Musik & Ästhetik, 2008, Jg. 12, Ausgabe 48

Media of Composition

Taking Niklas Luhmann´s distinction between medium and form as the point of departure one can develop a range of music-analytical tools to pinpoint different organisational levels extending from the individual note to the entire work. In contrast to conventional media theories storage and mass media are only particular manifestations of the general medium-form difference which enables ideas and statements for both production and reception traditional music and New Music. At the core lies Luhmann´s formula of the ›difference between medium and form which in turn becomes medial‹. Whether the parameters of a single note constitute the medium of a composition or entire music-historical specimens are subjected to deconstructive methods this spectrum is itself a medium of composition. The present text uses this as the basis for an outline of a media theory of music.

Tragedy of Listening.
Nono Cacciari critical thought and compositional practice

This article investigates the role of critical theory in the work of Luigi Nono; in particular that of philosopher-politician Massimo Cacciari. It examines the related concepts of negative thought resistance post-dialectical art and »un-everything«. A development is charted through Nono´s choice of poets to set in the 1950´s his insistence on the meaningfulness of musical text at Darmstadt in 1960 and his use of politically-charged documentary texts in parallel with his political engagement. Political aesthetic and philosophical ideas are manifest in the nature of the music itself. There are important theological components despite Nono´s communism. The relationship between the immanent present and musical structure becomes crucial. This is explored in the late works of the 1980´s especially in Nono´s collaboration with Cacciari on the opera Prometeo and his subsequent interest in the work of Jabès.

The Overstepping of Boundaries in Monteverdi´s »L´Orfeo« or Why Does Caronte Fall Asleep?
New thoughts on the genesis of opera

The traditional belief that has persisted for centuries in the »birth of opera from the spirit of Greek tragedy« has long obstructed any differentiated examination of the genesis of the genre and is now considered obsolete; it has even been exposed as a »myth of music historiography« (Silke Leopold). The present text attempts to show that it was precisely the renewal of ancient myths from the position of the authors´ own time and its intellectual climate – the process of reshaping and updating – that was an important motive for establishing the new musical genre. From this perspective it becomes clear how in Striggio´s and Monteverdi´s L´Orfeo aspects of the libretto´s content the discovery of new musical means of affective expression and the new form of presentation combine to create a unique constellation deeply rooted in the contemporary culture of the time. The concept of overstepping boundaries transpires here as a mediator between art and science.

The Self´s Sounding Other.
Remarks on the octave and the musical tone

From an acoustic perspective the musical tone as the basic unit of musical activity has been extensively researched but there are deficits from a musical perspective. Studies in the fields of tone psychology music psychology and musicology either follow the line of acoustics or understand tone in terms of tone systems. But the insight that differences not entities form the smallest musical units can already be brought to bear on the fifth as the first musically effective difference. The octave as the basis of the Western tone system is explained using the methods of Hegelian dialectics as the basic principle of the musical tone itself which reflects itself as being in itself thus revealing the other of its self. This self-referentiality can be understood with the help of the model proposed by the Prague structuralist school as an embodiment of aesthetic function i. e. both as internal self-relation and an explicit reference to itself.

Signs – Sound – Gestures.
Three Wagner dissertations

One can identify two seemingly opposing tendencies in current writing on Wagner: on the one hand a surprising prominence of themes that had already been at the centre of discussions in the early days of Wagner reception and on the other hand a tendency towards reception- and discoursehistorical approaches that bear the traces of the various »turns« of the more recent cultural sciences. Three dissertations by Christian Thorau Arne Stollberg and Martin Knust seem – each in their own way – to attempt a combination of these tendencies. The tension between different levels of objects and observation which all three must endure in the process is characteristic of a musicology trapped between new culture-scientific orientations and the preservation of a work paradigm however modified and expanded.