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Philosophy of Music

Philosophy of Music. Lecture 5. Non-vocal music.

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Philosophy of Music

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  1. Philosophy of Music Lecture 5

  2. Non-vocal music • 'Without words and without the human voice, instrumental music, quite as much as vocal music, should express certain passions and transport the listeners from one to another. But if this is to be properly managed, to compensate for the absence of words and of the human voice, neither the composer nor the performer may have a soul of wood.' (J.J. Quantz 1752). • ‘Beethoven’s music sets in motion the lever of fear, of awe, of horror, of suffering, and wakens just that infinite longing which is the essence of romanticism.’ (E.T.A. Hoffmann 1813) • ‘Precisely the “specifically musical” …. The form (as tonal structure), as opposed to the feeling (as would-be content), is precisely the real content of the music, is the music itself. (Hanslick 1854)

  3. The creation of an opera The genre • ‘The highest collective art work is the drama; it is present in its ultimate completeness only when each art variety, in its ultimate completeness, is present in it.’ (Richard Wagner). • ‘At one moment the music soars with open, full-hearted rapture – and then a shift in the harmony casts doubt on a relationship; or the cut of a phrase will open up the difference between confidence and swagger, or between indifference and insensitivity; or perhaps something unnameable in the orchestral sound suggests a bubble of hollowness in a declaration of love.’ (Bryan Magee) • Authenticity Works ProductionsPerformances

  4. Hybrid art-forms A hybrid art-form is one that historically has emerged from a plurality of pre-existing art-forms. (Levinson)

  5. Integration

  6. Opera’s aesthetic properties Works • “Verdi’s expression of his characters’ typically energetic and direct reaction to the circumstances, and above all Verdi’s unusual expression of that, creates in the audience a feeling of liberation, a sense of committed and energetic individual action, which is deeply invigorating. This experience is the basic, central, response to Verdi’s art; almost all other responses to it grow out from, are sophistications of, that one”. (Williams)

  7. Operatic content The genre • ‘The irrationality of opera lies in the fact that rational elements are employed, solid reality is aimed at, but at the same time it is all washed out in the music. A dying man is real. If at the same time he sings we are translated to the sphere of the irrational.’ (Brecht) • ‘He, unhappy at her apparent indifference to him brings her captive to the Temple of the Holy Grail. Another man also loves her, accusing her of witchcraft. She expresses but a lifeless automaton – who should have reported to jail for a minor offense. Disguising himself in exchange for her love, they are condemned as traitors. Conveniently, he flees to an inn on the Lithuanian border.’ (Cage) Peter Sellars’ production of Handel’s Theodora

  8. Opera’s mode of address • ‘… the end of the first act of Tosca with its mounting excitement and the superimposition of a dark baritone declamation onto the rhythm of a tolling bell and religious ritual’ (Williams)

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