Readings notes Flashcards
L’esprit du Finesse - Barzun
For Barzun, the process and result of historians is more intuitive
For Barzun, the responsible historian can moralize, imagine, or speculate
History has no method
The elements of music are known by common names, that avoid definition because they’re so mixed, confusing and a lot of them: no method
Criteria of history: Narrative, Chronology, concreteness and memorable
The point of no method is to avoid abstraction, it deals with the activity, not the process
Finesse is intuitive thought
Sound Vs. Tone - Scruton
Scruton defines tone as sound with intention/agency/purpose.
Scruton means when he says “music is not a natural kind”, that musical meaning comes from humanity and is not inherent in sound itself
Scruton thinks that you don’t need to know music theory in order to hear music properly
Music is a special kind of sound and not all art of sound is music
Music depends on our decision and it’s made with a purpose in mind, to describe and extend
A tone is a sound that exists within a musical field
To hear a sound as music is not just hearing, but also ordering it
It is a perceived order
In the presence of sound intentionally produced and organized, we feel ourselves in another person’s point of view
Timbre is identified through its physical cause or through metaphors
Music and Emotion - Budd
For Budd, music involves the expression of abstract emotion
A main point Budd wants to make is that musical expression involves abstract emotions
Abstract music must be able to express emotions or characteristics that are inexpressable by the other art forms
Instrumental Music and Imitation - Adam Smith
Adam Smith thought that instrumental music brings both a great sensuous and also intellectual pleasure
When Adam Smith refers to “imitative” arts, he is not referring to the texture known as polyphony
Adam Smith would reject that form and meaning are separate things
3 distinct effects: passions, imaginations and raiding emotions
Music raises ideas through those emotions
Not imitative, but suggestive
“Music even without words has expression” - Aristotle
There is some kind of music, so divinely composed, and so expressively performed, that it needs no words to explain its meaning
Smith thinks music can stand entirely on its own and that instrumental music can produce inferior effects to vocal music
Well-composed instrumental music uses the elements of music to create an object so interesting that alone and without imitation, fills up the whole capacity of the mind
Proper Poetry Setting - Goethe/Cone
Cone thinks that Goethe has a narrow sense of form because form is ambiguous
Cone doesn’t think that through-composed form makes the music subservient to the text
Goethe thought that being musically faithful to a poem meant following its meter and using strophic form
Most likely need to break the rules of poetry or music
Maintaining the diction of a poem might result in awkward melodic or phrase structure and setting a text to a melody might result in a distortion of poetic diction
Zelter and Goethe both have a preference for strophic form
Genre as a Contract - Dubrow
For Dubrow, genre functions like a(n) code/contract/agreement between author and reader
For Dubrow, genre is difficult to define and individual genres difficult to identify because genres encompass many different literary qualities
For Dubrow, genre gives guidance on how to interpret something
For Dubrow, the choice of genre reveals something about the artist making that choice
Transmits certain cultural attitudes
Genre can allude to literary types
Debatable and central to the mind it induces
Different genres are distinguishable from one another by which characteristics predominate
Art and History - Dalhaus
History and Aesthetics exist in relation to one another, art theory was based on the relationship of compositional techniques to social function
The ‘functional” theory of art(17th Century) consisted of social ends to be met and the musical means appropriate to those ends (was governed by norms)
“The Doctrine of Affections” (17 and 18th centuries), a theory of objective representation, conveys the extent of insights into the nature of a specific emotion
Aesthetic of expression(19th Century), was no longer the material represented that formed the aesthetic factor, but the manner of the composer
“Formalism/Structuralism”(20th century), perceived less in aesthetic terms than as documentary evidence on a historical process
Writing music history as though its essence consisted of the effects composers have on one another was the result of a collision between the romantic aesthetic
Our century regards the composer as a function of his work and not vice versa
Biographical method was viable on 3 grounds; justified in terms of the reigning doctrine of the time, fulfilled the condition that history follows the model of natural sciences and could pose as self-contained narrative history
The documentary approach stands above all distinctions between functionality and autonomy
Art is historical solely on the basis of separate and individual works considered on their own merits
The Boethian System
De Institutione Musica
Musica mundana (music of the cosmos)
Musica humana (music of the inner person[4 humors])
Musica instrumentalis (made music)
Romanticism/Nature on Essential in Feminist Criticism -
Susan McClary-Feminist Scholar
Essentialism - Biology IS destiny
Male vs Female thinking
Point of View
Anti-Essentialism - Biology is NOT destiny
Masculine vs Feminine mind
Ambiguity in Beethoven’s 9th - Buch
Enlightenment was banned during Beethoven’s time
Separated God from the workings of the world
Individualism was an idea around the enlightenment
One can separate themselves as an individual
People took it as a theocratic work
Intention - Cavell
The artist is responsible of everything that happens in his work and not just in t he sense that it is done but in the sense that it is meant
Popular Music and Consumerism - Scruton/Johnson
Our own musical preferences are shaped by judgements that impart greater value to some music over others
The more passionate we feel about the music we value the more we feel that we are right and that our judgment is somehow objectively true, regardless of other opinions
The lack of serious discourse on music today implies an absence of self-reflection about music and its mediation of the ideas by which we live
It is the pseudo-democracy of a commercial culture that accords equal validity and equal status to all products
The music industry’s demand for a rapid turnover of products and the formation of contemporary taste cultures are usually dependent
The process of commodity culture requires that we buy. Our own identity is confirmed and enhanced by our participation in that process.
Music sells because it is popular. It is popular because it has sold
It is a paradox that while we insist on the sovereignty of individual choice in all that we do and buy as fundamental to our idea of democracy
