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- Title
Interart Contraband What Passed between García, Liszt and Sand in "Le Contrebandier.".
- Authors
Dayan, Peter
- Abstract
It was common in the nineteenth century for works of instrumental music to present themselves as transpositions or paraphrases of literary texts. However, the converse was relatively rare. Although literature endlessly described itself as musical in general terms, specific works of music did not normally serve as pre-texts for translation or transposition into complete works of literature. Sand's "Contrebandier" is a striking exception, a unique form of music-word adaptation. It describes itself as a "paraphrase fantastique sur un rondo fantastique de Franz Liszt" (Sand 266). The paraphrased piece is Liszt's Rondeaufantastique sur un thème espagnol, for piano; the 'thème espagnol' is Manuel Garcia's song "Yo que soy contrabandista". Sand tells us that instrumental music can never have an arbitrary sense (el. 265); therefore, tales inspired by instrumental music, as hers is, should be read as products of the imagination of the writer, rather than expressive of the music's true nature. But the 'contrabandista' of Garcia's song becomes the emblem of the possibility of an underground traffic between music and literature: impervious to legislation, unreasonable and untrustworthy, always under threat of execution from the forces of law and order, doubtless attractive only in fiction and at a distance -- and nonetheless indispensable. Between song, instrumental music, and narrative prose, Sand's confrontation of the genres allows a unique insight both into their unspoken distinctive aesthetic rules, and into what can be repeated or, perhaps, smuggled from one into another in spite of those rules.
- Subjects
LE Contrebandier (Music); INSTRUMENTAL music; TRANSPOSITION (Music theory); SAND, George, 1804-1876; GARCIA, Manuel; LISZT, Franz, 1811-1886
- Publication
Word & Music Studies, 2007, Vol 9, p115
- ISSN
1566-0958
- Publication type
Article