1. Department for
Continuing Education
Music and Art
Marilou Polymeropoulou
marilou.polymeropoulou@music.ox.ac.uk
Week 2 - The work of art pt. 1
http://musicandartoxford.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
2. “To see something as art requires something the
eye cannot decry - an atmosphere of artistic
theory, a knowledge of the history of art: an
artworld”
A. Danto (in Frith 2002:249)
“To grasp the meaning of music is to hear something
not simply present to the ear. It is to understand a
musical culture, to have a scheme of interpretation”
S. Frith (ibid)
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
3. Developing an evaluation
methodology
• Issue: diverse aesthetic theories
• 1. Structuring an analysis model using
ontology (description)
• II. Applying sociocultural extensions
(context)
• III. Evaluation
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
4. Previously
• Aristotle’s ontology
• Definition of art
• Introduction to aesthetics
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
5. The work of art pt.1
• On listening: the art of music and sound
• What is music?
• Music aesthetics
• The evaluation and appreciation of music
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
6. • Hearing is spherical, vision is directional
• Hearing immerses its subject, vision offers a
perspective
• Sounds come to us, but vision travels to its object
• Hearing places us inside an event, seeing gives us a
perspective on the event
• Hearing is a sense that immerses us in the world, vision
is a sense that removes us from it
Jonathan Sterne, 2003, Cultural Theory of the senses
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
7. “Music may be what we think it is; it may not be. Music
may be feeling or sensuality, but it may also have nothing
to do with emotion or physical sensation. Music may be
that to which some dance or pray or make love; but it’s
not necessarily the case. In some cultures there are
complex categories for thinking about music; in others
there seems to be no need whatsoever to contemplate
music. What music is remains open to question at all
times and in all places. This being the case, any
metaphysics of music must perform and cordon off the
rest of the world from a privileged time and place, a time
and place thought to be one’s own. Thinking - or even
rethinking - music, it follows, is at base an attempt to
claim and control music as one’s own.”
Philip V. Bohlman
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
8. Music in the sciences
• Acoustics: Sound waves perceived (mainly) by humans,
frequencies
• Architecture: space and acoustics
• Computer science: music-making software, programming
languages
• Mathematics: music as structures, forms and patterns
• Neuroscience: effect of music on human brain
• Anthropology: music as culture
• Sociology: sounds that are experienced as music by certain
societies
• Economics: music industry, mass-production, business strategies
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
9. Music in the arts and
humanities
• History and archaeology: functional music, artifacts,
historical musicology
• Education: music as a learning tool
• Media and communications: cultural studies, broadcasting,
critical theory
• Linguistics: music as a language
• Literature: hybridity of music
• Law: intellectual property, copyright
• Philosophy: aesthetic theories, what is music?
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
10. Brief music history
• Ancient: social activity, ceremonial, “functional”. Seikilos Epitaph oldest musical
example
• Early/medieval: liturgical, sacred music, flourished in Church. Oral tradition/songs of
trobadours, trouveres and minnesaenger. Forms (motet, conductus, discantus,
ballade, rondeau)
• Renaissance: polyphony. Counterpoint, Palestrina, German chorales, organ music,
modal and tonal music
• Baroque: Improvisation. Well temperament.
• Classical: Vocal music. Sonata, symphony, concerto
• Romantic: orchestra. Expressions and emotions. Construction of national musics.
• 20th century music: modern, postmodern, experiments with tonality and forms,
atonality, jazz, noise, minimalism, serialism, electronic music, folk, pop, rock,
bluegrass, blues, disco, funk etc
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
15. Importance of technology
• Musical instruments
• Performance practices
• Printing
• Recording
• Reproducing
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
16. Music aesthetics
• 18th century: theories of beautiful,
sublime, and genius. Kant’s criticism on
music: beautiful but trivial
• “The astonishment, amounting almost to terror [Fear], the awe and sacred thrill
[Happiness] of devout feeling, that takes hold of one when gazing upon the prospect
of mountains ascending to heaven, deep ravines and torrents raging [Anger] there,
deep-shadowed solitudes that invite to brooding melancholy [Sadness], and the like -
all this, when we are assured of our own safety, is not actual fear. Rather is it an
attempt to gain access to it through imagination, for the purpose of feeling the might
of this faculty in combining the movement of the mind thereby aroused with its
serenity [Tenderness], and of thus as the latter can have any bearing upon our feeling
of well-being. (Kant [1790] 1989, pp. 120-1) the sublime as a constellation
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
17. Musical sublime
• Burke: beauty is a matter of straightforward pleasure.
Sublimity: ambivalent appreciation, pleasure related to
fear
• Interpretation of Kant’s aesthetic theory as musical
aesthetics
• Beethoven, Hoffmann wrote, is the “sublimest” of
composers: his music “induces terror, fright, horror and
pain.” It “awakens that endless longing which is the
essence of romanticism,” “opens the realm of the
colossal and immeasurable,” and “leads the listener
away into the wonderful spiritual realm of the infinite.”
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
18. Musical aesthetics
• 19th century: expression of ideas, images,
emotions, situations.
• Schopenhauer’s criticism on music as the
greatest art: has the capacity to represent the
metaphysical organisation of reality.
• Direct expression of emotions/moods/
feelings (Tolstoy’s communication theory)
• Hanslick: music related to its representational
function (formalism).
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
19. Aesthetic theories of the
Romantic era
Formalists Anti-formalists (Wagner)
(Hanslick) musical form as means to
appreciation of other artistic ends.
musical form/design Historical determinism
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
22. Musical aesthetics
• 20th century: Modernism, music autonomy, higher and lower
music, post modernism
• Stravinsky: the composer’s apprehension of forms. No
meanings in music, rather, looking for them = distraction from
the musical experience
• Babbitt: only specialists understand contemporary music
• Adorno: high+low division dependent on mass-production.
Criticism on culture industry
• Kivy: analytic philosophy centering on the nature of emotional
expressiveness in music. Authenticity in performance.
• DeNora, Demers: social effects of music, cultural aesthetics of
noise
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
24. Cultural listening
• Music as culture
• Listening as performance: from concert halls to
iPod
• The artwork context (Danto)
• Composer’s statement of intentions
• Perception: social effect of music (often not related
to the composer’s intentions)
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
25. Evaluation
Starting point: repeated listening
1. Sociocultural context
2. Composer’s intention
3. Genre
4. Form
5. Performance
6. Medium
7. Social perception
8. Expression of ideas/concepts
9. Emotions - depending on the sociocultural context/
composer’s intentions
10. compositional techniques
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
