Lyrical images. Lyrical images in music

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

A person becomes the center of any lyrical work. If there are no people in the song or story, then each item is described through the prism of the feelings of the author or a fictional character.

Lyric image

In a work of art, a musical work, there is a character that the author describes, endowing him with some characteristic features. In lyrics - a kind of works based on the emotional disclosure of the narrator and his character - he completely exposes the soul and heart.

The reader or listener can identify all the feelings that are fraught with lyrical images. Only an attentive public will read the author's message through his work.

What is lyrics?

This is a kind of artwork that came from Ancient Greece. It was named after the stringed instrument, the lyre. During such concerts, ancient artists conveyed their sensitive side through music. The most common misconception was that the lyrics are based on melancholic motifs. It is not true. It can focus on one emotion, but most often reflects a whole spectrum: grief, joy, sadness, fun. Whatever feelings a person experiences, if they are brought to the fore in art, it becomeslyrical.

The main types of works - poetry, music, message. The most ancient lyrical texts are considered to be the "Song of Songs", which was written by the legendary king Solomon, and the Psalms of David. The first work is a poem, the second is a religious lyric.

This type of creation can simply be a cut or digression in a larger piece, during which the protagonist experiences a series of feelings and shares them with the public.

What makes lyrics unique?

The main feature of this kind of works is that, in addition to feelings and personal sensations from some phenomena, the author does not describe anything. As if an individual confession sounds from the stage. No development of active events.

Main features:

• inaction,
• feelings and emotions,
• mood.

Ancient times

Lyric began its development in ancient Greece. Stesihor and Alkman, who glorified heroes and the state, were considered prominent representatives of this style at that time. Lyricism reached its greatest dawn in the first century, during the activities of Virgil, the author of the Aeneid, and Ovid with his Metamorphoses. The authors chose love as the main themes of moral experiences. She had a variety of dramatic images: love for her father (like Aeneas), love for her homeland, for loved ones.

Medieval and Renaissance

In the Middle Ages, troubadours were the main lyricists. They wandered through different villages, sang, recited poetry,played the flutes. With their work, the troubadours combined various types of lyrics into one. They even gave theatrical performances.

The Renaissance brought the flourishing of love lyrics to world art. Of the poets, the most famous were Dante, Petrarch, Lorenzo Medici. At the same time, musical ballads appeared. Charles of Orleans became a prominent representative of the genre.

The lyrics weren't just about love in that period. With Ulrich von Hutten it was entirely polemical. Lyrical images, examples of which were taken from the philosophers and musicians of the classical era, had to be made more modern, less emotional. But still, the unhappy love of the hero of Petrarch for his charming Laura dominated in all further works. His poems were taken as a basis.

In England, the lyrics developed little. Among the people there was a song about Robin Hood in the style of a lyrical ballad. William Shakespeare, as the discoverer of this literary genre in his country, brought to the fore the dramatic images of the sufferer and martyr Hamlet, hiding the truth of Macbeth and other heroes.

Recent past

The nineteenth century is full of lyric names: Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Keats, William Wordsworth, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Victor Marie Hugo, Alfred de Musset…

In Russia, famous poets working in this style were Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky, Mikhail Lermontov, Kondraty Ryleev, Pyotr Vyazemsky, Vladimir Odoevsky.

Description of the hero in the lyrics

In a work of this kind, a person will not necessarily be the main character. The lyrical hero is a man, a woman, a child, an old man, nature, a heavenly body, a season. Only the author can choose the object that endows with emotions in the end. The creator of the work tries to put his own thoughts into the mouth of his lyrical images. He does not transfer himself completely to the hero, but he endows with the feelings that he experiences.

Even if the author did not intend to put his personal experiences on display, he cannot avoid it. The main lyrical image will become a reflection of the worldview, perception of the musician or writer. The main character shows all the features that are characteristic of a person of the present time, his social class. In this image, everyone can learn for himself the lesson hidden by the author inside the work.

Lyric images in music

The lyrics are transmitted through the music. She is the closest to her. Music without words can express all the feelings that are not so difficult to understand for an attentive person. Lyrical images in a melody can be transmitted using an instrument or vocals.

Among the instrumental lyrical works, classical works by Mozart, Schubert, Debussy, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov and other famous composers stand out. With the help of melodies, they formed lyrical images. A prime example is Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The composer focuses on the whole people, the whole ethnic group performs lyrically. ATmusic sounds attempts to reconcile the warring people.

Beethoven throughout his life tried to bring positive features to all his images. He said: "What comes from the heart must lead to it." Many researchers take this statement into service when forming the definition of a lyrical image as a whole. In the "Spring Sonata" the melody tells about nature, about the awakening of the world after a winter sleep. Lyrical images in the composer's music were embodied in abstract concepts - spring, joy, freedom.

In Tchaikovsky's cycle "The Seasons" nature also becomes the main one. Debussy's lyrical image is focused on the moon in the composition "Tenderness". Each maestro found inspiration in nature, man, in some moment. All this then became the main theme in the music.

Among the most famous romances with lyrical images are:

• "The Beautiful Miller's Girl", "Winter Journey" by Schubert,
• Beethoven's To a Distant Beloved,
• "Romance about romance" - lyrics by Akhmadulina, music by Petrov,
• "I loved you" - lyrics by Pushkin, music by Sheremetyev,
• "Thin Rowan" by I. Surikov.

Lyric images in literature

Most of all, this literary genre manifested itself in poetry. It is in it that the lyrical images of characters are most often revealed by describing their unrest. Poets brought their own "I" to the works. The hero became the double of the author of the lines. A description of the fate of a person, his inner world appeared, andalso some characteristic features, habits. Such - special - poetry was forever immortalized by Byron, Lermontov, Heine, Petrarch, Pushkin.

These great geniuses secretly invented the basic rules in the chosen genre, according to which lyrical images were formed. The works became softer, individual, intimate. Writers call these poets romantics, which once again emphasizes the subtle connection with style. Nevertheless, a lyric poem may not have its own "I". So, Blok's poems can serve as an example, where the author does not transfer himself into the work. Same goes for Feta.

Pushkin in the poems "The Cart of Life", "To Chaadaev" did not focus on "I", but on "we" - in them he acts on a par with his characters.

In Russian literature, the hero can even be the opposite of the poet in his spiritual worldview. Vivid examples of such a stylistic direction are images in Russian literature in works:

• "Borodino" by Mikhail Yurievich Lermontov,
• "Black Shawl", "I'm Here, Inezilla…", "The Page, or the Fifteenth Year", "Imitations of the Quran" by Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin,
• "Philanthropist", "Moral Man", "Gardener" by Nikolai Alekseevich Nekrasov.

This is not a complete list of works. The lyrical images in them have become iconic for Russian literature.

In the poems of Sergei Yesenin, such a surge of emotions was transferred to the horse. And Marina Tsvetaeva has heroes in the form of birds. Poets endowed the characters with their own feelings, connectingin one look.

Many researchers of the lyrical hero in Russia, including Gudkovsky, Ginzbursh, Rodnyanskaya, believe that the audience itself supplements it with their perception. Each person can imagine the feelings that the hero of the work experiences in his own way. He is guided by those emotions that were caused by music or a poem, a ballad or a theatrical performance. Eternal images in literature support this theory. The author of the lyrical image is trying to convey his vision, relying on the fact that the public will understand him.