Programming the Absolute
eBook - PDF

Programming the Absolute

Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment

  1. 432 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Programming the Absolute

Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment

Book details
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

Programming the Absolute discusses the notorious opposition between absolute and program music as a true dialectic that lies at the heart of nineteenth-century German music. Beginning with Beethoven, Berthold Hoeckner traces the aesthetic problem of musical meaning in works by Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Mahler, and Schoenberg, whose private messages and public predicaments are emblematic for the cultural legacy of this rich repertory.
After Romanticism had elevated music as a language "beyond" language, the ineffable spurred an unprecedented proliferation of musical analysis and criticism. Taking his cue from Adorno, Hoeckner develops the idea of a "hermeneutics of a moment, " which holds that musical meaning crystallizes only momentarily--in a particular passage, a progression, even a single note. And such moments can signify as little as a fleeting personal memory or as much as the whole of German music.
Although absolute music emerged with a matrix of values--the integrity of the subject, the aesthetic autonomy of art, and the intrinsic worth of high culture--that are highly contested in musicology today, Hoeckner argues that we should not completely discard the ideal of a music that continues to offer moments of transcendence and liberation.
Passionately and artfully written, Hoeckner's quest for an "essayistic musicology" displays an original intelligence willing to take interpretive risks. It is a provocative contribution to our knowledge about some of Europe's most important music--and to contemporary controversies over how music should be understood and experienced.

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Information

Publisher
Princeton University Press
Year
2021
ISBN
9780691227566
Topic
Media & Performing Arts
Subtopic
Classical Music

Table of contents

  1. Cover Page
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. List of Figures and Tables
  7. List of Examples
  8. Preface
  9. Introduction: Musical Moments and the Moment of German Music
  10. Chapter One: Beethoven’s Star
  11. Chapter Two: Schumann’s Distance
  12. Chapter Three: Elsa’s Scream
  13. Chapter Four: Liszt’s Prayer
  14. Chapter Five: Schoenberg’s Gaze
  15. Chapter Six: Echo’s Eyes
  16. Notes
  17. Bibliography
  18. Index