A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Lyric

by Hubert Parry

LYRIC; LYRICAL. The term Lyric is obviously derived from the lyre, which served as an accompaniment or support to the voice in singing the smaller forms of poetry among the ancient Greeks. The poems thus accompanied were distinguished by the name of Odes, and all Odes were in those times essentially made to be sung. Among the Romans this style of poetry was not much cultivated, and the poems which fall under the same category, such as those of Horace and Catullus, were not expressly intended to be sung; but inasmuch as they were cast after the same manner as the Greek poems which had been made to be sung, they also were called Odes or Lyrics. On the same principle, the name has been retained for a special class of poems in modern times which have some intrinsic relationship in form to the Odes of the ancients; though, on the one hand, the term Ode has considerably changed its signification, and become more restricted in its application; and, on the other, the term Lyric is not generally associated either in the minds of the poets or their public with music of any sort. It is true that a great proportion are not only admirably fitted to be sung, but actually are set to most exquisite music; but this fact has little or no influence upon the classification. Thus the able and intelligent editor of the beautiful collection of modern lyrics called the Golden Treasury explains in his preface that he has held the term 'Lyrical' 'to imply that each poem shall turn upon a single thought, feeling, or situation,' and though he afterwards uses the term 'Song' as practically synonymous, he does not seem to imply that it should necessarily be sung. In another part of his preface he suggests an opinion which is no doubt very commonly held, that the lyrical and dramatic are distinct branches of poetry; and Mendelssohn has used the word in this sense even in relation to music, in a letter, where he speaks of his Lobgesang as follows: 'The composition is not a little Oratorio, its plan being not dramatic but lyrical.' But it is in respect of this sense of the term that its use in modern times is so singularly contradictory. It is true that the class of poems which modern critics have agreed to distinguish as Lyrics are quite different in spirit from the dramatic kind—Mr. Robert Browning's 'Dramatic Lyrics' notwithstanding—but the principle of classification has really been erroneous all along, as though a man were called a sailor because he chose to wear a sailor's hat. Consequently the apparent anomaly of calling dramatic works lyrical when they are associated with music is not the fault of musicians, but of the long-continued habit of mankind of classifying things according to outward resemblance, instead of regarding the true basis of the terms of classification. The term Lyric, then, originally implied music, and the Lyre stood as the type of accompaniment, of whatever kind; and it is strictly in conformity with this derivation to give the name 'Lyrical' to dramatic works which are associated with music; and we have a forcible and substantial reminder of this use of the term in the name of the celebrated 'Théâtre Lyrique' in Paris.

It has been necessary to enter into some detail on this subject in order to explain the confusion which exists in the use of the word. It must be confessed that nothing can now be gained by trying to go back to its original meaning; for the modern sense, as expressed by the editor of the Golden Treasury, has a prescriptive title of such great antiquity as would suffice to bar the most unquestionable prior claim. It would be well to bear in mind, however, that the term can have two significations, and that in relation to poetry pure and simple it does not necessarily imply music, in our language at least; and that in relation to the stage it should imply nothing else.

[ C. H. H. P. ]