Sound-worlds of justice: a response to John Kinsella

Abstract

A response to the chapter contributed to this book by Australian author John Kinsella, explaining the complex features of Kinsella's philosophical and stylistic indebtedness to both Dante Alighieri and musical works inspired by Dante Alighieri. This chapter's secondary function is to elucidate the specific musical works to which Kinsella's chapter refers, placing them in the context of nineteenth and twentieth century musical dramatisations of Dante. The chapter discusses the approaches to Dante demonstrated by the composers Gioacchino Rossini, Peter Maxwell Davies, Franz Liszt, Giacomo Puccini and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and proposes Richard Wagner as the composer whose work most closely matches an ideal musical adaptation of Dante, despite his never having attempted such an adaptation. The musical discussion serves to illustrate the highly individual, musically-inspired literary compositional technique of John Kinsella.