Musik & Ästhetik, 2007, Jg. 11, Ausgabe 41

The Future in Ruins. Essay on Charles Ives

Although Ives was first interpreted as an ancestor of 20th century modernism recent American musicology has stressed his more traditional aspects to integrate him into the canon of »great composers«. Here Ives as outsider and anarchist is rediscovered and Ives' music is seen as linked to a specifically American variant of individualism and an aesthetics of genius and nature. American political and gender culture is found in Ives's specific technique and his evasion of artistic realization. Like Adorno's Wagner Ives at once embodies the inner contradictions of American ideology and also implicitly criticizes them.

Case studies on Aesthetics in Music Education: Bix Beiderbecke's Solo

Aesthetics are generally being considered as a complicated field of inquiry particularly for students. Aesthetic experiences however often raise questions about the nature of music which philosophical aesthetics is intended to answer. It depends largely on the aptly chosen methods to connect students with aesthetics. Many music educators in the United States approach this goal through »case studies on aesthetics«. This method features short stories on aesthetic problems as a means of exemplifying aesthetic theory. These stories allow students to engage in aesthetic inquiry in close relation to the musical world of students. Furthermore case studies offer more applications to music education through performance improvisation or pre-concert lectures.

Sound-speech and Musical Syntax

Mattheson's »sound-speech« as a musical language of the heart is based on an auditory concept of language. Music here takes on a meaning that is independant from verbal language and not (yet) autonomy-aesthetically founded. Its new communicative function in the discourse of emotions demands close attention. With his easily comprehensible writings (in German) Mattheson develops a new form of theory for this on the basis of contemporary rhetoric. Rhetoric is an effective communication theory and simultaneously provides the language-theoretical model. Music creates an acoustic space by sounding. Using the basic scheme of rhetoric the positions of non-conceptual musical representation are named within it. The attraction of the model lies in the functional analogy of effect. It is based on an early Enlightenment understanding of language that differs substantially also grammatically from today's notions of sentence and syntax.

Salvatore Sciarrino's »Variazione su uno spazio ricurvo«

The Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino is one of the most productive today and his Oeuvre contains many works for piano. His Variazione su uno spazio ricurvo date from 1990; the piece is extremely short and succint and especially suited for an analytical explication of Sciarrino's compositional strategies and patterns of musical formation.

Gustav Mahler and Friedrich Rückert - a Mésalliance?

In the discovery of Gustav Mahler after 1960 it has been precisely those who have been most vocal in effecting the restitution of his music after the Nazi era that have expressed displeasure at his choice of poetry in his vocal works. Among these were Theodor W. Adorno and especially Hans Mayer. After showing disinterest in this context in his book on Mahler Adorno later emphatically amended his position in a polemic against Mayer. The present contribution shows how misguided it is to offer an interpretation of Friedrich Rückert's poetry and its appropriation by Mahler that evaluates this output from the perspective of a linear modernisation process. Mahler recognised something of himself in Rückert's poems in such a way that taking his cycle of five orchestral songs the Rückert-Lieder we can identify a self-portrait assembled by means of a poetic collage.

Current of Music. An examination of stage productions with new media using the example of »Fidelio«

In the performing arts the progress in technical resources has also increased the demand for new expressive possibilities - yet formal and aesthetic discrepancies between the traditional operatic repertoire and technological innovations are still prevalent. As part of an entirely virtually-staged production of Fidelio (premiered on 2 December 2004 at the Beethoven-Haus Bonn) whose abstract figures were initially derived from purely musical information in the sense of a musical visualisation then subjected to further scenic interpretation an analytical procedure was invented enabling the translation of a historical musical score into a numerical digital representation. While motivic analysis no longer seemed powerful enough to preserve the fluid texture of the music in its data-generated image the parametric transposition of Beethoven's score into the numbercode had to be carried out without damaging any of its historical foundations. The new digital medium of »Virtual Environment« and the analysis of classical music put each other to the test.