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On misunderstanding Taylor Swift
T
rue innovation in literature is hard to achieve — the same is true of music. But we can still see the value in certain stories and works. If we were to begin applying different metrics to music, we might be able to see a new value in what we listen to today. Looking at the ancient Greek literature of Homer from c. 800 BC and Taylor Swift can change the way you think about musicians today. The poems of the earliest Greek poets, such as Homer, were not original in content; they were innovative in the way they drew together multiple different sources. When we consider that all stories can arguably be boiled down to seven basic plots, it is not hard to imagine why even the Greek poets struggled to come up with something new. This is demonstrated by Homer’s Iliad, one of the oldest Greek poems that we have today. The story of Achilles would have been familiar to Homer’s audience, who would have been acquainted with the broader narrative context of the Trojan Cycle, a key theme in the songs of
many contemporary poets. One of the central aspects of Homer’s Iliad is the grief of Achilles over the death of his loved one, Patroclus. This is borrowed from the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh (a twelfth century BC text from Ancient Iraq) – the titular hero suffers great anguish at the death of Enkidu, his loved one. Thematically, even Homer’s considerations such as tragedy of mortality set against the backdrop of immortal gods are borrowed from Gilgamesh. In a longer piece, further extensive correspondences could be highlighted (and caveats included), including those found in other ancient Greek texts. None of this diminishes the value in reading the Iliad, but it is worth noting that Homer is leaning heavily on precedent texts. The way these poems have been constructed constitutes a large part of what makes them so impressive. Looking particularly at the Iliad, we see the central framework of the story: there is a tripartite structure, with Books 1-9 constituting the setup of Achilles’ wrath, Books 10-16 being the consequence of Achilles’
continued wrath, and Books 17-24 constituting Achilles’ return to battle and the ramifications. This is the basic core of the poem. The text is then overlaid with ring composition to bind the whole poem together and underlined with sub-narratives of anger to reflect the overall plot of the poem. Another distinctive structural feature is how pairs and triplets of events build into each other, such as the deaths of Sarpedon, Patroclus, and Hector all making the next one more intense, each with an emotional setup, buildup, and climax. Most of these events fit into three categories: either stock stories like the ‘anger cycle’ taken from Homer’s tradition, real events including the death of Hector lifted from their shared tradition, or parallels to earlier traditions, such as the Gilgamesh. These influences were distilled into a framework handed down to Homer, and the bard was able to process it all into a finely woven composition. Again, this is not to deny the value in analysing the themes that occur in the poem, nor to suggest that it is not a joy to read for its in-
Khusrau Islam examines the history of literary innovation, from Homer to Taylor. depth characterisation, engrossing descriptions, and exciting passages of narrative. Instead, I am merely trying to highlight another metric by which to analyse the poems: intricacy of composition. Innovation in music is also arguably difficult: it suffers from the same narrative constraints as literature, and there are limitations imposed by the sonic form. For instance, across a set of parameters, every melody has been produced by a computer and copyrighted, while there are only 243 combinations of 3 notes by 5 notes, demonstrating that there is a limit to the potential of sonic innovation. Admittedly, we may be far from this ceiling, but I think that the existence of limits should prompt us to consider new ways to analyse song writing. One way could be the same as epic literature, exploring the way musical precedent is used to weave intricate and complex compositions. A quick example of this is the use of sampling: often, musicians take other musicians’ work and incorporate the sounds into the fabric of their own song to great
effect – consider Kanye West’s sampling of Daft Punk’s ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’; and ‘Harder Better Faster Stronger’ sampling Edwin Birdsong’s ‘Cola Bottle Baby’. In all these cases, musicians have been able to take songs from completely different genres and work them into their own compositions. Similarly, the ancient poet Hesiod included didactic literature, apocalyptic prophecies, and catalogue poetry in his Works and Days. But this should not be viewed as negative: instead, artists have and continue to draw on different genres to produce masterful works. Just as certain sounds recur, certain themes are repeated in song writing. There are an incredibly large number of songs about heartbreak revolving around themes of affairs, falling out of love, and lovers being taken too soon. World Peace seems to be a popular subject too, just consider ‘Imagine’, ‘Give Me Love’, ‘Heal the World’, ‘We are here’ and the like. Sometimes, motifs are also shared between songs, including singing from the perspective of the devil.
