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 15
... lines to file without protest toward headlong destruction . Seven guitar measures open and close the song , and seven come also between sung stanzas . The last three sung lines in each stanza flow together without instrumental breaks ...
... lines to file without protest toward headlong destruction . Seven guitar measures open and close the song , and seven come also between sung stanzas . The last three sung lines in each stanza flow together without instrumental breaks ...
Page 110
... lines rhyme across stanzas , door / more / more , and also stand out from the rest of the melody as pub- lished ... sung lines go gently up , then down , then up , then down in melodic profile — all except each G line , which is mostly ...
... lines rhyme across stanzas , door / more / more , and also stand out from the rest of the melody as pub- lished ... sung lines go gently up , then down , then up , then down in melodic profile — all except each G line , which is mostly ...
Page 154
... sung lines . It is a two- measure , syncopated riff , its rhythm . Its fourth beat is marked by a chord change on guitar and usually by a shivering tambou- rine stroke ( i.e. , one produced by sideways wrist motion ) . This riff is ...
... sung lines . It is a two- measure , syncopated riff , its rhythm . Its fourth beat is marked by a chord change on guitar and usually by a shivering tambou- rine stroke ( i.e. , one produced by sideways wrist motion ) . This riff is ...
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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