Catherine’s capstone project looks into Gustav Holst’s musical ekphrasis of Keats’s ekphrastic poem, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’. Although Keats’s ode was discussed in the course ‘Ekphrasis’, it was Catherine’s bold endeavour to step into the unfamiliar field of musical transmediation. The very boldness however attests to her independent research skills and passion to pursue further studies in the field, both of which enabled her to analyse Holst’s musical work with a sharp ear, on top of delving into theories on the encounter and rivalry between music and poetry. It is a successful capstone project in its daring conception, vigorous and rigorous research process, engaging presentation, and the finalised precisely written essay.

How do words relate to sounds? What is lost and gained in the musical translation of poetry? How does the translation of poetry into music reveal the fundamental nature of representation itself? These questions led me to the uncharted territory of the musical ekphrasis of John Keats’s poetry. Focusing on Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Gustav Holst’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn, Op. 24”, the essay explicates the three layers of ekphrasis present: the imaginary urn, Keats’s poetic ekphrasis, and Holst’s musical ekphrasis. Through an investigation into the complicated multi-layered ekphrasis, I argue that both Keats and Holst engage in a strenuous and self-reflexive exploration on the limitations of their respective artistic mediums, revealing the fundamental irony and paradox of artistic representation—— no representation could possibly encapsulate human life, and any act of translating life itself is painfully deficient. While Keats’s ekphrasis ironizes the urn’s cold eternity deprived of human temperature, the struggle and failure of his own ekphrastic language demonstrate how the gap between representation and life cannot be bridged. On the other hand, using dissonance, dynamic shifts, and structural irony, Holst dramatizes the very struggle of encapsulating human life itself, showing that even music—the most temporal of arts—cannot resolve the problem. Ultimately, art cannot be life. It can only point to what life is, and in this process, inevitably revealing its own limitations.

This capstone project has been an amazing opportunity for me to conclude and expand my undergraduate education. While being undeniably challenging, the process of undertaking the project has been incredibly rewarding and serves as a testament to how I genuinely enjoy intellectual rigour and exploration. With the capstone project marking as a milestone to my undergraduate journey, I view it as a trial run to pursue postgraduate studies and career as an academic. With the overall positive and intellectually stimulating experience I have gained from undertaking this research, I am excited to carry the topic further in my potential MPhil project. I would like to express my sincerest gratitude to Professor Li Ou for her patient guidance and support, fuelling my enthusiasm not only for this capstone but for my future academia journey.