Malfunctioning music and the art of noise : the prepared pianos of Jules Laforgue
Abstract
While Laforgue criticism has explored the prominent role which music plays in his work, studies have focused on Les Complaintes and Derniers vers rather than his abandoned volume Le Sanglot de la Terre. This article suggests that Laforgue's later poetics of discord and dissonance already takes shape here: thematically, by subverting images of mechanical music such as the barrel organ, and formally, in the various dislocations which the poet inflicts on his verse. This malfunctioning music is read alongside wide-ranging evidence, in Laforgue's prose, notes and correspondence, of a notion of sound collage which demonstrates striking similarities with avant-garde musical experiments in the twentieth century by Russolo, Schaeffer or Cage, such as noise music and musique concrète. This aesthetics of explosion, decomposition and juxtaposition allows Laforgue to abandon previously secure hierarchies of beauty in favour of a modern, mobile idealism in which poetic value is unstable, dynamic and in constant process.
Citation
Evans , D 2016 , ' Malfunctioning music and the art of noise : the prepared pianos of Jules Laforgue ' , Dix-Neuf , vol. 20 , no. 1 , pp. 45-65 . https://doi.org/10.1080/14787318.2016.1141849
Publication
Dix-Neuf
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1478-7318Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2016 Taylor & Francis. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14787318.2016.1141849
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