Sound And Sense: Music And Musical Metaphor In The Thought And Writing Of Goethe And His Age (britische Und Irische Studien Zur Deutschen Sprache Und ... Studies In German Language And Literature)

This study focuses on beliefs about music current in eighteenth-century Germany. Of particular interest are the conceptual metaphors through which major writers (Goethe, Schiller, Herder and Klopstock) used music as analogy and medium for perceptions of the world in their writing. The book surveys traditional metaphors (music as harmony/disharmony, music as like/unlike language, music as structured by mathematical proportion or by rhythm) inherited from Greek and French thought and looks at ways in which these writers also assimilated and developed contemporary ideas (especially from Leibniz, the French Rationalists, Rameau and Rousseau). German writers of this epoch had a remarkably rich and varied range of ideas of music at their disposal, some of which could also be realised in multi-media genres. With the help of modern theory from several fields, the study aims to show how they deployed these resources in ways both like and unlike the practice of Romantic writers with whom they overlapped at the end of the century. -- From publisher's website Contents - vii List of Illustrations - xi Preface - xiii Introduction - 1 Part One - Traditional Conceptions of Music - 47 Chapter One - Music as Harmony i): Music as Order and Form - 51 Chapter Two - A Negative Metaphor of Harmony: Music as Disharmony, Discord, Dissonance - 77 Chapter Three - A Negative Metaphor of Language: Music as Irrational, Music as Voice of Feeling - 105 Chapter Four - A Further Negative Metaphor of Language: Music as Sub- and Superhuman, Music and the Daemonic - 153 Traditional Conceptions of Music, Reviewed - 180 Part Two - Conceptions of the Structure of Musicand Their Inf luence on Musical Metaphor - 183 Chapter Five - Music as Based on Mathematical Relations - 189 Chapter Six - Music as Based on Rhythm - 221 Part Three - Conceptions of Music and Language: Renewed Metaphorical Potential from Interactive Domains - 265 Chapter Seven - Enhanced Communication i): Music and Language as Similar - 277 Chapter Eight - Enhanced Communication ii): Music as Contrast and Complement to Language - 313 Part Four - The Synthesis of These Conceptions of Music - 365 Chapter Nine - Music as Harmony ii): Music as All-Encompassing Dynamic Whole - 369 Chapter Ten - Music as Harmony iii): Harmony as Sequence, ‘Melodie [...] in ihrem weiten Inbegrif’ - 403 Conclusion - 443 Bibliography - 473 With the help of modern theory from several fields, this study aims to show how they deployed these resources in ways both like and unlike the practice of Romantic writers with whom they overlapped at the end of the century. It focuses on beliefs about music in eighteenth-century Germany.