Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Milton on Music
1 Music as Matter
2 "Pure Concent": Music as Sound and Metaphor
Part II: Milton in Music
3 Handel’s Cacophony: Samson, Noise, and the Right to Music
4 Making a Hell of Heaven and Earth: Music as Sound and Metaphor in Penderecki’s Paradise Lost
Conclusion
Works Cited and Consulted
Index
Biography
Seth Herbst studies the relation between poetry and music in Milton and Shakespeare and later musical adaptations of their work. Herbst was trained in literature and music at Harvard, where he received an undergraduate degree in both disciplines and a PhD in early modern literature. Formerly a freelance music critic for The Boston Globe, Herbst is assistant professor of English at the United States Military Academy.
"Starting with the basic question of why music mattered so much to Milton, Seth Herbst penetrates deeply into Milton's personal life, his theology, and his aesthetics. Herbst’s insights not only advance our understanding of the great poet and his seventeenth-century context, but also illuminate the nature of acoustic experience in modern and contemporary music. This broader reach is what makes the unusual structure of Herbst’s Milton and Music – half on Milton, half on musical settings by Handel and Pederecki -- so innovative and valuable."
--Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University
