Musik & Ästhetik, 2004, Jg. 8, Ausgabe 32

»Philosophical Alarming Music«: Thomas Mann and Theodor W. Adorno Once Again

This essay revisits some familiar sites of controversity in the ongoing debate about the role of musical discourse in the pre-history of the German catastrophe. Based primarily on the recently published correspondence of Mann and Adorno it offers a fresh look at the underlying dynamics of the famious Schönberg - Mann - Adorno constellation and argues for a re-evaluation of Adorno's role in the composition of Doctor Faustus. Taking issue with some of the recent biographies of Adorno this paper calls attention to a whole array of philosophical and aesthetic differences between the author of The Philosophy of Modern Music and the author of Doctor Faustus and suggests that contrary to prevailing myths they failed to establish a closer relationship and for good reasons. In Doctor Faustus Mann interpreted German history as an attempt to translate musical supremacy into political hegemony. He came to suspect that Adorno's philosophizing about music rather than countervailing this mentality of supremacy was apt to lend support to it.

Franz Schubert: »Fantasie« in C major for violin and piano D 934 in the context of contemporary art around »Giselle ou les Wilis«

This text attempts to explore a work not primarily through a technical compositional analysis but rather one of the Zeitgeist and its consequences drawing on aspects of the literature music painting and ballet of the time and questioning Schubert's own motives and those of the society he lived in. The focus is on the ballet Giselle ou les Wilis and the music written for it by Adolphe Adam as classical ballet traditionally grows out of the synergy between those spheres of art and our musical understanding can be enriched through an identification with dance. The purpose of this comparison is that of using interpretation to gain a sense of the composer's possible imagination with the aid of an extra-musical work born of the same Zeitgeist.

The crossing of boundaries as music's central focus. Karlheinz Stockhausen on the way to »Düfte - Zeichen« in »Sonntag« from »Licht«

The work of Karlheinz Stockhausen can be understood as a process - unfolding methodically from the early compositions to the now completed cycle Licht - of formation through the overstepping of boundaries. Both the works before Licht and the operatic cycle of weekdays itself offer exemplary illustrations of this process. Within the repeated mediation of oppositions which sets off multi-dimensional metamorphoses there is an increasing incorporation of seemingly extra-musical materials and semiotic dimensions in the integral work-structure: the last of these to be added are symbolic images which the composer uses to visualize the characters of the weekdays and the - magically/ceremonially interpreted - fragrances assigned to the cycle's three protagonists and their constellations which change from each weekday to the next. Fundamental to this act of integrating all semiotic dimensions is an overcoming of a merely binary dualistic logic in favor of a polyvalent pluralistic order. For Stockhausen this is tantamount to the certainty that music fulfils a similiar mediatory and emissary function to the language of angels.

Material sound/sound material. Reflection on material research in musicology. Using the example of Edgard Varèse's Density 21 5

In many (artistic) disciplines questions on materiality and its relevance for aesthetics show a remarkable conjunction. This approach can also be transferred to musicology. The present essay attempts this using the example of Edgard Varèse's Density 21.5 (1936). This work for solo flute bears a material-aesthetic signature in its title: the density 21.5 g/cm³ refers to the platinum content of the flute for whose inauguration the piece was composed. The importance attached by Varèse to the materiality of the medium becomes particularly clear in contrast to Claude Debussy's Syrinx (1913) which Density 21.5 unmistakably refers to: Varèse's emphatic focus on the material sound inverts Debussy's material aesthetic of suspension.

Sparse Opera. On Peter Ruzicka's »Celan«

Reflection upon the necessary incompletion of the work one is involved in can endanger naiveté; on the other hand naiveté is misused where it seeks to evade an inescapable responsibility. The work and the life of Paul Celan stand for a constant engagement with this twofold conflict in a way that few others do. »Perhaps theater is now only possible as an encyclopedia of description - and yet at the same time as self-reflection and self-description«: this is one of Peter Ruzicka's answers to the difficult dual responsibility. As for the other the greater answer he has supplied it driven through many doubts with conscientious vital intelligent imagination through his composition.