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Greg Falcone
The Art of Listening
5/15/15
See Me, Feel Me:
Instrumentation as a Means of Representing Character in The Who’s “Tommy”
One recurring theme among the topics covered this semester is the idea of music
serving as a means of storytelling. From the Blues to Berberian to Broadway, there is a
common thread of using music to tell a story, where both the lyrics and the instrumental
arrangement reflect the voice of the speaker. The “Listen” textbook highlights this notion
within the section on The Early Romantics, referring specifically to the German Lieder:
“The art of the lied depends on the sensitivity of the composer’s response to the poetic
imagery and feeling” (Kerman 239). Not only is the composer taking into mind the
vocalist’s ability to convey his vision, but also how (in this case case, the piano) can
convey his vision as well. Take for example Franz Schubert’s “Erlkonig”, which is based
on the poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In the poem, a father tries desperately to
save his son who is being pursued by the evil demon Erlkonig, only to discover the boy
dead in his arms once they reach home. “Schubert invented different music for the
poem’s three characters (and also the narrator). Each ‘voice’ characterizes the speaker
in contrast to the others. The father is low, stiff, and gruff, the boy high and frantic”
(Kerman 241). It is this ability to create contrasting moods and feelings within a single
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piece that is essential to telling a story purely through music. This ideology is very much
present on a more contemporary work, by a musical group that one would not expect to
share similarities with Franz Schubert. The group is called “The Who”, and their 1969
album “Tommy” is a modern example of how instrumental arrangement and lyrical
content can fuse together to tell a story that can only be told through music. ...