Musik & Ästhetik, 2019, Jg. 23, Ausgabe 91

The Hermeneutics of Jazz
The aim of the paper is, firstly, to develop a mode of understanding that can be fruitful for questions of musical aesthetics, and secondly, to work out the specifics of what it means to understand jazz. This goal is realized in three steps: in the first step, basic hermeneutical assumptions are developed in and through short dialectical sketches of the positions of Heidegger, Gadamer and McDowell. The second step then develops answers to the question of what it means to understand aesthetic entities in contrast to philosophical texts, for example. The third and final step contrasts the understanding of jazz with the understanding of classical music and pop music. The overall thesis of the paper is that in jazz music, a dimension of musical practice per se becomes explicit, whereas in other musical practices it remains implicit.

The combinatorial recapitulations in Johann Stamitz’ late group of concert symphonies still provoke the question of their originality. Hugo Riemann’s historiographical construction of the »Mannheim symphonists«, considering Stamitz to be a precursor of Haydn, and his general stylistic catalogue of the Mannheim »manners« hindered a recognition of the works as original contributions to the genre. After Werner Korte’s attempt to exemplify his ideas of musicology as a structuralist aesthetics with Stamitz’ combinatoric strategies, Carl Dahlhaus tried to find a way out by explaining Stamitz’ formal surprises as a kind of »mannerism«. From the standpoint of a historiography of sonata form his judgment proved to be negative: Stamitz’ compositional combinatorics seem to negate formal differentiation. The present essay tries to re-evaluate Stamitz’ formal experiments by means of a comparative analysis of the first movements of D-2 and the versions of Eb-5. The recombination of components evokes a dialogue with the listener, as does Joseph Riepel’s Tonordnung (1755). Intertextual relations with the Italian opera symphony and with Thomas Erskine’s Overtures are considered in order to show that Stamitz’ formal decisions operate on a highly complex level.

»… trapped in the aporia« – On Adorno and Schönberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw
Despite his statement about poems after Auschwitz, Adorno’s comments on Schönberg’s A Survivor from Warsaw are largely positive. This is surprising at first, but is based on a convergence of Adorno’s words and Schönberg’s work. Thus, the characterization of poetry after Auschwitz as »impossible« or »barbaric« can be related to the contrast of the two parts in the ­Survivor – expressive narrative in the first, the constructive choral setting of ›Shma Yisrael‹ in the second. The first part threatens to become impossible as art through the expression of suffering; the second, by contrast, tries to withstand this in art, but transfigures suffering and therefore threatens to become barbaric. Thus the survivor is »trapped in the aporia«. But by resisting the aporia and calling to resistance through memory, he sets out to leave behind »self-sufficient contemplation«.

Concept and Compositional Freedom in Sebastian Claren’s »Kaleidoskopvillemusik II« 
Kaleidoskop­ville­musik II (2017) for 14 solo strings by Sebastian Claren consists of two distinct parts. The first is based on an instrumental transcription of exceprts from the play Heiliger Krieg by Rainald Goetz, while the second uses the theme melody from the crime series Dexter. The article examines how the composer combines strict technical procedures with individual compositional decisions in such a way that the resulting piece is extremely clear, yet also shows a great deal of variety.

A Swan Song to the Boundless: Keith Jarrett’s CD Box A Multitude of Angels
A Multitude of Angels seems to be a turning point in Keith Jarrett’s career: the four CDs contain the last concerts from 1996, in which Jarrett improvises the large formal arc of a complete concert half. The article examines the question of why this recording is widely viewed as a kind of swan song, even though Jarrett improvised entire concerts in the following years – though consisting of far shorter episodes, which accordingly tend to have the character of preconceived pieces. With this departure from the improvised large-scale form, the myths that shaped the image of Jarrett as an absolute creator for years, and now reveal themselves as expressing a collective longing for a positive conception of formlessness, also begin to falter.