Pity the poor music critic - his is a hard lot indeed. The inimitable Frank Zappa put it best: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture”; the task, though not insuperable, requires a sure hand and a delicate touch. And a good ear, not just for the music being described, but also for the language used to describe it. Too much detail¹, and the audience miss the symphony for the staves; too little², and they’re left groping for solidity in a mist of vague verbiage.

Which is why I’m not a fan of the excessively literal approach to music criticism; I find it tedious and uninspiring at best, actively off-putting at worst. In seeking to reduce music to its descriptive essence, this approach lessens its emotional impact.

What’s called for is something altogether more subtle and elusive. An approach which eschews direct expression for suggestion and hint; an approach which replaces acres of detail with a few carefully chosen phrases. An approach which seeks to reproduce the experience, not just depict it. The approach, in short, of poetry.

John Fuller uses precisely this approach in today’s poem. The first two stanzas are spent on the physical aspect of the performance. But instead of painstaking (and boring) detail, the poet uses metaphor: the double bass is a dancer, and the musician is a suitor whispering into her ear. Or the double bass is a fat lady³, and the musician, running his bow athwart its strings, is a magician cutting her in half. Or the musician and the instrument are two drunks, the former’s wandering fingers buttoning up the latter’s long coat.

The third stanza is where the poet really comes into his own. The music itself is not described, either structurally¹ or interpretatively². Instead, Fuller dives straight into the heart of the musical experience, with words that evoke the same reaction as the notes themselves:

  "But close your eyes and it is sunset
   At the edge of the world. It is the language
   Of dolphins, the growth of tree-roots,
   The heart-beat slowing down."

This is where the poetic approach scores over the descriptive one, and this is the high point of the poem. You can almost hear the throb of the bass, the deep resonances, the long silences, the power and the stillness. Beautiful.

— Thomas

Biography

Born in Ashford, Kent, the son of the poet Roy Fuller and Kathleen Fuller. He was educated at St Paul’s School and New College, Oxford. He lectured in New York and at Manchester and became a fellow of Magdalen College Oxford in
1966. His first publication Fairground Music demonstrates an early mastery of the different forms of conventional verse and an ability to write descriptively with wit and sophistication. His subjects are wide-ranging. His skill is also apparent in the next volume, The Tree that Walked. One of his best known poems is The Most Difficult Position, a wonderful pastiche that describes a famous battle of chess between two 19th century masters. All his poems are technically sophisticated.

– http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/poetry/john_fuller.shtml