Musik & Ästhetik, 2010, Jg. 14, Ausgabe 53

Aesthetica longa ars brevis: The Transience of the Beautiful and the Timelessness of Aesthetics in the Work of Eduard Hanslick

Eduard Hanslick´s relationship with history has remained one of the central problems in the interpretation of his music aesthetics to this day. Against the background of the formalist schools of aesthetics of his time – especially that of Herbart – we should really expect a historically narrow perhaps even wilfully ignorant aesthetics from Hanslick. A glance at the details however shows quickly how colourful and multifaceted the relationship between aesthetics and history is in Hanslick´s work. The present article analyses those statements from »Vom Musikalisch-Schönen« that are central to the definition of this relationship attempting to reinterpret them with reference to the decisive intellectual-historical contexts and their respective argumentative functions. In this way both the limitations of the approach and its relative originality and autonomy ultimately become apparent.

»The Matrix of Mentality«: Susanne K. Langer´s Symbol Theory of Music in Contradistinction to Nelson Goodman

The discourse of musical semiotics in current German-language research is based mainly on Nelson Goodman. Susanne Langer´s semantic philosophy of art however – produced before Goodman and anticipating many of his reflections – offers more far-reaching insights for music. Langer developed a symbol theory (still largely ignored in this country) in order to approach the problem of musical meaning in particular. Goodman on the other hand elaborated a general symbol theory from the examination of (visual) art. This contrasting aim makes Langer´s symbol theory a fruitful aid to reflecting upon music for musical artists music aestheticians and music historians.

Static Allegory and »Vortex of Time«: Structuralist Semantics in Salvatore Sciarrino´s Opera »Luci mie traditrici«

The music of Salvatore Sciarrino´s opera Luci mie traditrici (1996-98) is based on the continuous (re-)combination and metamorphosis of vocal and instrumental »modules« – short musical elements that can be very flexibly cross-related and intermingled in multifarious ways and are intimately connected with the psychological development of the characters on stage. The present analysis explores four main facets of the opera´s ›semanticized‹ structure: (1) the stratified macrostructure of plot and dramaturgy (2) the ambivalence and transformation of instrumental modules between naturalistic and psychological symbolism (3) the re-invention of traditional libretto topoi in the text structure and of early baroque recitative aesthetics (Jacopo Peri Giulio Caccini) in Sciarrino´s vocal style sillabazione scivolata (»gliding syllable articulation«) and (4) the microstructure and syntax of vocal modules exemplified by a detailed semiotic analysis of the vocal parts in the first scene. The confluence of cyclicity and linearity that can be traced in all four investigated fields prompts the metaphor of a ›spiral form‹ as an overall governing principle – a form that incorporates both the idea of musical plot and structure as a ›static allegory‹ and as a ›vortex of time‹.

Work-Being Through Discourse?
Albrecht Wellmer´s »Essay on Music and Language«

Working from the perspective of the relationship between music and language and following on from Adorno Wellmer undertakes a philosophical analysis of musical modernity in so far as it relates – even where it retreats from it – to a European-idealist understanding of art and the work. By defining the explication of the work through interpretation and aesthetic discourse as part of its being he succeeds in expanding the work concept sufficiently for it still to be applicable to the radical designs of such a composer as John Cage. This however is achieved at the cost of neglecting the primary temporality of music.

Porcheria tedesca and Eurotrash or: What Is the Work?

This text attempts for the first time to concentrate largely known facts of the opera profession in the 17th 18th and early 19th centuries into a concrete questioning of the restorative work concept in whose name the disciplining of German music theatre is currently being postulated. The opera composer of the 17th 18th and early 19th century was not the author of a »work« but rather a creator of theatre responsible for the most contemporary possible musical »staging« of a canonical text or subject. In today´s music theatre (where world premieres are rare exceptions!) this creative function has been transferred to the director. He is responsible for interrupting the automatisms of the reproduction ritualised in the culture scene and commercialised by the classical music market of a »classical« score in order to lend it renewed contemporaneity.

Juan Diego Flórez a Che Guevara of Belcanto

This text presents the singer Juan Diego Flórez from an emphatically subjective perspective. It describes experiences of listening to his voice and interpretative achievements sketches concise outlines of historical backgrounds and finally ventures associatively to assign political in the broadest sense revolutionary qualities to Flórez´s singing.

Singing in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility: Jürgen Kesting´s Monumental Book on Singers

The book Die grossen Sänger by Jürgen Kesting first published in 1986 and then in a thoroughly revised new edition in 2008 has had a massive influence on public taste. The work is firstly a comprehensive critical compendium a history of form and style in vocal art music and secondly a normative aesthetics that emphatically advocates not only bel canto but also music as the true heart of opera. Thirdly however Kesting also offers points of departure for a medial history and medial aesthetics of singing. While the effects of recording on music and its interpretation its technologies formats and forms of distribution are insufficiently addressed in both publicly-oriented and specialist critique Kesting knows that acoustic reproduction is not only of documentary but also of dispositif character. The aesthetics of the record admittedly has yet to be written.