gershon hepner - pure music

Pure music tells no clichéd tale
concerning God or love or conquering sword;
it is composed in that fair higher scale
of consciousness where facts may be ignored.

Opera is music that’s adulterated
by literature we call scenario and libretto;
like music we should keep our feelings understated,
not trading them like merchants in a Venice ghetto.



Edmund White writes about the way he prefers to write to the accompaniment of music in the NYT, June 18,2001 (“Before as Rendezvous with the muse, First Select the Music”) . He writes:

Unlike fiction, music is not about mothers-in-law or failed marriages. Of course opera and ballet and program music can be narrative but only because they are adulterated by literature, the libretto or scenario.

6/18/01,11/6/09

gershon hepner

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/pure-music/