Baroque-ku?
Baroque-ku?
from A Field Guide to North American Haiku by Charles Trumbull
Of the 215 entries in the Haiku Database tagged “Music: Baroque” fully half have to do with Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) is in second place in our haiku popularity poll with 20 percent, George Frederick Handel (1685–1759) ranks third with 8 percent, and, on the basis of a single work, Johann Pachelbel (1653–1706) occupies fourth place with just under 2.5 percent. We have only a few haiku about other composers of the period, namely Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), Henry Purcell (ca. 1659–1695), Dietrich Buxtehude (1637–1707), Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713), Tomaso Albinoni (1671–1751), and Georg Philipp Telemann (1681–1767). The discussion in this essay is topical, but haiku and senryu about Bach and Vivaldi predominate. Expect cameo appearances by other musical masters of the Baroque.
Music and sound
Music is organized sound, and many haikai poets use sound images as a device to illuminate music. This can be a sound that compliments the music, perhaps in the form of an unfinished metaphor, or else a sound that contrasts or clashes with the music. Here is a verse that views the added sound as a welcome thing:
almost autumn—
crickets join in
as i sing “handel”Tony Suraci
. . .
