Music of lost souls - Essay Example

?Music of lost souls Tennessee Williams uses piano music, in his play, ‘A Street Car d Desire”, to set the New Orleans lower middle ambience, to establish the cultural changes and conflicts between the old and the new, to give the play an added emotional plane, and to give rhythm to the narrative. In this way, music becomes a parallel narrative that generally reinforces the primary visual-verbal narrative and supplements it. In the opening instructions to the first scene of the play itself, Williams has described the presence of music from a near-by bar room, which he says should correspond the “air” of “lyricism” and “decay” expressed in the physicality of the scene (1). He has specifically mentioned the music to be used in the play as, “Blue piano” (1). This general mood-creating function of music continues up to the last scene. Music of New Orleans lower-middle class The music is not classy but coming out of a “tinny” piano, which indicates the socio-economic lowliness of the people that inhabit the play excluding Blanche (Williams, 1). It is particularly noticeable that from the very beginning of the play, music is just like any other background noise for the characters. This is why nobody in the first scene seems to even be aware of the piano playing. By bringing in the music, from the very beginning of the play, Williams has been able to treat music just like a stage property-like an umbrella or a table seen on stage. Thus music looses its aura and becomes just like the garbage on the street, or a discarded plastic bottle on the pavement. Music of change The social setting of the play is another aspect, which gets enhanced by music. The play happens in a period when, the typical social characteristics of the South are undergoing a transformation by the arrival of immigrant settlers, like Kowalski (who is the son of a Polish immigrant). The gaudiness reflected in the piano music represents the superficial and temporary nature of the changing culture, brought about by the influx of immigrants- which is why the music is described as “honky-tonk” and “sleazy”, meaning working class and shabby (Williams, 115). This ambience connotes the culture of the immigrants, who naturally constitute the working class because they are mostly unskilled laborers employed in menial jobs. The music is constantly oozing with melancholy, which shows the resigned yet conflicting aspect of life in this synergy of cultures- a hesitant bonding with the mixing and marriages of rich and the poor. Music of survival All the same, the music some how compensates for the poverty and difficulties of the people in the play. Williams has instructed that the piano music in the play “expresses the spirit of the life” (1). It can be seen that just like the oddity represented by the presence of music in such an ambience of decay, the people around also seem to be not bothered by the poverty that surrounds them. They are used to it, conditioned to accept the realities of life, get along with their routine life, joking laughing and poking fun at each other. To start with and end with music The author has used music in the beginning of every scene to give the reader or spectator, an inkling of what is about to come. In this way, the music anchors each scene and gives it a fresh beginning. In the first scene the music gets louder when Blanche tells Stella that her home estate, Belle Reve, has been lost (Williams, 13). Here, the music heightens the drama and indicates the enormous dimension of the loss: BLANCHE: (Slowly) The loss-the loss… STELLA: Belle Reve? Lost, is it? No! BLANCHE: Yes, Stella. (They stare at each other across the yellow- checked linoleum of the table. BLANCHE slowly nods her head and STELLA looks slowly down at her hands folded on the table. The music of the “blue piano” grows louder) (Williams, 13). In this part of the play, it is as if telling there is more than what is verbally told, to the story. It is also suggestive that the characters and events of the play have a close connection with the music as was subtly suggested in the beginning of the scene. In this way, there is a progression in the musical element corresponding to the plot of the play. The music in the beginning of each scene can be considered as a new composition, slowly unfolding with subdued notes, which will gradually grow into unpredictable realms of highs and lows and culminate towards the end of that scene. For example, when Stanley tells Blanche that Stella was going to have a baby, the music gets loud, as if it was kept in store for such passionate moments (Williams, 29). When Stanley talks to Blanche about her marriage the music bursts in as if it knows some secrets yet unrevealed (Williams, 18). In this way, music becomes a parallel narrative as is shown in the below lines from the play: STANLEY: Haven’t fallen in, have you? (He grins at BLANCHE. She tries unsuccessfully to smile back. There is a silence) I’m afraid I’ll strike you as being the unrefined type. Stella’s spoke of you a good deal. You were married once, weren’t you? The music of the polka rises up, faint in the distance. BLANCHE: Yes, when I was quite young. STANLEY: What happened? BLANCHE: The boy-the boy died (Williams, 18). Here, without the music, the reader or spectator will know of the death of the husband only when Blanche utters the information in words. But here, the music suggests there is some thing unusual, even before she answers the question about her marriage. Musical transitions It is not only that music has a forward progression along with the plot of the play, but also it correlates the emotional ups and downs of the story of the play. In the third scene, there is violence on stage, when Kowalski fights with Stella and beats her up, the music is changed into discordant and annoying noise so that it corresponds to the emotional discordance in the narrative (Williams, 57). Similarly, when the male characters are playing poker game, there is a corresponding change in the music (Williams, 45-46). In the scene when Blanche is raped, the sound of the piano turns into the sound of a locomotive, which again shows how the music is closely associated with the emotions of the characters (Williams, 129). The maximum presence of music is in the beginning and the end of the play as well as in the scenes of violence and lust involving Kowalski, Stella and Blanche. Stella and Stanley reunite in scene 3, after a big quarrel, with the accompaniment of heavy music (Williams, 60). Similarly, in scene 10, Blanche is raped with heavy and discordant piano music in background (Williams, 130). Music becomes the inner voice Apart from setting the general mood of each and every important moments in the play, music has also taken the responsibility to give voice to the silences of the key character in the play. In this way, music becomes the mind talk of this character, Blanche. The Varsouviana polka is used in the play to represent the dark memories and fears of Blanche. This is heard when Blanche is thinking of her dead husband and when she is loosing her sanity (Williams, 96, 114). This music has haunted her since the day of the death of her husband, because it was playing on the day of suicide of her husband. The Varsouviana polka is also heard, when, Blanche is handed over a return ticket to her native place (Williams, 111). It is suggestive of her getting thrown back into the past she had, by coming to her sister, wanted to forget. This music is used in the beginning of scene 9 which is very crucial because this was the music of parting for her in the past and it was going to become once again the music of parting with Mitch in her present as well (Williams, 113). The use of this music in the beginning of the scene, show that there is an element of continuity in Blanche, a presence of constant ill fate, which can be partially attributed to her own character. Breaking the noise-music dualism It is not only the pure music, but also the more raw ones, like from a radio or sung by a human being, that add rhythm to the scenes of the play. Music from a radio and singing by Blanche herself, are heard in many moments in the play (Williams, 51, 57, 104, 105). Kowalski is irritated by both of these. Here, the music and the lyrics show the contradiction in the characters of Kowalski and Blanche and the underlying ideological and class tussle between them. Every time Stanley comes up with violence against Stella and Blanche, the mood of music changes, which is representative of the violence and victory of the down-to-earth present, represented by Kowalski, over the world of fantasy nurtured by the past, by Blanche and to an extent, Stella. To be more precise, the dual character of the music used in the play represents the Old South and the new culture of mixed up origins. Every scene beginning with blue piano or joyous Varsouviana polka and ending with harsher culminations of the same, is suggestive of the conquering of the old world by the new. The victor here is Stanley and Blanche, the defeated. The Inner voice falls silent If the music of Varsouviana polka is accepted as the inner voice of Blanche, then, it is totally silenced at the end of the play. In the last scene, where Blanche is sent to a shelter home for the insane, the Varsouviana polka is played intermittently. Here, the music first transforms into the music of her loneliness (Williams, 132-138). And when the scene ends, it is not the music but an announcement about the poker game that lingers. Because, there is no more memories left in the mind of Blanche. In this way, the music in this play takes up a multi-faceted task. It sets the socio-cultural ambience, reflects the conflicts within, imparts emotional intensity, sets the rhythm and even speaks for the characters. It is a parallel narrative to the play, put forth by the author himself, at times supplementing and at times intercepting the flow of the story. Thus the music absorbs and reflects back, the sense of helplessness and decay that is inside the heart of this work. Works Cited Williams, Tennessee, “A Street Car Named Desire”, London: Heinemann, 1995. Print. Read More