Addressing a range of music examples and texts, the fifteen essays in this volume explore the interaction between both conceptions of time and space and the intermedial relationship between words and music. This intermedial experimentation may serve to adopt the spatio-temporal attributes of the other medium or to comment on a form s own mediality. It has much to say about processes of literary and musical composition and reception, the role of tradition and intertextuality, and the medial constellation in which these works situate themselves. The articles here collected testify to the...

What is a "musical novel"? This book defines the genre as musical not primarily in terms of its content, but in its form. The musical novel crosses medial boundaries, aspiring to techniques, structures, and impressions similar to those of music. It takes music as a model for its own construction, borrowing techniques and forms that range from immediately perceptible, essential aspects of music (rhythm, timbre, the simultaneity of multiple voices) to microstructural (jazz riffs, call and response, leitmotifs) and macrostructural elements (themes and variations, symphonies, albums). The musical...

Analyzes two groups of "musical novels" -- novels that take music as a model for their construction -- including jazz novels by Toni Morrison and Michael Ondaatje, and novels based on Bach's Goldberg Variations.