Meaning and Scepticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 783-802
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian
Keyword(s):  
Slow Movement ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
Generic Sense

This chapter revisits the classic questions whether absolute music can express extra-musical meaning and whether such meaning should be thought of as playing an important role in our understanding and appreciation of music. It argues that music’s expressive ability plays a central role in our conception of its phenomenology and value—in our perception of music as expressive and in its capacity to move us, both in the understudied generic sense, and in the sense of arousing specific emotions in us. It examines a type of scepticism about music’s expressive ability made influential by Eduard Hanslick and considers to what extent it can be answered. The chapter concludes that, while the extreme scepticism espoused by Hanslick cannot be sustained, his discussion teaches us deep lessons about the expressive indeterminacy involved in music. The chapter illustrates some of the issues it deals with through an analysis of the slow movement of Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 in G Major and explores the connection between meaning in music and meaning in poetry.

Object and Idea

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Shaw-Miller
Keyword(s):  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Clement Greenberg

This chapter concentrates on the strain of modernism that flows from the work of French artist Marcel Duchamp and its relationship to ideas of music. While the significance of music as a paradigm for the development of “purist” modernism is well known—it is an ideology best encapsulated in the writing of Clement Greenberg, the development of abstraction in art, and is based on the model of musical meaning that was consequent on the concept of “absolute music”—what is less well known is the significance of music for the strain of modernism that came through Duchamp, forming a hybrid conceptual alternative to purism. It is argued that the idea of the readymade is consistent with idea of music as more than just sound, as a discursive practice, and that this “extra-musical” conception of music (as counterpoise to absolute music) provides a lineage linking Duchamp to Paik to Marclay.

Music and meaning

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Cross ◽  
Elizabeth Tolbert
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Scientific Exploration ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
Theories Of Meaning ◽  
Cognitive Dimensions

This article presents an overview of theories of meaning that have been, and that may be, applicable to investigating music, particularly its cognitive dimensions. Some theories have had more impact on the scientific exploration of music's significance than others, which have been unduly neglected. Theoretical and empirical research into musical meaning is still at an early stage within the cognitive sciences; it is important that multiple perspectives on meaning in music, particularly those emerging from the study of music in non-Western contexts, are taken fully into account in future explorations of musical meaning within the cognitive sciences.

Interpretation and musical signification in acousmatic listening

2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Electroacoustic Music ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Music Psychology ◽  
Semiotic Model ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Integral Role ◽  
Recent Developments

AbstractThe challenges of understanding musical meaning are considered in light of ways in which electroacoustic practice and acousmatic listening might embody yet further nuances in how music can function as a signifying system. ‘Classical’ semiotics is discussed, as well as more recent developments with post-structuralist approaches and musical semantics in other areas of music scholarship. The idea, inherited from the tradition of ‘absolute music’, that musical meaning lies exclusively in the inner operations of the musical materials and their structural organisation, is questioned. Concepts from ecologically inspired music psychology are drawn upon to highlight the importance of interpretation, as well as perception, in acousmatic listening. It is argued that if new theoretical terminologies are needed, an invaluable project would be to develop a taxonomy (and thus theoretical framework) of how sound can ‘stand for something’, i.e. function as a sign in semiotic terms. It is also argued that such terminology should not reinforce distinctions between intra- and extra-musical that feature in many theoretical constructs used in relation to this music. Consideration of the Peircean semiotic model in electroacoustic music (as well as the more widely used Saussurean one), tropology in the study of literature, and a much more widely comparative and culturally explicit approach to analysis are suggested as practical starting points. A more critical approach to the integral role of sound recording and reproduction in relation to concepts of representation is needed.

Program Music

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Program Music ◽  
Musical Meaning ◽  
Aesthetic Value ◽  
Social Commentary ◽  
Absolute Music ◽  
Interpretive Strategies ◽  
Sociohistorical Context ◽  
The 19Th Century ◽  
Programmatic Music

Studies of program music explore ways in which extra-musical material is expressed and interpreted through music. Conceptions of program music are broadly construed and vary throughout history in correlation with various aesthetic and philosophical perspectives—narrowly defined, programmatic compositions include an extra-musical program describing the musical expression, while a broader definition considers evocative titles, allusive musical material, and conventional musical significations as vehicles of extra-musical meaning. The question of aesthetic value arises in the debate surrounding the ability of music to communicate extra-musical ideas and the quality of music that claims to do so. This question is extensively explored through the polemics of the 19th-century “War of the Romantics,” pitting programmatic music against “absolute music.” Musical and theoretical writings of figures such as Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, and Hanslick provide rich source material informing many studies on program music. The distinction between program music and absolute music is blurred through various approaches to deriving meaning from both types of music. Theories of narrativity propose methods of interpreting formal structures, tonal progressions, and thematic devices interacting in ways reminiscent of literary narrative. Semiotic approaches explore meanings that arise from conventional significations of genre, style, and “topics,” evoking cultural understandings of social position, setting, and affect. Applying interpretive strategies such as these to programmatic music allows for hermeneutic readings mapping the extra-musical program onto the musical events to explore meaningful points of intersection or contradiction. Further studies draw connections to composer biography and sociohistorical context, positioning the music in philosophical perspectives and reception. Broader cultural and political situations inform readings of underlying implications such as nationalism or social commentary. Current studies of program music explore musical narratives in nuanced contexts that parse the historical and cultural atmospheres surrounding composers, their music, and reception to propose new readings and frames of interpretation.

Cadenzas and Elaboration of the Slow Movement of the Piano Concerto in A

1960 ◽  
Vol 101 (1413) ◽  
pp. 708
Author(s):  
Mozart ◽  
Philipp Karl Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Slow Movement ◽  
Piano Concerto

Clara Schumann's Interiorities and the Cutting Edge of Popular Pianism

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 697-765
Author(s):  
Alexander Stefaniak
Keyword(s):  
Cutting Edge ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Robert Schumann ◽  
Piano Concerto ◽  
Sheet Music ◽  
Variation Sets ◽  
Music Market ◽  
Critical Responses ◽  
Drawing Room ◽  
Variations On A Theme

In her contemporaries’ imaginations Clara Schumann transcended aesthetic pitfalls endemic to virtuosity. Scholars have stressed her performance of canonic repertory as a practice through which she established this image. In this study I argue that her concerts of the 1830s and 1840s also staged an elevated form of virtuosity through showpieces that inhabited the flagship genres of popular pianism and that, for contemporary critics, possessed qualities of interiority that allowed them to transcend merely physical or “mechanical” engagement with virtuosity. They include Henselt's études and variation sets, Chopin's “Là ci darem” Variations, op. 2, and Clara's own Romance variée, op. 3, Piano Concerto, op. 7, and Pirate Variations, op. 8. Her 1830s and early 1840s programming offers a window onto a rich intertwining of critical discourse, her own and her peers’ compositions, and her strategies as a pianist-composer. This context reveals that aspirations about elevating virtuosity shaped a broader, more varied field of repertory, compositional strategies, and critical responses than we have recognized. It was a capacious, flexible ideology and category whose discourses pervaded the sheet music market, the stage, and the drawing room and embraced not only a venerated, canonic tradition but also the latest popularly styled virtuosic vehicles. In the final stages of the article I propose that Clara Schumann's 1853 Variations on a Theme by Robert Schumann, op. 20, alludes to her work of the 1830s and 1840s, evoking the range of guises this pianist-composer gave to her virtuosity in what was already a wide-ranging career.

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