.

[11] While the inversions are not perfect, their salience, visually and audibly, as well as Del Tredici’s own reference to them, permits their recognition as mirror-imagery.11 In fact, if one considers that reflections, whether in a mirror or in water (and neither the text nor the title are specific about the material or type of mirror), are never perfect in their depiction of reality, these flaws are no longer problematic.12 Their distortions become apparent only upon close observation, just as the flaws in a reflection are not noticed at first glance, but only with careful attention.

II: Midnight and Memory

[12] Inversions, palindromes, and pairing of parts—both vocal and instrumental—abound throughout the song, but it is still not clear how these musical features portray the other three aspects of the song title, “A Memory of the Players in a Mirror at Midnight.” The final descriptor in the title, midnight, is perhaps the most readily accounted for in the music. Del Tredici specifically references midnight with a marking in the score at m. 4: “the clock strikes twelve….” At that point, the horn enters on pitch B4 with a duration equal to eleven eighth notes. It repeats this pitch eleven times, each consecutive repetition reducing in duration by a single eighth note. The final stroke of midnight repeats the last eighth note in m. 17. The same process occurs in the bassoon in mm. 9–17, but with sixteenth note durations, as shown in Example 2a. As previously mentioned, the bassoon returns with this music at the cadenza, and both horn and bassoon recall it at the close of the piece, mm. 327–340.

[13] The cadenza is an important structural place that not only shares this bell toll, but also presents the entire text of the poem in a relatively straightforward fashion. While the sopranos extend a few measures in either direction beyond the bassoon, the bassoon’s “striking of midnight” limits the cadenza. In other words, the entire cadenza takes place during the time it takes for the clock to complete its twelve tolls and their retrograde, as seen in Example 2b. The representations of midnight, then, occur in the cadenza at the center of the song and frame the whole of the song, tolling in the first and last 17 measures.

[14] By closing the piece with the clock strike, the retrograde repetition at the end of the song gives the sense that the events described in the song take place at the moment of midnight, thus invoking the idea of memory. While a single instance of bell tolls may be merely mimetic and suggest a present time of midnight, the later repetitions and retrogrades suggest a memory because of their non-linear quality.13 The cadenza is the most coherent moment of the song with a retrograde in all parts to create a well-formed palindrome among pitch, rhythm, and text. It is also the only time that the text is presented in its entirety without interruptions or fragmentations. Following the idea of memory, the cadenza could represent the event as a whole, while the repetitions, fragmentations, and distortions in the outer sections represent the imperfections of memory as the event is remembered and attention is given to specific recalled elements. (Audio Example 7, cadenza, mm. 142–165)

[15] The suggestion of memory places the recalled events in the past, a requirement that Abbate argues is essential to narrative.14 The opening seventeen measures are enough to create a sense of the past by setting the events to be told at the moment of midnight. For Abbate, music is “not diegetic, but mimetic; like any form of theater, any temporal art, it traps the listener in present experience and the beat of passing time, from which he cannot escape.”15 Even if the tolling of midnight is only mimetic, describing a temporal present for the characters, it places the events of the song at a time other than the present of the listener. To follow Abbate further, if this song is an account of someone recalling a past event, then it is not only “past tense,” but it also implies a “narrating survivor of the tale who speaks of it in the past tense.”16 In her book Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, literary scholar Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan argues that the narrator/ narratee relationship is always present in narrative.

There is always a teller in the tale, at least in the sense that any utterance or record of an utterance presupposes someone who has uttered it. Even when a narrative text presents passages of pure dialogue, there is in addition to the speakers or writers of this discourse a ‘higher’ narratorial authority responsible for ‘quoting’ the dialogue or ‘transcribing’ the written records.17

The music, then, is not only mimetic in its representation of midnight (or at least of the clock striking midnight), but is also diegetic because it is now clear that the narrator, although unidentified, is relating the events to a narratee. Returning to the particulars of this song, even if this song relates an internal recollection where the narrator and narratee are a single entity, that is if the narrator is retelling the events to him/herself through memory, it is still diegetic. In his article on mimesis and diegesis in music, Karol Berger states that music is diegetic

even when the narrator is a personage in the story he narrates: since his ‘now’ as the narrator is different from his ‘now’ as the personage, in his role as the narrator he belongs to a different world than the one he narrates and to which he belongs in his role of a personage.18

The music still has a narrative function, and thus both a diegetic and mimetic role, but it is not yet clear what is being narrated or how the music depicts players.

III: The Players

[16] The previously mentioned pairing of parts in inversion also suggests “Players,” as well as mirrors. For a reflection, one part portrays the actual Player and the second, a slightly distorted image. Without reference to the score or access to a live performance, the representation of the Players is, perhaps, more abstract than the other elements. Expressive markings in the score suggest a dramatic element being attributed to instruments individually and in pairs. Del Tredici often indicates this descriptively, with directions like passionato, violente, grotesco, or “like crazy laughter,” specific characteristics with which the musicians are to perform, much as an actor might. These instances often follow a transfer from a voice part to an instrumental part. The individuality of the instrument is heightened with instructions to play out “to the fore” with bell in the air. During a live performance, the physical act of raising the bell helps the audience identify the main character or “Player” at that point in time. This is heard between the vocal parts and the winds in mm. 43ff. (Audio Example 8) 19

[17] At other times, Del Tredici gives specific articulation markings that achieve a similar effect, often because of their unexpected nature. One such instance occurs in mm. 57–59, an interjection where the sopranos are directed to be violent and are accompanied by the strings with snap pizz. and col legno, battutto articulations. The exaggerated articulations of the strings are contrasted with the wind quintet in the surrounding measures. (Audio Example 9)20 The aural and visual aspects contribute to the perception of the Players as characters present in the song.

[18] A narrative requires more than a past tense, characters, and events. Some narrative theorists, most notably Gerald Prince, posit, “A minimal story consists of three conjoined events. The first and the third events are stative, the second is active.”21 Additionally, Rimmon-Kenan elucidates that

the above definition requires three principles of organization: (1) temporal succession; (2) causality; (3) inversion (which [Rimmon-Kenan takes] to be one of several forms of closure based on symmetry or balance).22

While she argues that these are not always necessary, they are present in this song.

IV: The Narration

[19] Thus far, the four elements from the title: memory, Players, a mirror, and midnight are distinctly present in the music. Invocations of midnight set the song as a memory being recounted by a narrator. As far as what is being narrated, that is less clear. As previously explored, Del Tredici reads the poem as “a mirror commenting on what has been reflected in it.”23 This provides some guidance, but does not explain the musical events. The music centers around the cadenza, but this does not make it completely non-teleological. On a large scale, the first section, mm. 1–141, begins relatively calmly at m. 1 with string quartet only and dynamics of ppp. The sopranos have full lines of text; clear structural divisions with imitation, palindromes, and inversion; and fragmentation beginning after m. 34. By the end of this section at m. 141, the voices have disappeared, becoming lost after an increasingly frantic fragmentation of the last three lines of the first stanza. This shift of musical mood from calm to distressed reflects an analogous motion in the text.

[20] This first section of the song sets the first stanza of the poem, which similarly grows increasingly distraught, moving from an objective third person in the first two lines to a more intimate second person that is accusatory. The second section, while palindromic in texture, does not return to the relative calm that was present at the beginning of the first section. The sopranos end with a rare moment of unison on the imperative statement “Pluck and devour!” shown in Example 3. Besides the unison over instrumental silence at mm. 322–323, the sopranos are singing at a loud dynamic level, and then progress outward in a wedge with the soprano singing one of her highest pitches in the song.24

[21] Analogously, the language in the poem follows a similar trajectory with softer consonants (such as th, sh, l, etc.) in the first stanza and harsher consonants (such as k, t, p, etc.) in the second. This shift is particularly apparent by the last two lines of text, “Pluck forth your heart, saltblood, a fruit of tears / Pluck forth and devour!” with its frequent plosive consonants (p, t, d, k). Del Tredici’s setting heightens this with a surface level text-painting of the word “pluck” where the singers are half singing25 “pluck” with repeated syllables, creating a very harsh texture, immediately before the imperative unison. Together, the music and the poem depict the growing agitation of the narrator in both aural effect and meaning.

[22] Although the identity of the narrator remains unknown, this detail is not necessary for our understanding of the poem and how the music contributes to that understanding. The music creates a context for the poetry with the imitation of bells tolling, representing the moment of midnight. The placement of the events in the song at a specific time sets those events in the past, allowing the possibility of a narrator recalling a memory. Mirror imagery is present with inversions, although whether this is to be a literal mirror or a figurative one depends on one’s interpretation of the text. Del Tredici suggests that the narrator him/herself may actually be the mirror, reacting to the actions of “players.”

[23] The increased agitation present in the musical narration demonstrates the narrator’s personal investment as the events are recalled from memory, ending with a call to action. This anthropomorphizing further suggests that the mirror may be an active character or agent within the narrative, not just a passive reflector. The change of mood from the beginning of the song to the end demonstrates both a narrative form of closure (inversion from calm to declamatory) and the influence of the narrator. While there is insufficient information in the music or the text to place this into one of Byron Almén’s narrative archetypes (or Northrop Frye’s literary analogues of these archetypes) the existence of a past tense and a sequence of events that leads to a form of closure forms a basic narrative structure.26

[24] While the projection of the title in the music provides some context for the song and the music provides a narrative trajectory, multiple possible interpretations are still possible. The music does, at least, have both mimetic and diegetic roles in this process—both representing and telling. Just as the poem’s title sets the stage for the poem, Del Tredici’s musical setting creates the scene and relates some of the actions within that scene. While one may debate whether “A Memory…” is truly musical narrative, it does have aspects of narrative, in particular the engagement with memory and past tense. While most research of Del Tredicit’s music focuses on his later neoromantic works, this analysis of narrative elements provides one window of exploration for Del Tredici’s earlier compositions.

Works Cited

Abbate, Carolyn. “What the Sorcerer Said.” 19th-Century Music 12, no. 3 (Spring, 1989): 221–230.

———. Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

Almén, Byron. A Theory of Musical Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

———. “Narrative Archetypes: A Critique, Theory and Method of Narrative Analysis.” Journal of Music Theory 47, no. 1 (Spring, 2003): 1–39.

Berger, Karol. “Diegesis and Mimesis: The Poetic Modes and the Matter of Artistic Presentation.” The Journal of Musicology 12, no. 4 (Autumn, 1994): 407–433.

Chatman, Seymour. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1978.

Cone, Edward T. The Composer’s Voice. The Ernest Bloch Lectures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Culler, Jonathan. “Story and Discourse in the Analysis of Narrative.” In The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981.

Del Tredici, David. David Del Tredici: Joyce Settings, Scherzo. CRI American Masters, 1995. New WorldRecords, NWCR 689. Previously released as analog discs: SD 243 (1970), SD 294 (1973), and SD 492 (1983); and as cassette: ACS 6004 (1985).

———. Night Conjure-Verse. New York: Boosey & Hawkes, 1989.

Earls, Paul. “David Del Tredici: Syzygy.” Perspectives of New Music vol. 9 no. 2–vol. 10 no. 1 (Spring/Summer–Autumn/Winter, 1971): 304–313.

Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957.

Gann, Kyle. Music Downtown: Writings from theVillage Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

Holloway, Robin. “David Del Tredici before Alice.” In Essays and Diversions, II. London: Continuum, 2007.

Klein, Michael L. “Debussy’s ‘L’Isle Joyeuse’ as Territorial Assemblage.” 19th-Century Music 31, no. 1 (Summer, 2007): 28–52.

Kramer, Lawrence. “Music Narratology: A Theoretical Outline.” Indiana Theory Review 12 (Spring–Fall, 1991): 141–162.

Maus, Fred Everett. “Music as Narrative.” Indiana Theory Review 12 (Spring–Fall, 1991): 1–34.

Moravec, Paul. “An Interview with David Del Tredici.” Contemporary Music Review 6, no. 2 (1992): 11–22.

Prince, Gerald. A Grammar of Stories. The Hague: Mouton, 1973.

Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.

Rockwell, John. All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century. New York: Knopf, 1983.

Footnotes