Musical Formalism and Political Performances
Contemporary Aeshetics 7 (2009)
| Abstract | Musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is ill-equipped to account for contemporary performance practice. If performative interpretations are in a position to tell us something about musical works—that is if performance is a kind of description, as Peter Kivy argues—then we have to loosen the restrictions on notions of musical relevance to make sense of performance. I argue that musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is inconsistent with Kivy's quite compelling account of performance. This shows the difficulty that actual performances pose to overly rigid conceptions of music. Daniel Barenboim unannounced performance of Wagner in Israel in 2001 shows that the problem of the boundaries of musical relevance is no mere philosophical puzzle. It is a pressing problem in the musical public sphere. | |||||||||
| Keywords | music performance formalism criticism politics musical public sphere public sphere Wagner Kivy Barenboim | |||||||||
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Similar books and articlesHanne Appelqvist (2011). Form and Freedom: The Kantian Ethos of Musical Formalism. Nordic Journal of Aesthetics 40:75-88.
Peter Kivy (1995). Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance. Cornell University Press.
Peter Kivy (2007). Music, Language, and Cognition: And Other Essays in the Aesthetics of Music. Oxford University Press.
Lydia Goehr (1998/2002). The Quest for Voice: On Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy: The 1997 Ernest Bloch Lectures. Oxford University Press.
Peter Kivy (2006). Ars Perfecta: Toward Perfection in Musical Performance? British Journal of Aesthetics 46 (2):111-132.
Stephen Davies (2001). Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford University Press.
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