780 Musik
Refine
Year of publication
- 2019 (5) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (5)
Language
- English (5) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (5)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (5)
Keywords
- Musik (2)
- Ekphrasis (1)
- Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von (1)
- Lyrik (1)
- Meeresstille (1)
- Meeresstille, D 216 (1)
- Ontologie (1)
- Partitur (1)
- Rorem, Ned (1)
- Schubert, Franz (1)
Institute
- Medizin (1)
- Philosophie (1)
- Physik (1)
- Psychologie (1)
Die in diesem Essay erarbeitete Fragestellung fusst auf einem musikontologischen Problem: Welche Art von Gegenstand ist ein Musikwerk? Eine wichtige Aufgabe der Ontologie der Musik ist es, die Konsequenzen der Einführung der Notation in eine musikalische Praxis zu bewerten. Zur Klärung muss unter anderem die Rolle verstanden werden, die der Partitur zugeschrieben wird. Mit diesem Essay möchte ich auf das, was ich als ernsthaftes Missverständnis der Rolle der Partitur betrachte, insbesondere in Bezug auf die klassische Musik, hinweisen. Das Verständnis der Partitur als Spielanleitung, wie es in den letzten Jahrzehnten sowohl in der musikwissenschaftlichen als auch in der musikontologischen Literatur zu finden war, gilt es zu hinterfragen. In diesem Beitrag werde ich nach einem einleitenden Abschnitt zunächst sechs Argumente gegen die Vorstellung der Partitur als Spielanweisung formulieren; es folgen Kommentare zu einigen Passagen von Robert Schumann, Hermann Hesse und Peter Shaffer, um im weiteren Verlauf einen aktuellen Diskussionsbeitrag über die Rolle der Partitur in der klassischen Musik zu liefern.
Contrairement à sa contrepartie visuelle, qui est ancienne, l’ekphrasis acoustique - la description littéraire d'un son - ne date que de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, moment où l'ekphrasis spécifiquement musicale commence à apparaître comme base pour l'analyse et le jugement esthétique. Son émergence est liée au développement du concept de média. De nombreux cas d'ekphrasis acoustiques dépendent de la possibilité de rendre perceptible le medium par lequel le son, et en particulier le son musical, parvient à l'auditeur. Ces mêmes descriptions ekphrastiques tendent fortement à répéter le processus qu'elles décrivent. Ce qui signifie qu'elles rendent également perceptible le medium par lequel la littérature parvient au lecteur. Ce médium littéraire, cependant, n'est pas l'écriture, du moins pas en premier lieu : il s'agit plutôt d'une condition de résonance que l'écriture partage avec le son qu'elle décrit - une condition à la fois matérielle et émotive. Le mouvement de perception conduisant des phénomènes auditifs et littéraires vers leurs médias permet d'attribuer une signification ontologique à l'esthétique du son et de sa représentation. Deux poèmes issus de mondes culturels différents, de même que leurs mises en musique, serviront à illustrer les dimensions formelles et affectives de ces relations : "Meeresstille", poème de Goethe (1787) et sa mise en musique par Schubert (1815), puis "Far--Far--Away", poème de Tennyson (1893) et sa mise en musique par Ned Rorem (1963).
Over three decades the works of Frankfurt School member Theodor W. Adorno played an important role in the didactic conceptualization of popular music in Germany. This resulted in a predominantly analytical, ethic-centred and, in the end, pejorative agenda. Educationalists who advocated an affirmative approach to popular music needed to formulate “new” objectives that would serve as a true alternative to the highly elaborated Adornian framework. Though affirmative approaches finally became prevalent, the didactic situation remained delicate, since the teaching of popular music was also subject to general debates on how school education shall be constituted. Subsequently, the subject “popular music” became more and more tied to overall educational goals, whereas the objective dimension was increasingly ignored. The paper aims to reconstruct the complex path from critical to post-critical didactic efforts, finally addressing current issues, especially the notion of popular music as cultural practice. The “paradigm shift” towards affirmation is demonstrated on the basis of both theoretical works and curricular sources.
Attractiveness ratings for musicians and non-musicians: An evolutionary-psychology perspective
(2019)
From an evolutionary perspective, musical behavior such as playing an instrument can be considered as part of an individual’s courting behavior. Playing a musical instrument or singing might fulfill a function similar to that of a bird’s colored feathers: attracting attention. Therefore, musicians may be rated as more attractive than non-musicians. In an online survey, 137 volunteers (95 female) with ages ranging from 16 to 39 years rated the attractiveness of fictitious persons of the opposite sex described in short verbal profiles. These profiles differed with respect to whether the described person made music or not. Additionally, the musicians’ profiles varied with regard to whether the described person played music or sang in public or in private only. Results show that musicians’ profiles were not generally rated as more attractive than non-musicians’, but attractiveness did vary according to setting: private musicians were rated as most attractive, followed by non-musicians and public musicians. Furthermore, results indicate that participants who played a musical instrument or sang themselves gave higher ratings to profiles of musicians. But for participants who do not make music themselves, higher attractiveness ratings for musicians playing instruments or sing in private settings were found. These results indicate that the impression of sharing a common interest (making music) and furthermore making music in private instrumental settings seems to make people attractive to other people. No additional support for the sexual selection hypotheses for the evolution of music was provided by the current results. The musical status of the rater affected his or her judgements, with musicians rating other people as more attractive if they share the common interest in making music. Not the display of being a musician seems to be critical for attractiveness ratings but the perceived or imagined similarity by the rater created by information on musicality, fostering the theoretical significance of the communication aspect of music.
Five decades of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts show that cultural processes are accelerating
(2019)
Analysing the timeline of US, UK, German and Dutch music charts, we find that the evolution of album lifetimes and of the size of weekly rank changes provide evidence for an acceleration of cultural processes. For most of the past five decades, number one albums needed more than a month to climb to the top, nowadays an album is in contrast top ranked either from the start, or not at all. Over the last three decades, the number of top-listed albums increased as a consequence from roughly a dozen per year, to about 40. The distribution of album lifetimes evolved during the last decades from a log-normal distribution to a power law, a profound change. Presenting an information–theoretical approach to human activities, we suggest that the fading relevance of personal time horizons may be causing this phenomenon. Furthermore, we find that sales and airplay- based charts differ statistically and that the inclusion of streaming affects chart diversity adversely. We point out in addition that opinion dynamics may accelerate not only in cultural domains, as found here, but also in other settings, in particular in politics, where it could have far reaching consequences.