Emily Dickinson’s Popularity With Composers: A Brief Essay
by Kevin Michki
Emily Dickinson was one of 19th-century America’s greatest and most prolific poets, and
certainly can be considered the most important American female poet of any century. She has
nearly 1,800 poems to her credit, though almost none of them were published until after she
died in 1886 (only ten of her works saw publication during her lifetime). Dickinson also boasts
another impressive honor: a large number of her poems have been set to music by hundreds of
composers. There are well over 1,600 different settings of Dickinson’s poetry; in fact, among
American poets, Dickinson is the third most musically set poet in history, being surpassed only
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman. So what is so compelling about Dickinson’s
poetry that so many composers have found it interesting enough to set to music?
Dickinson was born in December of 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, the place she called
home and the place where she would spend the majority of her life. During her early years, she
studied voice and became especially proficient at playing the piano. Music was an important
part of Dickinson’s life, as evidenced in part by the number of her letters in which she referred to
choral rehearsals and piano playing. Another affirmation of her musical interests is seen in her
assembled binder of music, containing her personal collection of published sheet music titles,
both classical and popular. Binders of this type were common at the time for adolescent women,
as the study of music was considered a sign of cultural refinement. Dickinson’s music binder is
quite large, containing over one hundred pieces of mostly 19th-century popular music. The
majority of the binder’s content is instrumental works - popular waltzes and marches,
instrumental operatic arrangements, and other pieces, including many that were technically
difficult. She also collected traditional dance tunes, political songs, and other interesting music
that was not often found in these types of music binders.
Although Dickinson was by nature a quiet and introspective person, she was considered by
many locals to also be quite eccentric, a characteristic that is born out in many of her poems.
She was quite private in all matters, most specifically concerning her poetry. Most of her poems
that were heard or read at all during her lifetime were done so only by those close friends and
family that she chose to share them with. Later in life, she became even more introverted,
essentially becoming a recluse, keeping her friendships mostly through correspondence.
However it was during this period of her life that the theme of music became an even more
important part of her poetry.
Most of Dickinson’s poems are considered lyrics, which are brief poems with a single speaker who is not always the poet - expressing thoughts and feelings. The speakers in her poems are
often identified in the first person, although she did not consider those speakers to necessarily
refer to herself. In her texts she often uses images taken from her own observations of the world
around her; images from nature, music and religion - all exploring broad themes of nature, self,
death, immortality, and love (Dickinson was especially concerned with death and the immortality
of the soul, as can be seen not only in her poetry, but also in her letters to friends). All of these
themes are universal in nature, and are themes that can be readily crafted into musical settings.
The vast majority of Dickinson’s poems are quite brief, and encompass a variety of poetic styles
- from epigrams (short, witty and sometimes mocking verses, each reflecting on a single subject
or idea), to poems on profoundly moving subjects, to poems that are playful and teasing. Her
texts lend themselves well to being set as songs, as much of her poetry has an innate
“musicality” to it. This musicality stems partly from the fact that Dickinson wrote most of her
poetry in meters (rhythms) taken from the rich history of English hymn writing, being set in what
is known as “common” or “ballad” meter. A poem’s meter is determined by the number of
syllables in a line, as well as how those syllables are accented. Common meter is defined as
alternating lines of eight syllables and six syllables, and this meter is often used in sung music,
especially hymns and popular folk songs. Here is an example of common meter from
Dickinson’s poem “I’ll tell you how the Sun rose”:
Put gently up the evening Bars-- (8 syllables)
And led the flock away-- (6 syllables)
Though many of Dickinson’s poems used common meter, she also experimented with a variety
of other metrical arrangements and forms. She was also famous for using non-traditional “slant”
rhyme (sometimes called half-rhyme or imperfect rhyme), which uses words that don’t rhyme
exactly but sound similar. Though this is common in modern poetry, it was found far less
frequently in the poetry of most of the poets during Dickinson’s lifetime. Here’s an example of
slant rhyme from Dickinson’s poem “The soul selects her own society”:
Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —
Note also in the above example Dickinson’s rather peculiar use of dashes to separate words
and phrases in her poetry. All of this experimentation is one of the reasons that she is
considered an innovator as a poet, and may also partly explain her popularity among so many
composers.
There are a couple of early early settings of Dickinson’s poetry from the late 1890’s; however,
the greatest number of settings are from 1945 and later. Many composers have written songs
for voice and piano based on her individual poems, but there have also been a number of
composers who have set whole groups of her poetry, creating what are known as song cycles.
One of the best and most familiar of all of the song cycles based on Dickinson’s poetry is the
Twelve Poems by Emily Dickinson, written in 1950 by the iconic American composer Aaron
Copland. Copland’s songs mirror Dickinson’s poetic innovations by being unusual in style, with
irregular meters and stanzas, wide ranging vocal lines, and difficult music for the pianist.
There have also been writers who have been inspired by Dickinson’s life story to pen dramatic
works, some of which have been set to music. Playwright Dorothy Gardner adapted her play
Eastward in Eden: The Love Story of Emily Dickinson and turned it into an opera, the music
being composed by Jan Meyerowitz. Instrumental music has also been composed under
Dickinson’s influence; in 1994 English composer Judith Weir wrote Concerto for 10 Instruments,
Musicians Wrestle Everywhere - whose title and theme are taken from Dickinson's poem of the
same name. As Dickinson wrote in that poem about the ambient sounds of her beloved Amherst
- birds, tambourines and the music of “the spheres--at play” - Weir also composed music
reflecting the sounds that she heard on the streets of London. Even popular musicians have
been inspired by her poetry; Jeff Tweedy, American songwriter and bandleader of the group
Wilco, wrote the song “Born Alone” based on text taken from several of Dickinson poems.
Author Carolyn Lindley Cooley, in her book The Music of Emily Dickinson's Poems and Letters:
A Study of Imagery and Form (2003), writes about how “melodic sounds” inspired Dickinson in
her poetry, and, likewise, Dickinson’s poetry has inspired musicians to use her work in their
compositions. One might be able to make the case for the idea that Dickinson, with all of her
musical ability in voice and at the piano in the background, was essentially writing poetic
“songs” in much of her poetry. She often referred to her short ballad-like works as “ditties”, and
one wonders if she ever actually composed music herself (if so, none has reached us). A family
friend once wrote of the many evenings where Dickinson would be at the piano playing “weird
and beautiful music, all from her own inspiration.” Maybe all of these things, both separately and
together, have been and continue to be the inspiration of composers to set the “weird and
beautiful” poetic music that is the fantastic verse of Emily Dickinson.