Musik & Ästhetik, 2007, Jg. 11, Ausgabe 43

Ensemble of Freedoms. Philosophical observations on the concept of the musical work

In order to lend the critique of the view that the score is the actual indeed the entire musical work a positive character the concept of the musical ensemble is introduced in a new guise. It encompasses the composer the conducter the orchestral musicians and soloists and the listeners. Instead of simply refreshing existing reception aesthetics the author concentrates particularly on the »in-simul«: the enlivening and fertile interpenetration of all things that constitute the overall sound event. The central concept for the presentation ofthe unity of the ensemble is that of interpretation: all parties are involved with interpretation. The composer is the first interpreter; for the score is not originary but rather a result of the composer's - by necessity voluntary - interpretation of that which he/she musically conceives.

XTC in Music Dance Image and Text

Ecstasy is a central phenomenon in aesthetic experience. It resists intellectuel examination however as the immediacy of the ecstatic experience can only be theoretically negated by with difficulty. This makes it all the more possible to thematicise ecstasy as a dramatisation and a sign. Appropriate examinations of ecstatic practices in the 20th and 21st centuries here deal with examples from music literature and visual art: archaic presentations of ecstatsy in the interstices of dance and music in the works of Ravel Mary Wigman and H. W. Henze are analysed as well as video clips by Robbie Williams and Outkast. There is also mention of literary texts by Henri Michaux Christian Uetz and Robert Schneider where ecstasy is articulated in very different ways as also visual dramatisations of ecstasy by Pipilotti Rist and Cindy Sherman.

Dark feverish and comic sides. Interpretations of the Romantic in the Work of Jörg Widmann

The connections to Romanticism in the compositions of Jörg Widmann are especially significant. On the trail of Robert Schumann in particular but also various recent reflections on Romanticism for example those of Wolfgang Rihm and Roland Barthes works such as Fieberphantasie and Dunkle Saiten develop the unusual conflict-ridden and fractured aspects of the Romantic. In doing so they remind one - at certain points - of a comedy in Nietzsche's sense. Of particular importance in Widmann's music are the moments of strong force and tension which lead to a distance in relation to any monumental traditionalism.

Nothing But a Bluff? The experiment in music and art from the twentieth century to the present

In this text the author examines shifts of meaning in the concept of musical experimentation with all its scientific connotations using various examples. This brings to light four different uses: I. Composition as experiment (metaphorically) 2. Experiments as precompositional tools (scientific procedures are made artistically productive) 3. Performance as experiment (the reception-aesthetic turn) 4. Recipients as experimentators (research and exploration on the part of the recipients). The process described here shows an expansion of the experimental idea in the course of the twentieth century. In addition the mentality of researching and exploring transpires as one of the fundamental aesthetic attitudes of the twentieth century. Today one finds different forms of experimental music and sonic art existing alongside one another. The examination of the experimental concept reveals the intersections between arts and the natural sciences.

»Mahler's Danger is that of the Redemptive«. Consolation in Adorno and the Song of the Beautiful Trumpets

There is a considerable difference between the topical popularity of musical works by Gustav Mahler and Theodor W. Adorno's writings about music although his monograph about Mahler seems to be recognised more benevolently than usual - even among Adorno's opponents. And it is also undisputed that Mahler's music is sometimes able to console though Adorno himself rejected an affirmative understanding of »comfort« regarding artificial intentions. But the focus on the term »comfort« in Adorno's writings shows that he understood Mahler's works in a more differentiated fashion than Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht who insisted only on Adorno's pretended term of the »Gebrochenheit« [Fracture] in Mahler's music.

Beethoven in the »great school of tradition«

The title of the article forms the sub-theme of an international symposium held in Bonn in October 2000 dealing with »Beethoven and the Reception of Early Music«. The thematic complex of the ensuing essay collection encompasses a wide range of historico-philosophical reception -oriented analytical and documentary subjects thus also in so far as the amin theme forces almost all the authors to return to fundamental questions transpiring as a circumscription of the whole. All that is missing are some reflections and the categorial and methodological work of historians in the context of the »history of memory«.

Aesthetics despite Luhmann - Comments on Harry Lehmann's philosophy of art

Although Harry Lehmann understands his philosophy of art to be an extension of system theory as according to Niklas Luhmann his concern is not so much a theoretical approach to art in modern society but rather a re-formulation of social criticism. His approach re-refers art to >truth< and >meaning< in an emphatical sense. In the same way as Jürgen Habermas he aims to formulate a normatively relevant theory which is able to rephrase the possibility of criticism and value judgement not only concerning art but also concerning the state of modern society in general. Correspondingly he believes that the functions of art lies in the provocations of social self-descriptions which serve to reflect the problems of the functional differentiation of modern society. Analogous to his normative distinction between >merely artistically simulated innovations< and a >truly innovative art< he distinguishes between >normal< communication systems such as economy science or politics on the one hand and the >reflection systems< which operate in >human media< such as art philosophy belief and love on the other. In the end only the latter shall be able to fulfil the socio-political function. The main problem of Lehmann's aesthetics lies in the question as to why adopt his normative scheme of observation and »re-exit« the theoretical context of the system theory at all. Since his >philosophical< approach itself makes reference to an emphatical concept of truth which cannot be coded by the difference between true or false his social criticism seems to be hardly able to achieve connectivity with system theory.