Music In Search Of Itself: Essays On Music About Music (Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music)

Many contemporary composers and music critics say in an offhand way that all music written in the past quarter century is about music - that it is reflexive and self-referential in some significant sense. It is music in search of an understanding of itself. This book tries to deepen the understanding of music about music as well as music itself in four ways. First, it puts music's own self-understanding onto an equal footing with philosophical aesthetics of music. It subjects pieces of music about music to close, detailed analysis, and puts the statements about the nature of music that emerge from these analyses into conversation with philosophical statements about music. Second, it investigates whether and in what way the concept of reflexive music makes sense and to what extent music about music is possible. Third, it inquires into the need for music to search for itself, and evaluates the connection between this need and the European fascination and then disillusion with the concept of aesthetic experience. Fourth, it brings to the surface a sense, embedded in music's self-understanding, that there are severe limits to the meaningfulness of music in general that it is thus impossible for music about music to be fully meaningful. Title Page 2 Copyright Page 3 Table of Contents 5 Preface 7 Acknowledgements 10 Chapter One: The Possibility of Music about Music 11 1. Kinds of Refrences and Self-Refrence in Music 13 i. Repetition without Reference 14 ii. Repetition and Self-Reference 19 iii. Repetition and Emotional Reference 20 iv. Repetition, Reference and Hearing Music as a Category 20 v. Repetition, Reference and the Critque of the Listening Experience 21 vi. Repetition, Reference, and the Critique of the Category of Art 29 2. Music and Reference by Methaphorical Exemplification 31 Chapter Two: Hearing the Possibility of Music about Music: Five Pieces 47 1. Handel's Ode for St. Cecila's Day. A Celebration of the Musicality of the Divine 47 2. Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. A Meditation on Creating 55 3. Britten's War Requiem. An Indictment of Religious Music 75 4. Penderecki's "De Natura sonoris". A Musical Essay on the Musicality of Sound 85 5. Strauss's Capriccio. An Affair of Musically Felt Words 101 Chapter Three: The Need for Music about Music 113 1. The Aesthetic Consciousness and Its Impasses 113 2. Music about Music and the Aesthetic Impasses 118 3. Double Movements in Musical Aesthetics of Music 125 4. Hearing the Need for Music about Music. A Reprise of Five Pieces. 131 Chapter Four: The Impossibility of Music about Music 141 1. Mahler's Seventh Symphony and It's Statement on Meaning in Music 141 2. Gaps in Musical Meaning and the Impossibility of Music about Music 157 3. The Subjectlikeness of Music 159 4. Hearing the Impossibility about Music. The Five Pieces Again 162 Bibliography 171 Index 173 Treating art-as-art as a hallmark of the modern age, Greene (arts studies, North Carolina State U.), who is a trained musician and theologian, presents a meta-analysis of 20th century classical music. Drawing on the thought of Kant and other philosophers, he explores questions about music's self-referential nature, e.g., how can music be about itself or something else? His analysis begins by examining these themes in relation to Corigliano and Hoffman's Ghosts of Versailles, and ends with excerpts from Mahler's Seventh Symphony. The author concludes that "...music about music is possible, necessary and impossible, all at the same time." Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR