Musik & Ästhetik, 2006, Jg. 10, Ausgabe 38

I. Das Kunstsystem - II. Die Entkoppelung von Werk Medium und Reflexion - III. Das Medium der Kunst - IV. Klassische Moderne - V. Avantgarde - VI. Postmoderne - VII. Reflexive Moderne - VIII. Gehaltsästhetische Wende - IX. Naive Moderne - X. Kunstkritik - XI. Kunstphilosophie

Avant-garde Today. A theoretical model of aesthetic modernity

In order to still be able to answer the central question of the avant-garde today it is necessary to have a model of aesthetic modernity showing what the »avant-garde« once was and what became of it. According to the author's model the major divisions in art historiography such as classical modernity avant-garde and post-modernity can be reconstructed ideal-typically as steps in the progressive differentiation of art here leading to a gradual separation of work medium and reflection in art. If this process of differentiation has been completed then art can react in two ways to its self-created hyper-complexity: reflexively or naively. Accordingly art has now reached a point of bifurcation in its history at which it can evolve either into a reflexive or a naive modernity. The fundamental precondition for a reflexive modernisation of art would be the development of an art criticism that was autonomous in every respect enabling a paradigm shift in the self-definition of advanced art: namely from a material-aesthetic to a content-aesthetic orientation.

Mozart - a »cherub and guardian of true art«? The film For Ever Mozart by Jean-Luc Godard

In Godard's For Ever Mozart (1996) one only actually hears music by Mozart in the short closing sequence. For Ever Mozart is primarily a film about the wars in Bosnia and - as in a whole series of films by the same director - about the impossibility of depicting war. Mozart's music and Mozart the man who appears in that final scene and plays the solo part of his last piano concerto appear - on the surface - to represent a »harmonious« utopian reconciliation in opposition to the present warlike reality. Closer analysis shows that Godard understood this »harmony« merely as »a form of sleep« a »fleeing game« (Broch). The director himself also interpreted it as such in part 2.b of his monumental film history Histoire(s) du cinéma »Fatale beauté« - using words of Hermann Broch - and already anticipated this »desperate attempt« in 1993 in Hélas pour moi.

The Delayed End. Essay on the music of Morton Feldman

The ambiguity of Morton Feldman's music lies in the fact that it must divest itself of all traces of what is not »the music itself« in order to realise the musically »absolute« yet fails precisely through that realisation. This allows us to read the traces of the contingent within it. And they have been read in different ways to the effect that this music sometimes appeared as art as »modern« art on other occasions as the expression of a cultural particularity or indeed finally as »ambiental«. In all this it must be left open whether it has thus already moved beyond the end of art or is rather delaying that end.

»Musico antico & celebrato«. Essay on Jacobus Vaet

Jacobus Vaet is one of the most significant figures among the composers of the 1550s and 1560s. As the director of the Imperial Chapel Royal at the Viennese court of Maximilian II it is surely not without reason that Vaet like his composer colleagues Palestrina and Lasso stood at the centre of Western culture during that time. Though he was highly respected by his contemporaries his public image was subjected to considerable distortion during 450 years of reception history. Following the gradual rediscovery of his work through CD recordings in the last few years this article honours it with a first analytical and style-critical examination.

Tone Colours and Colour Tones. Josef Matthias Hauer and Johannes Itten

On the way from the late Romantic musical language to the twelve-tone game Josef Matthias Hauer's engagement with the phenomenon of »tone colour« constituted a milestone in the development of his music-theoretical and musical output. Influenced by his long-standing friend Johannes Itten he revised his 1918 theoretical study »Über die Klangfarbe« [On Tone Colour] and published it in 1920 under the title »Vom Wesen des Musikalischen« [On the Nature of the Musical]. Itten in turn was inspired by Hauser's reflections to write a theory of his own. Whereas Hauer saw musical intervals primarily as carriers of particular colours at the beginning of his engagement with the theory of colours he later referred with increasing emphasis to keys and their colour characteristics. He began by assuming at the purely sensory level that the relation between the colours black and white equalled the acoustic proportion of one octave. Itten began by defining the equivalent to the octave on the basis of physical parameters in the proportions between the frequencies and wavelenghts of red and violet and in a further step he moved beyond the two-dimensionality of the circle of colours to the sphere of colours now also bringing grey colour tones into the musictheoretical discussion.

Experiment and Form. Observations on Conlon Nancarrow's »Study No. 20«

The conception of Conlon Nancarrow's Study No. 20 is based on a game with the principle of chance. Succession and temporal co-ordination of the musical action spaces correspond in general terms to the ideal structural principle of sonata form. The strict separation of formal conception and chosen pitch material however leads to the conclusion that the composer did not intend an integration of tradition into his experiment.