MUSIC AND MOVEMENTS IN FOUR QUARTETS

Dr. Shailendra kumar Mukul

Four Quartets is a series of musical compositions. It approximates the form of a quartet and creates the effects of music produced by stringed instruments. In calling his poems “Quartets” Eliot regards them as representing an advanced stage in the artistic process of musical elaboration. The artistic excellence of these poems lies not only in their elaborate structure and varying tempo but also in their use of a variety of modes of human speech like different combinations of musical instruments. In the musical structure of Four Quartets Eliot seems to have been greatly influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven, an eighteenth-century German composer, who composed several “forms of vocal and instrumental music, from dainty bagatelle to grand symphony, from simpler songs to opera and mass.” He intended an analogy with Beethoven’s late quartets, op 127,130,131,132 and 135. In 1935 Stephen Spender made a conjecture that Part II of Ash-Wednesday corresponded in structure to one of the movements in Beethoven’s quartets. Whether Beethoven influenced Ash-Wednesday or not, it seems likely that Spender’s supposition influenced “Burnt Norton”.

But when we look back and cast a glance over the early poems of Eliot, we are struck by the fact that Eliot did not leap at this form of music all of a sudden. He had been rather cherishing in his heart the desire for musical experiment in his poetry for a long time. His early poems in 1917 had already discovered “the vocal powers of verse”. “Portrait of a Lady” had experimented with the music of speech cadences and “Rhapsody on a Windy Night” had shown its structural analogy to some musical form. The five movements of The Waste Land and Gerontion had indicated Eliot’s preference for elaborate musical structure.

What is unique and remarkable about Four Quartets is that its string music is “more closely analogous to the human voice than any other instrumentation.” Whatever diverse modes, lyric, prosaic, didactic or deliberative, these “Quartets” may have, they follow in an enclosed world the forms of common speech and intent conversation. If we study the representative poets of different ages, we are sure to find that each of them discards the worn-out poetic idiom and discovers something new in the common speech of his time. Wordsworth revolted against the synthetic poetic diction of the neo-classical poetry and advocated the use of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation in his Preface to the Lyrical Ballads. But the same revolt had been made a century before by Waller, Denham and Dryden and was made a century after by Hopkins, Yeats and Eliot. What actually happens is that every revolutionary in every age creates a new poetic idiom and invents a new poetic style for the subject he wants to talk about. But as time rolls on, the speech of man changes with the change of sensibility in him. Consequently, the poetic idiom, losing its relation to the common speech of its time, goes out of date and turns effete. A new generation of poets appears on the scene and makes a search for a new poetic idiom. In this way, the cycle of revolution keeps on.

What I mean to say is that the music of poetry is music which is “latent in the common speech of its time”. That is why, much of the poetry written in modern times is meant to be spoken, not to be sung. The present context reminds me of the dual achievement of William Shakespeare who performed in his single lifetime the task of two poets. In the early half of his poetic career he began to move from artificiality to simplicity, from stiffness to suppleness. His prime objective was to adapt his poetic form to the sound and rhythm of spoken words and colloquial speech. This adaptation was almost complete when he wrote Antony and Cleopatra in which every dramatic character could easily speak with simplicity and naturalness. But in the later half of his poetic career Shakespeare did something extraordinary and moved from simplicity towards elaboration. Now his chief concern was to experiment, to see how elaborate the music of poetry could be made without losing touch with the colloquial speech.

T. S. EIiot, in “The Music of Poetry”, holds that modern poetry has not attained its full form as yet; and it still belongs to “a period of search for a proper modern colloquial idiom.” It is only after finding such a colloquial idiom that “a period of musical elaboration” will begin. Eliot is an extraordinary poet who began his search for a proper idiom very early and found it out in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in 1917. Later on, he used it copiously and developed it into a medium of great flexibility and adaptation. Having found and developed his poetic idiom, he began to exploit his auditory imagination and move towards elaborate musical form. Now his main task was to experiment, to see how elaborate the music of poetry could be made without losing touch with the colloquial idiom. He began this experiment with the music of poetry in “Portrait of a Lady” just a few years after the publication of “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”; and his experiment continued for the whole of his life and found its consummation in the poetry of Four Quartets. The music of Four Quartets is the most elaborate music that Eliot ever made in his life - time. It not only suggests the sound and rhythm of spoken words and colloquial speech but also signifies the structure of interrelation among various types of human speech and poetic materials. In “The Music of Poetry” T. S. Eliot has made some significant remarks which may be applicable to the music of Four Quartets:

“There are possibilities for verse which bear some analogy to the development of a theme by different groups of instruments; there are possibilities of transitions in a poem comparable to the different movements of a symphony or a quartet; there are possibilities of contrapuntal arrangement of subject-matter.”

Here Eliot talks about three types of possibilities in verse - the possibility of thematic analogy between poetry and musical instruments, that of structural analogy between poetry and quartets and that of contrapuntal arrangement of subject-matter. So far as the first possibility is concerned, it needs greater attention. It is not that the themes of poetry and musical instruments are identical. They may be or may not be. Four Quartets is analogous to groups of instruments in the sense that both of them have recurring themes which are developed in a highly complex way and then resolved. But it is impossible to create in poetry the effect of the unison of musical instruments. However, a poet of consummate craftsmanship may, be some analogy, suggest some effects of seeming unison through different tonal levels or intensities in writing, ranging from the prosaic to the lyrical. These tonal levels demand different modes of expressions with the changing moods of the poet at different stages of his experience. That is why, the music of Four Quartets is very rich and varied. It exhibits a vast range of speech rhythms extending from the ordinary everyday speech.

“You say I am repeating

Something I have said before”

to serious philosophical meditation,

“What might have been is an abstraction

Remaining a perpetual possibility

Only in a world of speculation.”

But the second possibility is quite obvious; and it applies well to the structure of Four Quartets. Four Quartets is composed of four poems; and each poem is “structurally a poetic equivalent of the classical symphony or quartet or sonata as distinct from the suite.” Each “Quartet” is divided into five movements and transitions between these movements are quite musical.

The first movement follows the musical sonata form and falls into three divisions. These divisions are the exposition, development and recapitulation of themes. In “Burnt Norton” the first division is attached to the second by a bridge passage while the third is a brief da capo. In “East Coker” and “The Dry Salvages” the second division has two parts; but the third division is utterly lacking in the latter poem. The contrast between two kinds of time, one symbolized by “river” and another by “sea”, is apparent in “The Dry Salvages”.

“The river is within us, the sea is all about us”

The second movement opens with a lyric passage in traditional metre with varying rhyme schemes in different poems. The lyric passage is immediately followed by a prosaic one abounding in speech rhythms. The idea treated metaphorically in the first half of the movement is developed in the second in a conventional manner. In “Burnt Norton” the lyric passage is packed with images and allusions and shows the great influence of French Symbolist poetry. But the following prosaic passage is longer and more discursive and quite relaxed in metre. In “The Dry Salvages” and “Little Gidding” the first lyric passage is in stanza form; but the second one is conspicuously in traditional metre in the last “Quartet”.

The third movement is more or less prosaic in contrast with the second one. In “Burnt

Norton” the third movement describes ordinary life as bondage to time and shows two important ways of redemption from this life - “illuminative way” and “purgative way”. The third movement of “East Coker”, like that of “Burnt Norton”, shows a sharp contrast between the barren darkness and “the darkness of God.” In “The Dry Salvages” the third movement describes the discipline of detachment in terms of the oriental philosophy derived from the Bhagavad Gita.

The fourth movement is brief and lyrical; and in the last three “Quartets” it becomes stanzaic in form. It sums up the ideas already introduced and gives to them Christian formulation. It has different subjects in different “Quartets”: God the Father as the unmoved Mover in the first, God the Son as Redeemer in the Second, the Virgin as Intercession in the third and God the Holy Ghost as the voice of Love in the fourth.

The final movement recapitulates the themes of the poem and resolves the underlying contradictions. In “Burnt Norton” the fifth movement meditates upon the nature of a work of art and sees stillness in its form and pattern. The transient materials of a work of art acquire eternity only though form and discipline. Eliot makes excellent use of a smile by comparing the form of a work of art to a Chinese jar:

“Only by the form, the pattern,

Can words or music reach

The stillness, as a Chinese jar still

Moves perpetually in its stillness.”

The third possibility imagined by Eliot is the possibility of “contrapuntal arrangement of subject-matter” in verse. This is really an excellent quality Four Quartets displays in its philosophical meditation on time. Time is in flux, ever-changing, unreal and meaningless. It acquires meaning only when it is in relation to eternity. The union of the flux of time with the stillness of eternity which forms the central theme of Four Quartets involves several philosophical meanings of time. Besides, the poem has a number of supporting themes like history, poetry, faith and love which combine together to form a complex pattern of meaning. The contrapuntal arrangement of these themes contributes to the music of Four Quartets.

So the music of Four Quartets is a complex product. It emanates not merely from its speech cadence and elaborate structure but also from a counterpoint of themes. The phrase “music of ideas” used by I. A. Richards for The Waste Land may be applied to Four Quartets. Ideas in Four Quartets are of several kinds, abstract and concrete, general and particular. But they arc so arranged that they tell us something and their effects cause in us “a coherent whole of feeling and attitude”.

Back