Performed Literature: Words and Music by Bob DylanBob Dylan is not a poet. He is a singer-songwriter, a performing artist. The unit of his art, as collected and documented by his intended audience, is the live performance. Right now, no existing technological tool can give researchers ready access to his entire corpus of work. Revised from the author's Ph.D. dissertation (UC Berkeley, 1978) and again from its first edition (Indiana UP, 1982), Performed Literature develops a methodology for close analysis of verbal art that is heard, not seen, using as comparative examples 24 performances of 11 songs by Bob Dylan. The second edition adds a preface, two major appendices and one minor one, and a detailed index. |
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Page 34
... harmonica . He seldom plays the sung mel- ody , though . For example , in the fifth instrumental line , his harmonica notes blur into a harsher sound than elsewhere ; in the ninth line he plays a series of high , then low , pitches ...
... harmonica . He seldom plays the sung mel- ody , though . For example , in the fifth instrumental line , his harmonica notes blur into a harsher sound than elsewhere ; in the ninth line he plays a series of high , then low , pitches ...
Page 71
... harmonica with the precise phrasing , melody , and inflections that his voice will produce for " Nobody feels any pain / Tonight as I stand inside the rain . ” After all of the 1966 lyrics , the closing harmonica again sings like a ...
... harmonica with the precise phrasing , melody , and inflections that his voice will produce for " Nobody feels any pain / Tonight as I stand inside the rain . ” After all of the 1966 lyrics , the closing harmonica again sings like a ...
Page 125
... harmonica refrain shows more respect for tex- tual divisions than did the sung stanzas . Dylan's harmonica , as usual , mediates between vocal and instrumental effects , but here the conflict has been so one - sided that the harmonica ...
... harmonica refrain shows more respect for tex- tual divisions than did the sung stanzas . Dylan's harmonica , as usual , mediates between vocal and instrumental effects , but here the conflict has been so one - sided that the harmonica ...
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Common terms and phrases
ABCB aesthetic ain't Al Kooper album artistic audience aural Babe Baby Ballad bass Beatles becomes Blonde on Blonde Bob Dylan chord change couplet culture drums Dylan's songs Dylan's voice effect electric guitar emotional feel female Ferry's Folklore four fourth stanza Freewheelin give you shelter Hard Rain hard rain's a-gonna harmonica Highway 61 Revisited Idiot Wind Idiot wind Blowing imagery imitate inflections instrumental break Isis John Wesley Harding listener listener's melody meter Miss Lonely musical beat musicians narrator narrator's oral organ chords outtake Oxford Town performance phrase piano pitch plays poetic rain's a-gonna fall recorded refrain released Retrospective rhyme word riff rock rock music Rolling Stone sad-eyed lady scene second stanza shift sings someone song's sound stanza studio version Subterranean Homesick Blues suggests sung lines sweet lady syllables tape textual third stanza tion verse vocal woman Woody Guthrie words and music York