MUSIC AND POETRY? WRITING INSPIRED BY CLASSICAL MUSIC: PART I

The nine Greek muses of the arts served to encourage creativity, enhance imagination, and inspire artists. The Greeks also named “Ekphrasis,” a process in which descriptive words can expand the meaning of a work of art. For poetry, such works are known as “ekphrastic poems,” and literary journals exist that specialise in them. In most, if not all cases, the works of art are visual.

As a pianist and aspiring poet, I wanted to know if a similar association exists for poetry and music. For example, can classical music inspire poetic thoughts, even poetry itself? What would the process involve? Is the stimulus the music itself, the composer, an instrument, the situation around the listening event? Or something else, outside of but connected to the music, like a violin teacher, a conductor, a piano tuner? Or what if the poet simply uses music as a metaphor, like Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing”?

There is no easy answer, in part because the question prods the creative process. For my own poems, the answer is “Yes, and….” It’s important to move carefully from one’s subjective experience to a generalisation. Some of my poems about music, for example, have been inspired during a conducting class, a chamber concert, and listening to human voices. Two focus on the composer, while the third uses music as a metaphor.

1) In an evening music school class, as one or two students were having difficulty learning how to conduct Beethoven’s Third Symphony, I wondered what the composer would have thought of the endeavour. It was the contrast of the music to the attempts to move the baton that made me think of Beethoven himself. What would he think? I imagined him stomping through the halls, angry that his work was not being interpreted correctly. The result is the poem “Beethoven Eavesdropping”.

2) While listening to a concert of Mozart chamber music in Salzburg, my thoughts wandered to a Mozart concerto I had once played as a young student. That memory in turn called forth others over time as I looked back, which came together in “Mozart Unravels Time’s Tight Curtain.”

3) On a trip to Dubrovnik, Croatia, after an early evening music performance, I watched crowds on the wide main street below the walled city. The sounds of people — talking, laughing, whispering, etc. filled the silence that had followed the concert. Since the wide street had once been a canal when the Venetians ruled Dubrovnik, I thought of time passing. All this resulted in “The Music of Place.”

In a further exploration of the links between music and poetry, I tried an experiment at several poetry workshops in collaboration with the leader. Each time I played a Chopin Nocturne on the piano as a “writing prompt” for participants to develop and write poems. They could write while I played, and/or in the half hour afterward. The results will appear in a subsequent article. [Mary K. Lindberg. This article first appeared in Serenade 2021.]

Beethoven Eavesdrops
(The Juilliard School, New York City)

Ludwig von Beethoven eavesdrops, peers
through the glass window of our conducting
class at Juilliard, eyes bright, wavy hair
askew, lips moving, ear trumpet in hand.

A beat-up grand piano mimics
orchestra sounds of his Third Symphony.
Sharp eyes under his crevice frown attend
a student’s clueless conducting.

Holding the downbeat up, the baton flails,
an aimless motion causing molecular
commotion, as the pianist weaves a miracle:
a two-handed out-of-tune Eroica.

The composer follows the student’s
jittery baton leading the Funeral March.
He shakes a salt-and-pepper mane,
shouts,“Die Klasse ist 

The words ricochet off the wall
like the first four notes of his Fifth.
Distracted by the “Ode to Joy”
and melodies only he can hear,

the maestro of music drama can no longer
watch a left-handed clarinetist conduct
with his right hand, nor hear a piano
untuned since it arrived a century ago.

Beethoven strides majestically over
scores of his symphonies, trios, quartets
lining the brightly lit hall, escaping,
footsteps faultless in rhythm.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025

The Music of Place: Dubrovnik, Croatia

Often the silence, where harmonies
and melodies once sounded,
gives a place its true music.

At midnight in Dubrovnik’s Old Town
I watch summer Music Festival lights shine
on ancient walls rising from the sea.

Worn stone steps lead to houses
not far from Vivaldi’s school.
Musical history lives here.

After a recital of classical, modern
works in the ramparts, the concert
plays in my head, sounds that linger
like motes in late afternoon sun.

A bright full moon and graceful quiet
reign over this walled, often besieged town
until concertgoers emerge, strolling.
They keep voices low, flood the space
with gentle notes, hushed exclamations.

I hear the music of this place:
not electric guitars with flashing lights,
nor sighs of strings or drums of fanfare,
but intonations riding on polished air,
the muted hum of human voices rising,
falling over a bridge of centuries.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025

Mozart Unravels Time’s Tight Curtain
(Salzburg, Austria, and Albany, New York)

Notes rise from the past, like old intimacies,
trailing memories of musical sensibility,
bond with a piano teacher, TV appearances
used to strive for perfection.

At this Salzburg chamber concert, musicians wear
18th century white wigs, stockings, lace cuffs,
sing excerpts from Don Giovanni. I listen but don’t hear …
I’m back in Albany, eagerly focused on practicing.

I’m studying to be a concert pianist. Mrs. O. accompanies me
on a beat-up studio piano in the Women’s Club,
where we play Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A major,
part of my prep for a successful solo recital.

With her sharp eyes, shoes molded to walk straight,
Mrs. O. nods the downbeat — and in lessons explains
life’s meaning — while here in Salzburg, years later, operatic
melodies, strung like pearls, weave Austrian air velvet.

Mozart unravels time’s tight curtain: “We want to hear
music. Sit down and play for us, Mary Frances.”
My mother’s voice, silent for decades, sings.
I would play forever to hear it again.

You too are gone, Mrs. O., and cannot bring back
those measured moments — my mother happily
answers calls about my TV show, a boyfriend
warms my hands, I rehearse how to bow —
before recitals of dreams performed on that stage.

Mary K. Lindberg, Dance of Atoms, 2025