Words and Music (play) 1

Words and Music (play)

Samuel Beckett wrote the radio play, Words and Music between November and December 1961.[1] It was recorded
and broadcast on the BBC Third Programme on 13 November 1962. Patrick Magee played Words and Felix Felton,
Croak. Music was composed especially by John S. Beckett. The play first appeared in print in Evergreen Review
6.27 (NovemberDecember 1962). Beckett himself translated the work into French under the title Paroles et
Musique (Minuit, 1972).

Synopsis
The play takes place in what Katharine Worth describes as "an unidentified listening space,"[2] another of Becketts
"skullscapes."[3] The only specific location mentioned is "the tower" perhaps a folly so the scene may well be in
a castle with Croak in the role of chtelain.
Croak [4][5] is a doddery old man, testy and maudlin. He is never referred to by name in the play itself but he is well
named. Joe addresses to him albeit somewhat obsequiously as, "My Lord," since, despite his apparent frailty, he
has plainly been someone used to wielding authority. There are only two sound effects used in the entire play, the
scuffle of Croaks feet as he arrives and departs and the thud of his club reminiscent of the rulers wielded by the
Animator in Rough for Radio II and the music teacher in Embers. For entertainment, this Beckettian old King Cole
has only two old stalwarts left to call on, his minstrels, Joe (Words) and Bob (Music).
Alfred Alvarez refers to him as "a poet"[6] though there is no real evidence to suggest that he is. In fact his utterances
throughout the play are terse: moans, groans and murmurings mainly. That said, he appears to appreciate poetry
especially when set to music. The theme Croak opts on for the evenings diversion is love. He is a decrepit version of
Orsino with his famous opening line from Twelfth Night: "If music be the food of love, play on,"[7] a hopeless
romantic, in love with love, and melancholy from the mere thought of it. Croak could almost be the selfsame man,
had he never moved from that spot for the rest of his life and now finds himself on the brink of death.

Prelude
The going is not easy; from the very beginning its obvious that Words and Music do not enjoy each others
company. The play opens with Music a small orchestra tuning up much to the irritation of Words who is trying
to rehearse a soliloquy on the unlikely theme of sloth. The orchestra interrupts him in the middle of his speech and
again at the end when hes straining to hear if their master is approaching. Squabbling servants appear often in the
works of Shakespeare. Joe is much like Malvolio, the strait-laced steward in the household of Lady Olivia, efficient
but also self-righteous, with a poor opinion of drinking, singing, and fun. His priggishness and haughty attitude earn
him the enmity of Maria, Olivias sharp-witted waiting-gentlewoman.
Croak shuffles into the room and Joe and Bob both become subservient. Theyve probably been together for a great
many years, like Hamm and Clov, and rubbing each other up the wrong way has become a means of entertaining
themselves when theyre not performing for their master. Croak realizes they will have been bickering and gently
reproves them: "My comforts! Be friends."[8] He apologises for being late and mutters a vague excuse: "The face
On the stairs In the tower."[9] He doesnt need to explain further; Joe and Bob are not expecting any kind of
explanation.
Words and Music (play) 2

Love
Croak considers for a moment and then announces the theme for the nights entertainment: love. He calls for his club
and thumps it on the ground: "Love!" We now realise that Joe was mocking the old man in his earlier disquisition
[10]
on sloth. The speech he delivers is practically identical to the one he was rehearsing before; he has simply
swapped sloth with love. It is empty rhetoric. At one point he even stumbles and says sloth by mistake. The
feeling is that it wouldnt matter what the theme chosen was this was the speech he was intending to deliver:
"one-size-fits-all verbiage [11]" Polonius could not have done better."[12] Croak is displeased and calls on Bob to
play, the theme is unchanged. Croak is still unhappy and wants the music louder. Joe interrupts, overstepping the
mark with a jesters veracity [13]: "What? Is love the word? Is soul the word? Do we mean love when we say
love? Soul, when we say soul? Do we? Or dont we?"
Croak finally cries out for Bobs assistance and the recital turns into a shambles.
Once everything has calmed down he sets a new topic: age.

Age
Joes words are nowhere near as eloquent here. He had prepared one speech and now has to improvise a second.
Does his master mean old age? Hes not sure. His speech falters and Croak doesnt put up with him for long. Its
unclear is he is trying to mimic an old mans speech pattern or if has genuinely been caught off guard. Bobs music is
also endured for only a short time. Croaks solution is a simple one, force the rivals to work together. They object but
acquiesce.
Stefan-Brook Grant has proposed the term "fugue",[14] an imitative compositional technique, to describe the initial
attempts of Joe and Bob to work together. At first Joe offers a few words, which Bob tries to present as a musical
phrase but soon its clear that things work better if Joe adds words to Bobs music. In this way they stumble through
the construction of the first "aria"[15] as Vivian Mercier refers to each of the two short poems, the first of which was
published separately as Song in Collected Poems (1984).
After their initial run through, line-by-line, Bob plays the whole piece and then invites Joe to sing along, which he
does his best to. The result is less actual singing than 'sprechtstimme.' It is a song about age but it is also about lost
love. Perhaps his comforts are beginning to grasp what their master really needs to hear. "For the first time Croak [is
able to] direct his attention to the subject of the recitation rather than to its form."[16] "Specifics replace slippery
abstractions, the active replaces the passive voice ... clumsy and tentative, Joe has achieved resonance in reaching
Croaks memory." Croak makes no comment whatsoever after they have finished but one senses approval because he
opens up an altogether more intimate topic: "the face".

The Face
Bob starts off this time with a "warmly sentimental" melody lasting about a minute.[17] Joes response is poetic
enough but his description of the face seen by starlight is presented in "a cold, rather precise and prosaic"[18] manner;
old habits die hard. Bob again recommends a softer tone but Joe immediately blurts out the description he believes
his master is looking for, that of a young man who, having just experienced an orgasm, and taken a moment to gather
himself, now looks again on the face of his lover lying together with her in a field of rye.
Croak groans. This is not right. Joe thinks he understands now and tempers his delivery. He describes the womans
"black disordered hair"[19] and the look of concentration on her face; eyes closed, (Croak calls out in anguish:
"Lily!"[20]) breasts heaving, biting her lip she is in the throes of ecstasy. Suddenly Bob bursts in and interrupts this
scene of coitus at the very point of climax presenting it as a moment of triumph, drowning out Joes protestations.
Like Henry in Embers, Words cannot express what is beyond words, and so, it is up to Music to communicate the
climactic moment.
Words and Music (play) 3

When Joe gets to speak again he has calmed down. In a gentle expostulatory [21] manner Joe describes the scene as
the couple collect themselves before changing his tone to a more poetic one. With the aid of Bob the two compose a
second "aria" which they perform together as before describing the mans eyes move down the womans body toward
"that wellhead [22]".[23] "One glimpse of "that wellhead" of another beings inmost Being, down there beyond the
opened eyes that is the most [Becketts] heroes can even gain and, having gained, forever try to recapture"[24]
like the old men in ... but the clouds ..., Ohio Impromptu, Ghost Trio and, of course, Krapp.
At the end of this Joe looks over at his master and what he sees shocks him: "My Lord!"[25] Croaks club slips from
his hand and we hear it land on the ground but he is not dead; the "morose delectation of remembered bygone
sexual encounters has overwhelmed him".[26] He gets up and shuffles off leaving his "comforts" alone.

Postlude
"It seems [Joe] has lost his power to express himself through words and, in contrast to his initial protestations during
Music's tuning session, he now implores [Bob] to continue, as if admitting defeat. The play ends with what we might
perceive to be our own natural non-rational and immediate expression of hopelessness; the word is reduced to a
human sigh."

Interpretation
Various readings of what the situation in Words and Music represents have emerged from critical studies of the
work:
Vivian Mercier treats the three characters as separate beings, Croak being an "old man who shuffles in" asking
Words and Music to be friends.[27]
Eugene Webb suggests that "Croak is the name the dialogue directions give to the conscious self of the artist".[28]
Charles Lyons says that "[i]n Words and Music Beckett provides three characters who seem to represent different
psychic functions of a single consciousness [however] Beckett does not integrate them into the image of a
specific, whole person."[29] Also a number of times Lyons hints at the autobiographical nature of the piece though
without providing any real evidence.
John Fletcher refers to Croak as Beckett's "toppled Prospero . . . with Words as his Caliban and Music his
Ariel."[30]
Clas Zilliacus proposes that in this play, "a mental process is unfolding," whereby Croak "instigates two of his
faculties, at odds with each other, to provide him with solace and entertainment." Zilliacus also offers a view of
the play in the light of medieval lyric, suggesting that the "master and servant motif familiar from other Beckett
works here appears in recognisably feudal costume".[31]
Stefan-Brook Grant reminds us too that, "Words and Music was a commissioned work from the Third
Programme. Croak, therefore, can be interpreted as the commissioner of the play, while Words is Samuel
Beckett's work and Music, John Beckett's. The two instruments, therefore, actually originate from separate
sources, and are required to rehearse and combine forces in order to achieve a satisfactory rendering of certain
themes."
Ultimately most critics agree that Words and Music is a "composition about composition".[32] Of course, a theme
running through all of Becketts writing has been the impossibility of meaningful expression through words alone
and, in that respect, Joe doesnt disappoint. Croak wants to feel. He wants to wallow in a moment, exactly as Krapp
does. He doesnt want to know. He doesnt need to understand. What is there to understand? Viewed purely as a
means of communication, people revert to lovemaking to express their feelings, to say what words cant say.
If Croak is a writer, or the personification of the creative aspect of a writer, then he demonstrates precious little
control over his thoughts and his feelings. When they eventually do get their "act" together what is produced, which
from all accounts is what Croak sought all along, is far too painful for him to bear.
Words and Music (play) 4

"Words, in the end, are [Becketts] material not as literature but in terms of something akin to silence; the desire is
not to control or empower but to listen. Words are a function of listening for Beckett, listening within a silence of
being where the world is effaced."[33]
For Beckett, writing can be equated to seeing, it is a visual art that aspires to the ideal status of music: "music is the
idea itself, unaware of the world of phenomena",[34] "the ultimate imageless language of emotion."[35] It is not so
surprising then, when Katharine Worth asked Beckett about the relationship between the two figures in this radio
play, he said: "Music always wins."[36] Similarly, Beckett told Theodor W. Adorno "that it definitely ends with the
victory of music".[37] In what way though? They struggle together to get to this point but is it meaning that has
finally overpowered Croak or is it his feelings? Is this why Words are rendered speechless by the plays end?

Music
Considering the importance Beckett places on the role of music in this play, it is worthwhile looking at how three of
his collaborations were handled.
"The concerns of Words and Music are clearly related to Becketts general preoccupation with the limitations of the
expressive powers of language. However, the fact that the music could not be composed by Beckett and therefore
changes with the individual composer involved in each production has always rendered the word-music opposition,
and hence the play as a whole, somewhat problematic. Beckett gives some instructions to the composer regarding the
character of the music (asking for responses to specific concepts Love, Age and Face and demanding music
of great expression, Love and soul music and spreading and subsiding music), but this gives no indication of style
or material content."[38]
What is perhaps most amazing is the lack of input Beckett chose to have. According to James Knowlson, "John
Beckett wrote his music for [this] play, totally independently of Beckett."[39] Becketts conversation with Everett
Frost, who directed the play in the 1980s, sheds a slightly different light on things: "Beckett apologised that, now at
an advanced age and increasingly in poor health, he felt unable to enter once again into the kind of collaborative or
consultative effort that he had once given his cousin, John.[40]
Irrespective of how much support he did or did not get, John became diffident about his score (despite it having
pleased Beckett at the time) and, when Katharine Worth asked his permission to use it in a later production she was
politely told "that he had withdrawn it."[41]
"I liked its austerity," she said, "and touches such as a faint suggestion of plainsong, which picked up the
quasi-medieval notes in the text. It was hard to see why the composer had withdrawn it."[42]
Worth approached Samuel Beckett to see "if there was any composer he would care to recommend; he suggested
Humphrey Searle", one of the UKs foremost pioneers of serial music (whom he had met once in Paris[43]), as a
suitable replacement. Much to her surprise, Beckett expressed no pressing need to meet up with him to discuss
approaches. "This seemed interestingly," she writes, "different from the degree of control he had been known to
exert over directors and designers."[44]
For many years the version most readily available on CD, has been Morton Feldmans, written in 1987. "The two
men had met in Berlin in 1976. Feldman wanted to do something with Beckett for the Rome Opera. Beckett
indicated that he didnt like opera and Feldman agreed. Out of this understanding grew the collaboration on Neither
(1977), and Beckett's pleasure with that work accounts for the fact that he recommended Feldman for the music of
Words and Music ten years later."[45] The noteworthy thing is that when Beckett sent the text of Neither to Feldman
he had never heard any of the composers music.
Feldman's idiom is slow, shapeless and tentative; his mastery lies in "probing" sound; its material and sensuous
characteristics, the haunting suggestion that his notes are surrounded by silences. This alone brings him into the
Beckettian domain. In an interview Feldman stated:
Words and Music (play) 5

"I never liked anyone else's approach to Beckett. I felt it was a little too easy; they were treating him as if he
were an existentialist hero, rather than a tragic hero. And he's a word man, a fantastic word man. And I always
felt that I was a note man. I think that's what brought me to him. A kind of shared longing: this saturated,
unending longing that he has, and that I have."[46]

References
[1] Both James Knowlson (Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett, p 497) and Stan Gontarski (The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, p
650) quote these dates however, Deirdre Bair, stipulates that the text of the play was completed "by 20th November, the date [Beckett] affixed
at the end of the manuscript." Bair, D., Samuel Beckett: A Biography (London: Vintage, 1990), p 571
[2] Worth, K., Cosmic Scenery in Samuel Beckett's Theatre: Life Journeys, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)
[3] The designation "skullscape" is Linda Ben Zvi's, from the recorded discussion that followed the production of Embers for the Beckett Festival
of Radio Plays, recorded at the BBC Studios, London on January 1988.
[4] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ croak
[5] To croak: a common euphemism for "to die". The suicidal man in Rough for Theatre II is named Croker.
[6] Alvarez, A., Samuel Beckett (New York: Viking Press, 1973), p 119
[7] Shakespeare, W., Twelfth Night (Act 1, Scene 1)
[8] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 127
[9] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), pp 127,128
[10] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ disquisition
[11] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ verbiage
[12] Brown, V., Yesterdays Deformities: A Discussion of the Role of Memory and Discourse in the Plays of Samuel Beckett (http:/ / etd. unisa.
ac. za/ ETD-db/ theses/ available/ etd-03022006-154713/ unrestricted/ thesis. pdf), (doctoral thesis)
[13] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ veracity
[14] Grant, S., Samuel Beckett's Radio Plays: Music of the Absurd (http:/ / www. samuel-beckett. net/ ch4. html)
[15] Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 155
[16] Lyons, C. R., Samuel Beckett, MacMillan Modern Dramatists (London: MacMillan Education, 1983), p 137
[17] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 131
[18] Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 156
[19] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 132
[20] The lily has long been associated in with death (in both eastern and western culture) and was a popular metaphor with John Keats, a poet
Beckett particularly admired. "I like him best of them all," he told MacGreevey The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett, p 297. A
comparison of La Belle Dame Sans Merci (http:/ / www. bartleby. com/ 101/ 633. html) written while he was dying of tuberculosis with
Words and Music is certainly worthwhile. (http:/ / academic. brooklyn. cuny. edu/ english/ melani/ cs6/ belle. html) The flower has also been
said to symbolise purity and innocence and, as such, is often associated with the Virgin Mary and resurrection and, by extension, motherhood
in general and fertility. The flower became especially popular with artists after Freud provided a sexual interpretation of its form that added
new levels of meaning to depictions of it (Freud, S., Symbolism in Dreams, pp 163,164).
[21] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ expostulation
[22] http:/ / www. thefreedictionary. com/ wellhead
[23] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 134
Commentators avoid saying what believe "the wellhead" to be but considering the definition of the word, there is little doubt Beckett is
referring to the vulva, the gateway to the womb from where all life springs. (Compare Leonard Cohens song, Light as The Breeze (http:/ /
www. leonardcohenfiles. com/ album10. html))
[24] Esslin, M., Patterns of Rejection: Sex and Love in Becketts Universe in Ben-Zvi, L., (Ed.) Women in Beckett: Performance and Critical
Perspectives (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992), p 66
[25] Beckett, S., Collected Shorter Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 1984), p 134
[26] Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (London: Souvenir Press, 1990), p 158
[27] Mercier, V., Beckett/Beckett (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), p 154-159
[28] Webb, E., The Plays of Samuel Beckett (London: Peter Owen, 1972), p 102
[29] Lyons, C. R., Samuel Beckett, MacMillan Modern Dramatists (London: MacMillan Education, 1983), pp 136,139
[30] Fletcher, J., Samuel Beckett's Art (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), p 76
[31] Zilliacus, C., Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television (bo: bo Akademi,
1976), pp 105,106
[32] Cohn, R., A Beckett Canon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), p 168
[33] Finch, M., Book review of Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde (http:/ / www. yurulbin. com/ mickfinch/ beckett. htm)
by Charles Juliet
[34] Beckett, S., Proust (London: Calder, 1958), p 92
Words and Music (play) 6

[35] Sion, I., The Shape of the Beckettian Self: Godot and the Jungian Mandala (http:/ / www. aber. ac. uk/ cla/ archive/ sion. html) in
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, Vol. 7 No. 1, April 2006
[36] Worth, K., Beckett and the Radio Medium in Drakakis, J., (Ed.) British Radio Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p
210
[37] Zilliacus, C., Beckett and Broadcasting: A Study of the Works of Samuel Beckett for and in Radio and Television (bo, bo Akademi,
1976), p 114
[38] Laws, C., Music In Words And Music: Feldmans Response to Becketts Play in Moorjani, A. and Veit, C., (Eds.) Samuel Beckett
Today/Aujourd'hui, Samuel Beckett: Endlessness in the Year 2000 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001), p 279
[39] Knowlson, J., Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), p 497
[40] Beckett in conversation with Everett Frost. Quoted in Frost E. C., The Note Man and the Word Man: An Interview with Morton Feldman
about Composing the Music for Samuel Beckett's Radio Play, Words and Music (http:/ / www. cnvill. demon. co. uk/ mfefrost. htm) in
Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 47
[41] Worth, K., Words for Music Perhaps in Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 11
[42] Worth, K., Words for Music Perhaps in Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 12
[43] Worth, K., Words for Music Perhaps in Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 12 fn 2
[44] Worth, K., Words for Music Perhaps in Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 13
[45] Strauss, W. A., review of Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) (http:/ / muse. jhu. edu/
journals/ substance/ v029/ 29. 2strauss. html) in SubStance 29.2, 2000 pp 106,107
[46] Frost E. C., The Note Man and the Word Man: An Interview with Morton Feldman about Composing the Music for Samuel Beckett's
Radio Play, Words and Music (http:/ / www. cnvill. demon. co. uk/ mfefrost. htm) in Bryden, M., (Ed.) Samuel Beckett and Music (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p 51

External links
A PDF version of Catherine Laws detailed article, Words and Music: Feldmans Response to Becketts Play can
be downloaded from Ingentas website (http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/rodopi/sbta/2002/
00000011/00000001/art00033)
Apmonias website contains an extensive article on this piece concentrating heavily on Feldmans version (http://
www.themodernword.com/beckett/beckett_feldman_wam.html)
MP3 of the play performed as a one-person show Theatre of the Mind (orchestral version) (http://www.
thetheaterofthemind.com/WordsMusic-OrchestralVersion.mp3)
MP3 of the play performed as a one-person show Theatre of the Mind (piano version (http://www.
thetheaterofthemind.com/WordsMusic.mp3))
MP3 of the play (Theatre for Your Mother) (http://ubu.wfmu.org/sound/beckett_samuel/theatre_pieces/
Beckett-Samuel_Theatre-For-Your-Mother_Words+Music.mp3)
Text of the play (Samuel-Beckett.net) (http://samuel-beckett.net/WordsMusic3.html)
Article Sources and Contributors 7

Article Sources and Contributors

Words and Music (play) Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=596174277 Contributors: Charlesgannon, David Gerard, Dl2000, Homonihilis, Jimmy4559, JustAGal, Metadox,
Muso ed, Picaroon, Piuro, Rjwilmsi, Tassedethe, The stuart, Tstone2002, Wolfehhgg, Yossarian, 3 anonymous edits

License
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
//creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/