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Russian to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Music
Russian term or phrase:musical text vs музыкальный текст
Is "musical text" a valid translation of the Russian collocation "музыкальный текст"? Meaning exclusively a musical score written using musical notation, not a text written with letters like a libretto, lyrics, etc. It seems (to me as to a non-native English speaker) that the word "text" means only a piece of writing with letters.
It's intended for translation of the phrase (into English): "Симметрия поэтического и музыкального текстов в mélodie Prison Габриэля Форе" -> "Symmetry of the poetic and musical texts in the mélodie Prison by Gabriel Fauré"
Here, as you see, the verbal and musical texts are meant to be distinctively different.
Explanation: The symmetry of the poetic text and the musical composition in Gabriel Faure's melodie "Prison"....
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, either a song or an instrumental music piece, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating or writing a new song or piece of music. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musical_composition
cccccccccccccccccccccccccc The symmetry of the poetic text and the melodic lines...
Let us keep this in front of us as we ponder further the answer: Gabriel Faure and Paul Verlaine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgswU64kw4A I haven't fully investigated what some people mean by musical text, but here teh musical accompaniment/background/development faithfully mirrors/reflects/follows the poetry in the form of the song lyrics. The poetic and the melodic lines are mirror images of each other/mirror each other, e.g. exhibit symmetry.
In the article i'm translating "symmetry" means a close text-music relationship, i.e. the music follows the text closely, repeating all its twists and turns and not owerpowering it. To each couplet of the poem corresponds a musical phrase, and to each syllable - a note. It's about a French melodie - Prison, by Gabriel Fore on verses by Verlaine. May be it's too broad sense of symmetry :), but that's the way it's used here.
In view of usage found on the web,"musical text" is beginning to grow on me. I like "language" too. By the way, is this symmetry of poetry and music separately or the symmetry between them. What do you thiink of poetic and musical forms/construction/architecture? It invokes geometry and its symmetries.
I would like to ask about "musical language", too. Would it be valid "symmetry of poetic and musical languages"? I'd like to be a bit closer to the original, translations like "symmetry of lyrics and music" are Ok, they convey the meaning, may be when interpreting orally it would be great, but... The author could have said "симметричность поэтического и музыкального" in Russian, or "симметричность поэзии и музыки". But he used "texts", so I try to find the means to render it exactly, not in general, interpreting the meaning. And translation like "poetic text ans musical composition", a bit... too large :)
So, back to my question :) When I google "musical text" ("texts") it gives a lot of matches pointing to discussions/articles/books on, properly, musical texts :) the meaning matching closely the russian "музыкальный текст", i.e. a score, a piece of writing in musical notation. May be it's not so common in spoken language...
A lovely video. Definition: In music, texture is how the tempo, melodic, and harmonic materials are combined in a composition, thus determining the overall quality of the sound in a piece. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texture_(music)
@spanruss: When I google "musical texture" it gives over 80 000 matches (and over 18 000 in Books), so it seems as if this collocation made a perfect sense in music.
@Rus_Land: Musical texture has a different nuance then text. The sentence speaks of the symmetry of music and lyrics, not the symmetry between the music and the lyrics. One can say, musical develoment, melodic development, melodic lines (a text of sorts). musical theme. melodic train, ....
Although "text" has the same first four letters as "texture", the two do not share a common root, and have no relationship or similarity whatsoever. Also, as a semi-professional musician and composer, I've personally never heard "texture" used to describe a piece of music.
Does it sound OK to a native English speaker "Symmetry of the poetic text and the musical texture in..."? I would like to keep "text" in some way :)
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Answers
25 mins confidence: peer agreement (net): +1
score
Explanation: I agree that musical text does not cover the Russian phrase accurately. Score is the obvious translation but won't fit in the sentence. My suggestion for the whole sentence to get around the problem is: "Poetic symmetry of words and music in the mélodie Prison by Gabriel Fauré"
James Duncan United Kingdom Local time: 01:55 Native speaker of: English
Notes to answerer
Asker: "symmetry of words and music" would be a good translation, but in this context it doesn't work, because the symmetry. in fact, is at the level of syllables, not words. Likewise, "score" doesn't work in this context, in my opinion, because it's only printed "stuff", signs on a sheet of paper, and it's evidently not symmetric to the letters of the poem. It seems that the only way is "symmetry of the poetic text and the music", or "the musical composition", as Frank Szmulowicz suggests.
peer agreement (net): +1
