A Toccata of Galuppi's by Robert Browning
Listening to Galuppi's music, a speaker who has never left England imagines Venetian revelers pausing to hear the clavichord before returning to pleasure and eventually dying. The music unsettles his confidence in reason and prompts questions about whether their souls survive, leaving him chilly and feeling old.
By Robert Browning · Genre: Dramatic Monologue, Musical Poetry, Philosophical Poetry · 810 words
First lines
Oh Galuppi, Baldassare, this is very sad to find! / I can hardly misconceive you; it would prove me deaf and blind; / But although I take your meaning, 't is with such a heavy mind!
Here you come with your old music, and here 's all the good it brings. / What, they lived once thus at Venice where the merchants were the / kings, / Where St. Mark's is, where the Doges used to wed the sea with rings?
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A Toccata of Galuppi's is listed on Textopian as a poem by Robert Browning, dated Date unknown.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Robert Browning
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Dramatic Monologue, Musical Poetry, Philosophical Poetry
- Length: 810 words
- Structure: 1 section, 15 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)
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- Work identity for A Toccata of Galuppi's by Robert Browning
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Genres
- Dramatic Monologue — A single speaker addresses Galuppi, reconstructs imagined conversations among Venetian revelers, and reveals his own unease about death.
- Musical Poetry — The speaker interprets thirds, diminished sixths, suspensions, sevenths, and an answering octave as questions and responses about pleasure and mortality.
- Philosophical Poetry — The speaker's scientific reasoning is disturbed by questions about the survival of souls and the fate of people devoted to earthly pleasure.
Tags
music · Venice · carnival · mortality · immortality · the soul