Musik & Ästhetik, 2021, Jg. 25, Ausgabe 97

This article examines similar music-philosophical problems and thought figures in the writings of the three piano-playing philosophers Vladimir Jankélévitch, Theodor W. Adorno, and Roland Barthes. The focus lies on the paradoxical challenge of »speaking of the ineffable« which is a central issue for all three thinkers. In the English-speaking reception Jankélévitch is often seen as a counterpart to Adorno, but there are striking similarities between their respective approaches to the ineffability of musical sense and the temporality and ephemeral nature of music as well as its aesthetic experience. Jankélévitch and Barthes especially emphasize the immediate bodily and sensual experience of music making (piano playing). Following Jankélévitch’s differentiation between »gnostic« and »drastic« forms of knowledge, music analysis in the context of performative and posthermeneutic aesthetics should be epistemologically situated between discursive and artistic practices.

The pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli was surrounded by an almost mythical aura that was partly due to his musical perfectionism and partly to his appearance, which was often considered eccentric. However, the present essay focuses less on these two well-known aspects of the artist’s life and work and rather seeks to describe some specific characteristics of Michelangeli’s interpretations, and also to pay tribute to the special nature of his playing. The focus here is on Michelangeli’s ›poetic virtuosity‹, cantabile character, quality of tone and sense of musical form, which are discussed with reference to recordings of the works of Scarlatti, Beet­hoven, Schumann, Chopin and Liszt. Various recordings will also be compared in order to arrive at the most multi-faceted possible picture of Michelangeli’s musical practice.

In the second half of the 18th century, musical rhythm developed into a central category in the music-theoretical and aesthetic discourse. Proceeding from an outline of the historical concept of rhythm along with its reception, the subsequent rhythmic analysis of a Haydn minuet looks more closely at the relationship between compositional practice and contemporaenous theory. Haydn’s music does not go against the theory of rhythm formulated by his contemporary Joseph Riepel, but rather takes it as a point of departure. The author argues for a greater and more nuanced consideration of rhythm in historically-informed music theory and analysis.

The clarinet quintet Poem Dusk by Shen Ye is a good example of how a contemporary Chinese composer today deals with his own and Western musical culture. Shen uses the single sound technique, which was developed from the analysis of Shen’s daughter in her pre-linguistic phase. Although it takes a literary inspiration from Chinese poets, the composer moves away from art form or ideology, takes up the object itself. Haizi’s poem is also the case: back to existence and life itself. The tension and the aesthetic appeal of this piece can therefore be understood by the listener without knowledge of modern Chinese poetry. But the more common ground there is in cultural knowledge, the more thought connections can be drawn from the listener’s subconscious. In order to increase and strengthen such thought connections, the exchange between cultures must be supported.

Conceived as a forum for the free exchange of ideas, starting in 1951, the Programmhefte constituted a new departure in the self-representation of the Bayreuth Festival. Building on an important body of work devoted to the illumination of Wagner’s work through the lens of political science, Bermbach views them as a single coherent project of »decontamination« aimed at the Denazification of both the festival and of Wagner himself. Initially, former Nazis dominated the field, but the inclusion of Adorno, Bloch, and H. Mayer, all Marxist intellectuals and Jewish exiles, prepared the ground for the renewal of our understanding of Wagner as a radical revolutionary, which led to the landmark Chéreau production of The Ring in 1976.