Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment

Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment

Author: Johann Georg Sulzer

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0521360358

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Can an abstract theory of Empfindsamkeit aesthetics have any value to a musician wishing to study composition in the classical style? The eighteenth-century German theorist and pedagogue Heinrich Koch showed how this question could be answered with a resounding yes. Starting with the systematic aesthetic theory of the Swiss encyclopedist Johann Sulzer, Koch was creatively able to adapt Sulzer's conservative ideas on ethical mimesis and rhetoric to concrete problems of music analysis and composition. In this collaborative study, Thomas Christensen and Nancy Baker have translated and analysed selected writings of Sulzer and Koch respectively, bringing to life a little-known confluence of philosophical and musical thought from the German Enlightenment. Koch's appropriation of Sulzer's ideas to the service of music represents an important development in the evolution of Western musical thought.


Book Synopsis Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment by : Johann Georg Sulzer

Download or read book Aesthetics and the Art of Musical Composition in the German Enlightenment written by Johann Georg Sulzer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can an abstract theory of Empfindsamkeit aesthetics have any value to a musician wishing to study composition in the classical style? The eighteenth-century German theorist and pedagogue Heinrich Koch showed how this question could be answered with a resounding yes. Starting with the systematic aesthetic theory of the Swiss encyclopedist Johann Sulzer, Koch was creatively able to adapt Sulzer's conservative ideas on ethical mimesis and rhetoric to concrete problems of music analysis and composition. In this collaborative study, Thomas Christensen and Nancy Baker have translated and analysed selected writings of Sulzer and Koch respectively, bringing to life a little-known confluence of philosophical and musical thought from the German Enlightenment. Koch's appropriation of Sulzer's ideas to the service of music represents an important development in the evolution of Western musical thought.

Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment

Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment

Author: Matthew Riley

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 198

ISBN-13: 1351556908

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The silent attentiveness expected of concert audiences is one of the most distinctive characteristics of modern Western musical culture. This is the first book to examine the concept of attention in the history of musical thought and its foundations in the writings of German musical commentators of the late eighteenth century. Those critics explained numerous technical features of the music of their time as devices for arousing, sustaining or otherwise influencing the attention of a listener, citing in illustration works by Gluck, C. P. E. Bach, Georg Benda and others. Two types of attention were identified: the uninterrupted experience of a single emotional state conveyed by a piece of music as a whole, and the fleeting sense of 'wonder' or 'astonishment' induced by a local event in a piece. The relative validity of these two modes was a topic of heated debate in the German Enlightenment, encompassing issues of musical communication, compositional integrity and listener competence. Matthew Riley examines the significant writers on the topic (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Rousseau, Meier, Sulzer and Forkel) and provides analytical case studies to illustrate how these perceived modes of attention shaped interpretations of music of the period.


Book Synopsis Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment by : Matthew Riley

Download or read book Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment written by Matthew Riley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The silent attentiveness expected of concert audiences is one of the most distinctive characteristics of modern Western musical culture. This is the first book to examine the concept of attention in the history of musical thought and its foundations in the writings of German musical commentators of the late eighteenth century. Those critics explained numerous technical features of the music of their time as devices for arousing, sustaining or otherwise influencing the attention of a listener, citing in illustration works by Gluck, C. P. E. Bach, Georg Benda and others. Two types of attention were identified: the uninterrupted experience of a single emotional state conveyed by a piece of music as a whole, and the fleeting sense of 'wonder' or 'astonishment' induced by a local event in a piece. The relative validity of these two modes was a topic of heated debate in the German Enlightenment, encompassing issues of musical communication, compositional integrity and listener competence. Matthew Riley examines the significant writers on the topic (Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Baumgarten, Rousseau, Meier, Sulzer and Forkel) and provides analytical case studies to illustrate how these perceived modes of attention shaped interpretations of music of the period.

Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th Century Germany

Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th Century Germany

Author: Bellamy Hosler

Publisher: Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press

Published: 1981

Total Pages: 328

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th Century Germany by : Bellamy Hosler

Download or read book Changing Aesthetic Views of Instrumental Music in 18th Century Germany written by Bellamy Hosler and published by Ann Arbor, Mich. : UMI Research Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Music in German Philosophy

Music in German Philosophy

Author: Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-01-15

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0226768392

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Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a philosopher, and Oliver Fürbeth, a musicologist, here fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. Music in German Philosophy includes contributions from a renowned group of ten scholars, including some of today’s most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music. The book is prefaced by the editors’ original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and foreword to this English-language addition, which places contemplations on music by these German philosophers within a broader intellectual climate.


Book Synopsis Music in German Philosophy by : Stefan Lorenz Sorgner

Download or read book Music in German Philosophy written by Stefan Lorenz Sorgner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a philosopher, and Oliver Fürbeth, a musicologist, here fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. Music in German Philosophy includes contributions from a renowned group of ten scholars, including some of today’s most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music. The book is prefaced by the editors’ original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and foreword to this English-language addition, which places contemplations on music by these German philosophers within a broader intellectual climate.

Musical Portraits

Musical Portraits

Author: Joshua S. Walden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 201

ISBN-13: 0190653507

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Joshua S. Walden's Musical Portraits: The Composition of Identity in Contemporary and Experimental Music explores the wide-ranging but under-examined genre of musical portraiture. It focuses in particular on contemporary and experimental music created between 1945 and the present day, an era in which conceptions of identity have changed alongside increasing innovation in musical composition as well as in the uses of abstraction, mixed media, and other novel techniques in the field of visual portraiture. In the absence of physical likeness, an element typical of portraiture that cannot be depicted in sound, composers have experimented with methods of constructing other attributes of identity in music, such as character, biography, and profession. By studying musical portraits of painters, authors, and modern celebrities, in addition to composers' self-portraits, the book considers how representational and interpretive processes overlap and differ between music and other art forms, as well as how music is used in the depiction of human identities. Examining a range of musical portraits by composers including Peter Ablinger, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Gy rgy Ligeti, and Virgil Thomson, and director Robert Wilson's on-going series of video portraits of modern-day celebrities and his "portrait opera" Einstein on the Beach, Musical Portraits contributes to the study of music since 1945 through a detailed examination of contemporary understandings of music's capacity to depict identity, and of the intersections between music, literature, theater, film, and the visual arts.


Book Synopsis Musical Portraits by : Joshua S. Walden

Download or read book Musical Portraits written by Joshua S. Walden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joshua S. Walden's Musical Portraits: The Composition of Identity in Contemporary and Experimental Music explores the wide-ranging but under-examined genre of musical portraiture. It focuses in particular on contemporary and experimental music created between 1945 and the present day, an era in which conceptions of identity have changed alongside increasing innovation in musical composition as well as in the uses of abstraction, mixed media, and other novel techniques in the field of visual portraiture. In the absence of physical likeness, an element typical of portraiture that cannot be depicted in sound, composers have experimented with methods of constructing other attributes of identity in music, such as character, biography, and profession. By studying musical portraits of painters, authors, and modern celebrities, in addition to composers' self-portraits, the book considers how representational and interpretive processes overlap and differ between music and other art forms, as well as how music is used in the depiction of human identities. Examining a range of musical portraits by composers including Peter Ablinger, Pierre Boulez, Morton Feldman, Philip Glass, Gy rgy Ligeti, and Virgil Thomson, and director Robert Wilson's on-going series of video portraits of modern-day celebrities and his "portrait opera" Einstein on the Beach, Musical Portraits contributes to the study of music since 1945 through a detailed examination of contemporary understandings of music's capacity to depict identity, and of the intersections between music, literature, theater, film, and the visual arts.

Musical Vitalities

Musical Vitalities

Author: Holly Watkins

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2018-11-21

Total Pages: 207

ISBN-13: 022659484X

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Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.


Book Synopsis Musical Vitalities by : Holly Watkins

Download or read book Musical Vitalities written by Holly Watkins and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-11-21 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.

Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability

Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability

Author: W. Dean Sutcliffe

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-10-10

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 110701381X

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Interprets an eighteenth-century musical repertoire in sociable terms, both technically (specific musical patterns) and affectively (predominant emotional registers of the music).


Book Synopsis Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability by : W. Dean Sutcliffe

Download or read book Instrumental Music in an Age of Sociability written by W. Dean Sutcliffe and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 613 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interprets an eighteenth-century musical repertoire in sociable terms, both technically (specific musical patterns) and affectively (predominant emotional registers of the music).

Representing Duchess Anna Amalia's Bildung

Representing Duchess Anna Amalia's Bildung

Author: Christina K. Lindeman

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-04-21

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1351768069

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The cultural milieu in the “Age of Goethe” of eighteenth-century Germany is given fresh context in this art historical study of the noted writers’ patroness: Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar-Sachsen-Eisenach. An important noblewoman and patron of the arts, Anna Amalia transformed her court into one of the most intellectually and culturally brilliant in Europe; this book reveals the full scope of her impact on the history of art of this time and place. More than just biography or a patronage study, this book closely examines the art produced by German-speaking artists and the figure of Anna Amalia herself. Her portraits demonstrate the importance of social networks that enabled her to construct scholarly, intellectual identities not only for herself, but for the region she represented. By investigating ways in which the duchess navigated within male-dominated institutions as a means of advancing her own self-cultivation – or Bildung – this book demonstrates the role accorded to women in the public sphere, cultural politics, and historical memory. Cumulatively, Christina K. Lindeman traces how Anna Amalia, a woman from a small German principality, was represented as an active participant in enlightened discourses. The author presents a novel and original argument concerned with how a powerful woman used art to shape her identity, how that identity changed over time, and how people around her shaped it – an approach that elucidates the power of portraiture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.


Book Synopsis Representing Duchess Anna Amalia's Bildung by : Christina K. Lindeman

Download or read book Representing Duchess Anna Amalia's Bildung written by Christina K. Lindeman and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The cultural milieu in the “Age of Goethe” of eighteenth-century Germany is given fresh context in this art historical study of the noted writers’ patroness: Anna Amalia, Duchess of Weimar-Sachsen-Eisenach. An important noblewoman and patron of the arts, Anna Amalia transformed her court into one of the most intellectually and culturally brilliant in Europe; this book reveals the full scope of her impact on the history of art of this time and place. More than just biography or a patronage study, this book closely examines the art produced by German-speaking artists and the figure of Anna Amalia herself. Her portraits demonstrate the importance of social networks that enabled her to construct scholarly, intellectual identities not only for herself, but for the region she represented. By investigating ways in which the duchess navigated within male-dominated institutions as a means of advancing her own self-cultivation – or Bildung – this book demonstrates the role accorded to women in the public sphere, cultural politics, and historical memory. Cumulatively, Christina K. Lindeman traces how Anna Amalia, a woman from a small German principality, was represented as an active participant in enlightened discourses. The author presents a novel and original argument concerned with how a powerful woman used art to shape her identity, how that identity changed over time, and how people around her shaped it – an approach that elucidates the power of portraiture in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Europe.

The Oxford Handbook of Opera

The Oxford Handbook of Opera

Author: Helen M. Greenwald

Publisher: Oxford Handbooks

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 1217

ISBN-13: 0195335538

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Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators.


Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Opera by : Helen M. Greenwald

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Opera written by Helen M. Greenwald and published by Oxford Handbooks. This book was released on 2014 with total page 1217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty of the world's most respected scholars cast opera as a fluid entity that continuously reinvents itself in a reflection of its patrons, audience, and creators.

Music and Transcendence

Music and Transcendence

Author: Ferdia J. Stone-Davis

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 1317092228

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Music and Transcendence explores the ways in which music relates to transcendence by bringing together the disciplines of musicology, philosophy and theology, thereby uncovering congruencies between them that have often been obscured. Music has the capacity to take one outside of oneself and place one in relation to that which is ’other’. This ’other’ can be conceived in an ’absolute’ sense, insofar as music can be thought to place the self in relation to a divine ’other’ beyond the human frame of existence. However, the ’other’ can equally well be conceived in an ’immanent’ (or secular) sense, as music is a human activity that relates to other cultural practices. Music here places the self in relation to other people and to the world more generally, shaping how the world is understood, without any reference to a God or gods. The book examines how music has not only played a significant role in many philosophical and theological accounts of the nature of existence and the self, but also provides a valuable resource for the creation of meaning on a day-to-day basis.


Book Synopsis Music and Transcendence by : Ferdia J. Stone-Davis

Download or read book Music and Transcendence written by Ferdia J. Stone-Davis and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-03 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Music and Transcendence explores the ways in which music relates to transcendence by bringing together the disciplines of musicology, philosophy and theology, thereby uncovering congruencies between them that have often been obscured. Music has the capacity to take one outside of oneself and place one in relation to that which is ’other’. This ’other’ can be conceived in an ’absolute’ sense, insofar as music can be thought to place the self in relation to a divine ’other’ beyond the human frame of existence. However, the ’other’ can equally well be conceived in an ’immanent’ (or secular) sense, as music is a human activity that relates to other cultural practices. Music here places the self in relation to other people and to the world more generally, shaping how the world is understood, without any reference to a God or gods. The book examines how music has not only played a significant role in many philosophical and theological accounts of the nature of existence and the self, but also provides a valuable resource for the creation of meaning on a day-to-day basis.