What Music is Popular Today?

1. What Music is Popular Today? What makes a song good? Bad? What songs are popular? Why do some songs/artists appeal to some and not to others? What concerts are you going to this summer? Where? How much do they cost?

2. The Ever Popular Sonnet The sonnet became one of the most popular literary forms of the Renaissance, and its popularity continues today. Because Renaissance sonnets so often deal with love, they appealed especially to the young. As a new art form, the sonnet represented a break with the past; Renaissance poets wrote sonnets in their own language, rather than in Latin, the literary language of the Middle Ages.

3. Reasons for Popularity Sonnets (little songs) became popular because they caught the spirit of the age. Poets used the sonnet to express deeply personal feelings about love and life. Readers enjoyed the sonnet because they found their own thoughts and feeling reflected there. The sonnet also provided a feast for the ears because poets created beautiful sound patterns that made the poems a pleasure to read aloud.

4. The Petrarchan Sonnet One type of sonnet takes its name from Petrarch, the Italian poet who perfected the form. Petrarchansonnets are often divided into two majors sections. The first section, called an octave, is eight lines. The second, a sestet, is six lines.

5. The Shakespearean Sonnet When the sonnet reached England, poets had to modify the form because fewer words rhyme in English than in Italian. To overcome this handicap, English poets developed a rhyme scheme that is less difficult to work with than that of the Petrarchan sonnet. Shakespeare became such a master of the English form that eventually it took his name. But other poets adopted the sonnet form, as well.

6. Structure of the Sonnet • Length • 14 lines • Rhyme Scheme Petrarchan • abbaabba (8 lines - octave) • cdecde (6 lines – sestet) • Rhyme Scheme Shakespearean • abab (Three quatrains) • cdcd • efef • gg (couplet)

7. Rhythm of the Sonnet Iambic Pentameter 10 syllables Iambs: Unstressed followed by a stressed syllable Five iambs = iambic pentameter

8. Sonnet 18 William Shakespeare Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

9. Sonnet 130 William Shakespeare My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

10. “To Helene” Pierre de Ronsard Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir, à la chandelle,   Assise auprez du feu, devidant et filant, Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant: Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle.   Lors vous n'aurez servant oyant telle nouvelle, Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant, Qui au bruit de Ronsard ne s'aille resveillant, Benissantvostre nom de louange immortelle.   Je seray sous terre, et fantosme sans os, Par les ombres myrteux je prendray mon repos; Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,   Regrettant mon amour et vostre fier desdain. Vivez, si m'en croyez, n'attendez à demain, Cueillez dès aujourd'huy les roses de la vie

11. English Translation When you are old, at evening candle-lit, Beside the fire bending to your wool, Read out my verse and murmur "Ronsard writ This praise for me when I was beautiful." And not a maid but at the sound of it, Though nodding at the stitch on broidered stool, Will start awake, and bless love's benefit, Whose long fidelities bring Time to school. I shall be thin and ghost beneath the earth, By myrtle-shade in quiet after pain, But you, a crone will crouch beside the hearth, Mourning my love and all your proud disdain. And what comes to-morrow who can say? Live, pluck the roses of the world to-day.

12. The Sonnet Through the Ages 1300s Francesco Petrarch Italy 1500s Pierre de Ronsard France 1500s William Shakespeare England 1600s Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz Mexico 1800s William Wordsworth England 1900s Jorge Luis Borge Argentina 1900s e.e. cummings U.S. 1900s Gwendolyn Brooks U.S.