What the Sorcerer Said

Abstract

Narrative is a commonplace; we think immediately of Till Eulenspiegel, of the Symphonie fantastique.' Perhaps the notion of music is not often scrutinized, perhaps it cannot survive closer scrutiny, for it is at once pervasive and ill-defined. Program and symphonic poems are somehow narrative, and we all have a casual understanding of their pleasant conceits, their representation of turns in a literary story by musical gestures. In this case, the music is a shadow thrown by a literary narrative, and the musical narrative is child's play-the gong stroke in Tod und Verkliarung as death's hammer, shattering the protagonist's earthly shell. We soon learn to put this kind of understanding aside, as a game inerited from the nineteenth century and now turned trite, simple-minded, unprofitable. Narrative in literature is so rich and funda-