Musik & Ästhetik, 2011, Jg. 15, Ausgabe 60

One More Time: Consciousness-Raising or Redemptive Critique


A Music-Philosophical Reading of the Benjamin-Adorno Dispute. Counter to the usual tendency to pay attention to Adorno´s criticism of Benjamin, but not to acknowledge Benjamin´s criticism of Adorno, this article begins by showing what exactly Benjamin criticised in the early version of Adorno´s Versuch über Wagner, where he insisted with remarkable harshness on the irreconcilability of »consciousness-raising and redemptive critique«. The second section attempts to flesh out this idea with the help of Adorno´s Wagner analyses and pin down the different notions of time, in which the thinkers both meet and part ways. The third section uncovers the divergent understandings of »mediation« (Vermittlung), which accompanies both »consciousness-raising« and »redemptive critique«. The fourth suggests ways to develop Benjamin´s presentist critique of Adorno´s text on Wagner further, also showing where the later book version is directed against Benjamin´s essay on technical reproduction, before ending with an outlook on the relationship between the work-aesthetic and reception-aesthetic perspectives.

»Je ne la puis oblier«. A Binchois Fantasy


This text is an analysis of the chanson Je ne fai tousjours by Gilles Binchois, composed in the 1430s. In the tradition of Historische Satzlehre, the study of source material is here combined with contemporary theoretical and culture-historical documents as well as unwritten musical practices in order to describe and interpret a special characteristic of this chanson: the conspicuously unbroken application of a contrapuntal model used for improvisation in the 15th century (fauxbourdon with low countertenor). Following a comprehensive discussion of the compositional means employed by Binchois, the essay examines the question of whether the composer used this compositional model in this particular context in order to achieve a particular rhetorical effect.

On Naive and Sentimental Ways to Listen to Mahler. Observations on the Contemporary Reception of His Music


The article discusses transformations in the way Mahler´s music is heard. The main focus is the current Mahler reception, but in order to gain a full picture of contemporary reception contexts, a few important stages in reception history are briefly commented on. The emphasis here is on the different reactions to the verdict of banality, which confronted Mahler´s music from the start. Reactions include Schönberg´s classicist view on Mahler as well as Adorno´s modernist or postmodernist critique. With reference to the present situation, the article addresses the current sociological discourse on the sovereign handling of the objects of today´s consumer society, as opposed to the older critique of reification or commodity fetishism, before discussing Mahler recordings on compilations and Mahler in film and television.

Mahler and America: A Sketch


The American years of Gustav Mahler (1908-1911) constitute the final, by now thoroughly researched phase of his life and his artistic existence, which still raises numerous questions for interpretation. This article examines them with reference to the paradoxical situation of American music life on the East Coast before the First World War, which was highly developed institutionally, but artistically dominated by European composers and performers. Mahler´s successful work as a conductor and the reception of his music show an attempt to exert considerable music-political influence on American musical life, but at the same time stand in the context of aesthetic constellations in American modernity before 1910, which was located between artistic emancipation (Ives) and a pessimistic »redemptive culture« (Mason). The article concludes by arguing for a de-mythologisation of Mahler´s American period.

»My Time Will Come«. Gustav Mahler 100 Years after His Death


With the particular self-confidence he displayed as an artist (»in art I make no concessions«), Mahler´s comment on the fact that Richard Strauss was more »successful« as a composer in his lifetime was the prediction: »My time will come«. Both concert hall programmes and record catalogues impressively demonstrate Mahler´s dynamically growing »popularity« in public musical life over the last thirty-odd years. But the academic reception of his work also testifies to an unprecedented interest in researching Mahler´s life and the interpretation of his musical output. Never before have as many books appeared within a few years before and during the centenary of a composer as in the last few years for the anniversaries of Mahler´s birth and death in 2010/11. If one looks at the range of interpretations and the diversity of their methods, one discovers a second truth to Mahler´s prediction: Establishing a co-operative pluralism of interpretative methods and parameters, recent scholarship opens up far-reaching dimensions of »decoding« the multi-layered web of relationships and references in Mahler´s »polyphony«.

»Histoire(s) du cinéma« by Jean-Luc Godard: The Resurrection of Images


Jean-Luc Godards four-part, four-and-a-half-hour film Histoire(s) du cinéma (Tales of the Cinema, F/CH 1988-98) is a monumental montage of film excerpts, images, texts and music, a subjective history of cinema as a film – as opposed to a verbally narrative historiography. Histoire(s) is simultaneously a climax in Godard´s directorial work and the starting point for his parallel and subsequent films. No part of the film has gained as much attention as the short excerpt from the first chapter, Toutes les Histoires (All the Stories), examined here. Using the author´s own score of Histoire(s), the method, and thus the cinematic thought of Jean-Luc Godard, is presented and explained: what is the meaning of this montage of a film excerpt from A Place in the Sun by George Stevens (1951) and footage from a concentration camp with the resurrection painting Noli me tangere! by Giotto, a text from Robert Bresson´s 1951 film of the novel Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos, an early viola sonata by Paul Hindemith (op. 11 no. 4, 1919) and Godard´s own commentary?