Sound in the Papers: Musical Hermeneutics in the Age of the Feuilleton

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-83
Author(s):  
Hansjakob Ziemer
Keyword(s):  
Musical Hermeneutics

Hermeneutik in Bewegung

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-65
Author(s):  
Christian Grüny
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Studies ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Controversial Issue ◽  
Expressive Movement ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

Die musikalische Hermeneutik ist ein umstrittenes Unternehmen, das heute vor allem für eine historisch-kulturwissenschaftliche Analyse musikalischer Bedeutungen steht. Daneben besteht aber eine wilde Alltagshermeneutik, in der das Verstehen mit dem alltäglichen Umgang mit Musik verwoben ist. Meg Stuarts Tanzstück Built to last wird gelesen als Reflexion auf diese Alltagshermeneutik. Es wendet Stuarts Technik der Erforschung und Verfremdung von Ausdrucksbewegung auf die Bewegung der und zur Musik an, und sein dezidiert »falscher« Umgang mit der klassischen Musik lässt mehr über deren Gegenwart erkennen als ein formalerer, »richtiger« Ansatz. <br><br>Musical hermeneutics is a controversial issue. Today it is primarily associated with historical research into musical meanings in the context of cultural studies. Besides this, there is an everyday hermeneutics where understanding is inextricably linked to the daily use of music. Meg Stuart’s dance piece Built to last is interpreted as a reflection of this everyday hermeneutics. It applies Stuart’s technique of researching and distorting expressive movement to the movement of and to music, and its decidedly “wrong” way of doing this reveals more about classical music’s presence than a more formal, “right” approach.

Hermeneutics

2020 ◽  
pp. 383-402
Author(s):  
Lawrence Kramer
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
Communications Media ◽  
Fundamental Condition ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Conscious Thinking ◽  
Humanistic Knowledge ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

Musical hermeneutics, the interpretation of the meaning of musical works, genres, or performances, has traditionally been limited by the assumption that any meaning music might have must derive from the intrinsically musical dimension of form, technique, or structure. This assumption is a mistake. Understanding why it goes wrong may lead to a more robust and revealing understanding of music. A more genuinely musical hermeneutics is possible in light of two modern philosophical concepts—care (from Heidegger) and aspect-change (from Husserl and Wittgenstein)—combined with two new ones: hermeneutic delay as an essential feature in the generation of meaning and paraphrase as a fundamental condition of language in particular and communications media, including music, in general. The interpretive practice thus made possible, illustrated with examples from Haydn and Debussy, extends humanistic knowledge and is consistent (but not compliant) with advances in neuroscience and digital technology that have broadened the concept of cognition beyond conscious thinking.

Fauré and the Effable: Theatricality, Reflection, and Semiosis in the mélodies

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 497-558 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Rumph
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Song Cycle ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Charles Sanders Peirce ◽  
Musical Experience ◽  
Gabriel Faure ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
French Composers ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

Gabriel Fauré plays a leading role in Vladimir Jankélévitch's influential critique of musical hermeneutics, La musique et l'ineffable (1961). For the French philosopher, Fauré's works epitomized music that resists verbal interpretation and demands absorption in temporal experience. Yet, like many French composers, Fauré drew upon theatrical song in his mélodies, introducing a performative element that encourages distance as well as absorption. These hybrid mélodies invite both singer and audience to listen critically, savoring the performance within the performance; indeed, these songs offer up music itself as an object of reflection. This article reassesses Jankélévitch's idea of ineffability in light of Fauré's use of diegetic song, questioning the apparent claim that musical experience is incompatible with critical reflection. An introductory analysis of La musique et l'ineffable explores the crucial role of Henri Bergson's philosophy of mind, especially his theory of perception, and demonstrates the inseparable role of both metaphysical cognition and representation in Bergsonian phenomenology. The following song analyses illustrate the need for both reflective and immersive listening. An examination of two settings from Théophile Gautier's La comédie de la mort reveals how Fauré responded to the poet's writerly play between lyric and performative modes, while a longer analysis of the song cycle La chanson d'Ève, based upon a stage ballad, demonstrates how Fauré exploited theatrical song to portray Eve's fall into self-consciousness. Finally, the conclusion proposes a musical hermeneutics compatible with Jankélévitch's idea of ineffability, one informed by the semiotic theory of Charles Sanders Peirce.

scholarly journals THE ROLE OF MUSICAL HERMENEUTICS IN THE FORMATION OF A CULTURE OF INTERPRETATION IN PERFORMERS

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-135
Author(s):  
Dina Vladimirovna Kharicheva ◽  
Lyudmila Voldemarovna Bigler ◽  
Sergei Nikolaevich Baidalinov ◽  
Anna Valeryevna Zhilina ◽  
Elena Anatolyevna Meleshkina
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Text Analysis ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Mental Abilities ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

Purpose of the study: The purpose of this work is to consider the possibilities of hermeneutics in developing the skill of understanding a musical text as one of the main mental abilities of musician-performers. Methodology: The study is based on the method of hermeneutics, the method of analyzing a musical text, which is widely used in the humanities and social sciences in general and plays an essential role in art criticism. Unlike other methods, text analysis uses the point of view of the author of the text. Interpretative and content analysis are the two primary forms of textual analysis of cultural artifacts. Interpreting textual analysis seeks to go beyond the surface of the meaning and explore the hidden "message" of the author. Main Findings: The main findings of the study are that the role of musical hermeneutics is important in the professional training of contemporary performers in connection with the need to develop their ability to understand a musical text and form a culture of interpretation. Applications of this study: This research can be used in musicological analysis and the process of professional education of musician-performers and theorists. The novelty of the work consists in proving the effectiveness of the method of musical hermeneutics in the formation of a culture of interpretation in performers. Novelty/Originality of this study: The method turned out to be effective for not only the theory of literature, hermeneutics, and semiotics, but also for musicology and the work of composers and performers directly working with intertexts.

What Fortune Can Do to a Minim

2012 ◽  
Vol 65 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Zayaruznaya
Keyword(s):  
Roman De La Rose ◽  
Josquin Des Prez ◽  
Sacred Texts ◽  
Musical Compositions ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics ◽  
Insight Into

Abstract Among the numerous references to music in the writings of poet, composer, and Burgundian chronicler Jean Molinet, none is more puzzling than a passage from his Roman de la rose moralisé (ca. 1500) that describes the misadventures of a note—a minim—fallen victim to Fortune. As it rides her wheel, it becomes a maxima and then a minim again, while its pitch is raised, then lowered. Another passage linking Fortune with transposition and mensural change occurs in Molinet's Petit traictié soubz obscure poetrie. Both stories are exempla divorced from their immediate contexts, raising the possibility that Molinet may have been influenced by specific musical compositions related to Fortune. Aspects of notational usage and cantus-firmus manipulation in the Fortuna desperata masses of Jacob Obrecht and Josquin des Prez make these works—especially the latter—likely influences for Molinet's strange digressions. And Molinet's exempla, insofar as they can help clarify previously misinterpreted aspects of both works, are an important early example of musical hermeneutics. The difficult relationship between Molinet's musical stories and the ostensibly sacred texts from which they digress also offers insight into the devotional functions of secular mass models.

Music and meaning in the commercials

Popular Music ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Cook
Keyword(s):  
Internal Structure ◽  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Musical Aesthetics ◽  
Music And Meaning ◽  
Eugene Narmour ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

What does music mean, if anything? The question is one of the hardy perennials of musical aesthetics, and there is no shortage of answers to it. Indeed, there is a plethora of seemingly unrelated answers. We can talk about music's internal structure, about its symmetries and directional motions, about patterns of implication and their realisation or lack of realisation; moving from ‘the music itself’ to listeners' reponses, approaches like this offer a psychological approach to meaning (and the work of Leonard Meyer and Eugene Narmour provide the best known examples). Or we can approach the music from the opposite direction, talking about the context of its creation, the context of its performance, and the context of its reception; here the assumption is that music acquires meaning through its mediation of society. Or again, we can oscillate between these two viewpoints, on the assumption that meaning arises from the mutual mediation of music and society. That is the central assumption of musical hermeneutics, whether we are applying this term to the work of Hermann Kretzschmar in the 1880s or that of Lawrence Kramer in the 1980s.

Guido Casoni on Love as Music, A Theme "for All Ages and Studies"*

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 883-913
Author(s):  
Don Harrán
Keyword(s):  
Arts And Sciences ◽  
Scholarly Discourse ◽  
Musical Hermeneutics

Onde sappiamo non esser etade,o studio, che sia separato dal canto.In an essay onLa magia d'amore, Guido Casoni (d. 1642) demonstrated how music, along with other arts and sciences, is generated by love. On the surface, the essay strikes one as a hodgepodge of fact and fantasy in which the credibility of the data is vitiated by their often whimsical interpretation. But there is more to music than historically or logically verifiable acts or events. Casoni's musical hermeneutics reflects conceptual tendencies inherent in his own times, yet derivative from a long tradition of commentary on musicalmirabilia. The present study is an attempt to contextualize these tendencies. It follows through the equation of love with music as a parable, of a plainly Neoplatonist stamp, for the relevance of music to all forms of scholarly discourse.

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