What's wrong with music? -- A century of cultural earthquakes -- Crossover music : help or hindrance? -- Opera : a special case? -- Are schools the solution? -- Where do we go from here?

During the last few decades, most cultural critics have come to agree that the division between "high" and "low" art is an artificial one, that Beethoven's Ninth and "Blue Suede Shoes" are equally valuable as cultural texts. In Who Needs Classical Music?, Julian Johnson challenges these assumptions about the relativism of cultural judgements. The author maintains that music is more than just "a matter of taste": while some music provides entertainment, or serves as background noise, other music claims to function (...) as art. This book considers the value of classical music in contemporary society, arguing that it remains distinctive because it works in quite different ways to most of the other music that surrounds us. This intellectually sophisticated yet accessible book offers a new and balanced defense of the specific values of classical music in contemporary culture. Who Needs Classical Music? will stimulate readers to reflect on their own investment (or lack of it) in music and art of all kinds. (shrink)

It is agreed on all hands that both fictional narratives and the familiar genres of classical music possess an inner structure that both can be perceived and be appreciated aesthetically. It is my argument here that this inner structure plays a crucially different role in fictional narrative than it does in classical music, confining myself here to 'absolute music' (which is to say, pure instrumental music without text, programme, dramatic setting, or other 'extra-musical' content). The argument, basically, is that whereas (...) the sophisticated listener to the absolute music repertory is keenly, consciously aware of the inner structure, the sophisticated reader of fictional narrative, the principal exemplar being the novel, is not so aware. Therefore, whereas musical structure directly contributes to aesthetic satisfaction, narrative structure contributes only indirectly (which is not to deny that, at times, the reader is consciously aware of narrative structure, and that, at such times, it does contribute directly to aesthetic satisfaction). (shrink)

Eco, Chopin, and the limits of intertextuality -- The appeal to structure -- On codes, topics, and leaps of interpretation -- Bloom, Freud, and Riffaterre : influence and intertext as signs of the uncanny -- Narrative and intertext : the logic of suffering in Lutosawski's Symphony no. 4.

A few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a special arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The central statement of the work, that "all men will be brothers," captured the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the newly reunited nation. This now-iconic performance is a palpable example of "musical monumentality" - a significant concept which underlies our cultural and ideological understanding of Western art music (...) since the nineteenth-century. Although the concept was first raised in the earliest years of musicological study in the 1930s, a satisfying exploration of the "monumental" in music has not yet been made. Alexander Rehding, one of the brightest young stars in the field, takes on the task in Resounding Monumentality, an elegant, thorough treatment that will serve as a foundation for all future discussion in this area. Rehding sets his focus on the main players of the period within the Austro-German repertoire -Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler- as he unpacks a two-fold definition of "musical monumentality." In the conventional sense, monumentality is a stylistic property often described as 'grand,' 'uplifting,' and 'sublime' and rife with overpowering brass chorales, sparkling string tremolos, triumphant fanfares, and glorious thematic returns. Yet Rehding sees the monumental in music performing a cultural task as well: it is employed in the service of establishing national identity. Through a clear theoretical lens, Rehding examines how grand sound effects are strategically employed with the view to overwhelming audiences, how supposedly immutable musical halls of fame change over time, how challenging musical works are domesticated, how the highest cultural achievements are presented in immediately consumable form-in a word, how German music emerges as a unified cultural and musical brand. (shrink)

"The scholarship of Michael Spitzer's new book is impressive and thorough. The writing is impeccable and the coverage extensive. The book treats the history of the use of metaphor in the field of classical music. It also covers a substantial part of the philosophical literature. The book treats the topic of metaphor in a new and extremely convincing manner."-Lydia Goehr, Columbia University The experience of music is an abstract and elusive one, enough so that we're often forced to describe it (...) using analogies to other forms and sensations: we say that music moves or rises like a physical form that it contains the imagery of paintings or the grammar of language. In these and countless other ways, our discussions of music take the form of metaphor, attempting to describe music's abstractions by referencing more concrete and familiar experiences. Michael Spitzer's Metaphor and Musical Thought uses this process to create a unique and insightful history of our relationship with music--the first ever book-length study of musical metaphor in any language. Treating issues of language, aesthetics, semiotics, and cognition, Spitzer offers an evaluation, a comprehensive history, and an original theory of the ways our cultural values have informed the metaphors we use to address music. And as he brings these discussions to bear on specific works of music and follows them through current debates on how music's meaning might be considered, what emerges is a clear and engaging guide to both the philosophy of musical thought and the history of musical analysis, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Spitzer writes engagingly for students of philosophy and aesthetics, as well as for music theorists and historians. (shrink)