Is it possible to speak about the unspeakable as it is represented in music, lyric poetry, and tragedy? The answer is yes, if we adopt a purely aesthetic perspective. The answer is no, if we adopt the perspective of the transcendental subject as the metaphysical source of music, lyric poetry, and tragedy. In this paper, I conceptualize the nondiscursivity of music, lyric poetry, and Attic tragedy in the philosophical aesthetics of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche. I also make (...) a few incidental remarks to Plato's Socrates and Aristotle as well as the Theban plays by Sophocles. (shrink)

Songs that combine happy music and sad, violent, or morally disturbing lyrics raise questions about the relationship between music and lyrics in song, including the question of how such songs affect the listener, and of the ethical implications of listening – and perhaps singing along with – such songs. To explore those perplexing cases in which the affective impact of music and lyrics seem entirely incompatible, we first examine how song music – and (...) the sympathetic musical affects it elicits – can influence listener attention to lyrics. We propose that ‘happy’ music and mood in particular may discourage close attention to the semantic contents of lyrics in some cases, and impart a ‘positive glow’ to them in others. We also mine the kinds of moral questions to which emotional and imaginative immersion in fiction can give rise for their potential applicability to songs with disturbing narratives. We then explore how performance and performer may influence the understanding and interpretations of lyrics. This investigation of the complexities of such songs will use Tom Jones’ murder ballad “Delilah” as a template, taking into account both its impact and its presentation. (shrink)

Popular songs are ubiquitous in the lives of school-age children, but the construction of traditional school music curricula does not always provide an adequate framework for studying them. In particular, the salience of words qua lyrics is an inescapable feature of popular songs, and recognizing the musical properties of those lyrics opens for study an important dimension of the real-world music that students of all ages engage so readily. Rather than treating song lyrics as separate (...) from the music, I here attempt to establish that lyrics can be treated as musical entities, as demonstrated in scholarship from popular music theorists and musicologists that highlights the musical properties of song lyrics and the musicianship of those who write them. Then, I argue that existing school curricula could do more to give lyrics their musical due, which would not only enhance the teaching and learning of popular songwriting itself, but also may expand notions of what counts as music more broadly, with benefits for school music curricula overall, perhaps especially in the domains of choral and general music. (shrink)

The epidemic outbreak of the coronavirus has meant a sudden, temporary ceasing of activities as we knew them. The health crisis has led to a social and economic crisis, and these circumstances have revealed solidarity on a global scale. In moments of separation, when culture has brought us closer together, the global phenomenon of charity songs has emerged, generating financial aid for scientific research and care for the most vulnerable people. This work focuses on a charity song turned into a (...) hymn, a narrative poem in the first person that tells everyone's common story, “Aves enjauladas” by the Spanish singer-songwriter Rozalén. This paper carries out a linguistic, stylistic and audiovisual analysis of this multimodal event, which has been transmitted through a ‘lyric video’ and spread in a vertiginous way on digital platforms and social networks, reaching millions of views. Ultimately, the paper analyses the spiritual and material impact, the body and soul of this living poem, taking a still photograph of the artistic recreations and musical, visual, pictorial and pedagogical ‘echoicities’ of this work, as well as appreciating its material socio-economic repercussions in the real lives of families at risk of exclusion. (shrink)

It has been over two decades since Miranda Fricker labeled epistemic injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their capacity as a knower. The philosophical literature has proliferated with variants and related concepts. By considering cases in popular music, we argue that it is worth distinguishing a parallel phenomenon of art-interpretive injustice, in which an agent is wronged in their creative capacity as a possible artist. In section 1, we consider the prosecutorial use of rap lyrics in (...) court as a central case of this injustice. In section 2, we distinguish art-interpretive injustice from other categories already discussed in recent literature. In section 3, we discuss the relationship between genre discourse and identity prejudice. The case for recognizing the category of art-interpretive injustice is that it allows one to recognize a class of harms as being importantly related in ways that one would otherwise overlook. (shrink)

Vladimir Jankélévitch left behind a remarkable uvre steeped as much in philosophy as in music. His writings on moral quandaries reflect a lifelong devotion to music and performance, and, as a counterpoint, he wrote on music aesthetics and on modernist composers such as Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel. Music and the Ineffable brings together these two threads, the philosophical and the musical, as an extraordinary quintessence of his thought. Jankélévitch deals with classical issues in the philosophy of (...) music, including metaphysics and ontology. These are a point of departure for a sustained examination and dismantling of the idea of musical hermeneutics in its conventional sense. Music, Jankélévitch argues, is not a hieroglyph, not a language or sign system; nor does it express emotions, depict landscapes or cultures, or narrate. On the other hand, music cannot be imprisoned within the icy, morbid notion of pure structure or autonomous discourse. Yet if musical works are not a cipher awaiting the decoder, music is nonetheless entwined with human experience, and with the physical, material reality of music in performance. Music is "ineffable," as Jankélévitch puts it, because it cannot be pinned down, and has a capacity to engender limitless resonance in several domains. Jankélévitch's singular work on music was central to such figures as Roland Barthes and Catherine Clément, and the complex textures and rhythms of his lyrical prose sound a unique note, until recently seldom heard outside the francophone world. (shrink)

What is Life? This is the question asked by Denis Noble in this very personal and at times deeply lyrical book. Noble is a renowned physiologist and systems biologist, and he argues that the genome is not life itself: to understand what life is, we must view it at a variety of different levels, all interacting with each other in a complex web. It is that emergent web, full of feedback between levels, from the gene to the wider environment, that (...) is life. (shrink)

Lyric poetry, often regarded as the epitome of subjectivity in the realm of artistic expression, emerges from the depths of the poet’s personal emotions. Hence, in the aesthetic landscape of the nineteenth-century Germany, it was excluded from the inventory of genuine art forms, all of which were deemed to be objective and disinterested. Associating lyric poetry with music in its origin and essence, Nietzsche extends his Schopenhauerian metaphysics of music to the lyric, making it a highly objective art (...) reverberating from the abyss of existence, the Ur-Eine, expressing its intrinsic self-contradictory and agonizing nature. A similar understanding of the creative process of poetic composition in the lyric, which this article aims to elucidate, can also be found in some of Rūmī’s ghazals and observations. These include a metaphysics of the unseen, a reunion through ecstasy and rapture, and a reflection and mirroring, initially through music and then through the lyric. (shrink)

1. My topic is integrity, and the relation between an integrated structure and its component details. Let me begin with an image. The jazz trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis says: In American life, you have all of these different agendas, you have conflict all the time, and we’re attempting to achieve harmony through conflict. Which seems strange to say that, but it’s like an argument that you have with the intent to work something out, not an argument that you have (...) with the intent to argue. And that’s what jazz music is. You have musicians, and they’re all standing on the bandstand, and each one has their personality and their agenda. And invariably they’re going to play something that you would... (shrink)

Music is considered an indispensable feature for almost all religions. Christianity emerges as one of the most important religious traditions in which music is involved in rituals and social life. Among the Christian sects, there are different practices in terms of using music. American Christianity was the scene of religious awakening in the 18th and 19th centuries. One of the most important reflections of this process took place in the field of music. American Christianity has given (...) particular importance to music in the experience of religious awakening since the 18th and 19th centuries. At the end of the 19th century, traditional Christian hymns have largely been altered or abandoned. Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran and Pentecostal churches have played a role in the transformation and spread of Christian music. This process has emerged as new genre hymns and later as Gospel music. There are some similar and seperated points among the new music genres. The musical instruments which they use, melody structures, the places they are performed, their improvisation or rules and their poetic features are among these points. With the introduction of these two genres and some local cultural factors, music genres have emerged as secular in style but which may have religious content. Regardless of whether it is secular or religious music, these genres have used religious terminology in their lyrics. At the same time, there are some similarities at the point of the musicians who perform these music. Blouse and Jazz are considered as the two most prominent and international examples. (shrink)

How do hip-hop songs produced from 2017 to 2023 depict and rationalize online fraud? This study examines the depiction of online fraudsters in thirty-three Nigerian hip-hop songs on nine popular streaming platforms such as Spotify, Deezer, iTunes, SoundCloud, Apple Music, and YouTube. Using a directed approach to qualitative content analysis, we coded lyrics based on the moral disengagement mechanism and core themes derived from existing literature. Our findings shed light on how songs (a) justify the fraudulent actions of (...) online fraudsters, (b) blame and dehumanize victims of online romance fraud, (c) glamorize online fraud, and (d) provide insights into prevailing attitudes, indigenous linguistics, and worldviews regarding cybercrime victimization. Specifically, our analysis shows the presence of moral disengagement mechanisms, including "dehumanization," “minimizing own agency,” and "displacement of responsibility." Moreover, we identify core contextual themes pertinent to online fraud in the Nigerian context: (a) "cyber spiritualism" and (b) "the North-South divide." This research underscores the global influence of musicians whose songs are easily accessible on diverse music platforms in trivializing the plight of online fraud victims. We argue that these artists' persuasive messages not only downplay but also satirize the victims' predicaments, thus contributing to the cultural worldviews and dimensions of online fraud. We conclude by underscoring these songs' capacity to actualize, reshape, and actively engage with the narratives of glamorization, justification, spiritualism, colonial legacies, gender dynamics, and societal implications. We recommend that future research endeavors explore non-conventional data sources adept at capturing the intricate fabric of cultural attitudes and dynamics. (shrink)

In order to solve the problem of the influence of feature word position in lyrics on music emotion classification, this paper designs a music classification and detection model in complex noise environment. Firstly, an intelligent detection algorithm for electronic music signals under complex noise scenes is proposed, which can solve the limitations existing in the current electronic music signal detection process. At the same time, denoising technology is introduced to eliminate the noise and extract the (...) features from the signal. Secondly, from the perspective of audio and lyrics of song sentiment analysis and the unique characteristics of lyrics text, a lyric sentiment analysis method based on text title and position weight is proposed. Finally, considering the influence of the weight of feature words in different positions on the classification of lyrics, the analytic hierarchy process is used to calculate the weight of feature words in different positions of text title and lyrics before, in, and after the text. The results show that in the complex noise environment, the accuracy of music classification and detection of the proposed model is more than 90%, which is far beyond the control range of the actual application of music processing. The effect of music classification and detection is better than that of the contrast model, which has a certain practical application value. (shrink)

The practice of inserting bits of lyric verse within Old French narrative romances appears to have begun with Jean Renart, the supposed author of the Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, which most scholars date around 1228. It was soon imitated by Gerbert de Montreuil in his Roman de la violette and became widespread during the balance of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, appearing in upwards of fifty works. This technique of lyric insertions in romance continues the (...) earlier use of variable refrains within lyric songs and anticipates, perhaps, the insertion of snatches from Latin poetry in the Essais of Montaigne. Little studied until recently, the phenomenon was the focus of a colloquium at the Newberry Library in Chicago, in October 1991, with the title “Music and Narrative in Medieval Romance: The Poetics of Lyric Insertions.” The present study was read at that colloquium. (shrink)

When Chinese literary thought is put in a global context, it is often characterized by its disinterest in mimesis and its correlative faith in the legibility of direct lyrical expression, both of which features would derive from a general epistemic optimism common to all schools of Chinese thought. Early writing on music, however, attests to a distrust of the art and to a consequent urge for reform. Suspicious mimesis, linked with the promotion of moral exemplars, is shown in this (...) historical essay to be the ground of aesthetics in the Confucian tradition. (shrink)

We extend Savage et al.'s music and social bonding hypothesis by examining it in the context of Chinese music. First, top-down functions such as music as political instrument should receive more attention. Second, solo performance can serve as important cues for social identity. Third, a right match between the tones in lyrics and music contributes also to social bonding.

In philosophy of music, formalists argue that pure instrumental music is unable to represent any content without the help of lyrics, titles, or dramatic context. In particular, they deny that music’s use of convention counts as a genuine case of representation because only intrinsic means of representing counts and conventions are extrinsic to the sound structures making up music. In this paper, I argue that convention should count as a way for music to genuinely (...) represent content for two reasons. First, the view that only intrinsic ways of representing counts is too stringent. If use can ground meaning in language, then use might also ground meaning (and representation) in music, too. Second, even if we were to insist on intrinsic features, convention should count as a way for music to genuinely represent because convention is an intrinsic feature of music. Without knowledge of musical systems and encultured listening, music wouldn’t even be recognized as music, so convention is already baked into our listening practices. (shrink)

Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a composer and successful music critic. _Night Music_ presents the first complete English translations of two collections of texts compiled by German philosopher and musicologist Adorno—_Moments musicaux_, containing essays written between 1928 and 1962, and _Theory of New Music_, a group of texts written between 1929 and 1955. In _Moments musicaux_, Adorno echoes Schubert’s eponymous cycle, with its (...) emphasis on aphorism, and offers lyrical reflections on music of the past and his own time. The essays include extended aesthetic analyses that demonstrate Adorno’s aim to apply high philosophical standards to the study of music. _Theory of New Music_, as its title indicates, presents Adorno’s thoughts and theories on the composition, reception, and analysis of the music that was being written around him. His extensive philosophical writing ultimately prevented him from pursuing the compositional career he had once envisaged, but his view of the modern music of the time is not simply that of a theorist, but clearly also that of a composer. Though his advocacy of the Second Viennese School, comprising composer Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils, is well known, many of his writings in this field have remained obscure. Collected in their entirety for the first time in English, the insightful texts in _Night Music _show the breadth of Adorno’s musical understanding and reveal an overlooked side to this significant thinker. (shrink)

TWEEN POP examines the creation of the "tween" in the early 2000s as a gendered and raced consumer audience. The tween, aged nine to twelve, and usually thought of as a white girl, occupies a temporality between childhood and adolescence: she has aged out of children's products but is too young to fully engage in marketing directed at teenagers. But, as Tyler Bickford argues, this seemingly narrow market grew to broadly include four to fifteen year olds, with producers and marketers (...) pulling upwards and downwards by creating material that would attract younger viewers and teenagers, thereby creating a demographic that expanded, rather than limited, the traditional reach of child and teenage markets. According to Bickford, the key to this expansion was pop music, as it provided an intensity of experience that mirrored childhood in its investments in emotional authenticity, cultural value, and relational intimacies. In other words, pop music needed to be both intimate and public--a tension that Bickford argues defined the tween's positionality as well--and tween pop did so by pairing the mainstream pop of adulthood with images and lyrics suitable for younger audiences. Throughout the book, Bickford reveals how childhood's status as a private domestic position outside of politics was not a hindrance to the cultivation of children as a mass audience but rather was the very foundation of that project. By creating an intimate public of tween pop, the tween music industry was able to position tweens as still within the private domestic sphere of family life, but connected in a broader public of other tween-pop-listening tweens. Chapter 1 looks at Kidz Bop music videos to argue that the tween music industry framed childhood domesticity as complementary to participation in a public culture. Chapter 2 focuses on Disney Channel's popular music programs' efforts to engage older children, particularly older girls, in their marketing tactics. Chapter 3 analyzes the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana and its foregrounding of tensions between girlhood, public culture, and family. Chapter 4 attends to how whiteness served as central to the tween construction of innocence and childhood. Bickford concludes the book by periodizing the tween moment as the decade from 2001 to 2011, and then outlines the developments in popular culture for children since that time. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of ethnomusicology, feminism and gender studies, and cultural studies. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The traditional conception of the link between Melancholia and a creative disposition finds its climax in the artistic-literary environment of France in the nineteenth century in Baudelaire’s poetry: he illustrates this paradigm by praising Spleen and Idéal, depicting the interplay of sweetness and bitterness as a specific and aesthetic principle that his ‘sickly flowers’ are based on. But the mental gloom of the spleen can also have its paralyzing shadows. How spleen, ennui and melancholia behave to each other and (...) how the poet confirms the classical conception of genius, will emerge by facing Baudelaire’s mourning cult. With Spleen as a central motif of his poetry his lyrical work represents simultaneously the perception of modern times: the culture of the black tails enters the streets of Paris. Starting from the poet’s observations of the morbid city, the contribution proceedes to other cornerstones from fine arts and music that illuminate the position of mélancolie in the new feeling culture within the hexagon. (shrink)

Eustache Deschamps writes in 1392 his Art de Dictier, an art of writing and, according to its added title, an art of “making songs, balads, virelais and rondeaux.” He introduces it, therefore, as a versification treatise that is exemplary for his generation of nonmusician poets, unlike Machaut, his most probable initiator into metrics. In so doing he introduces the concept of natural music, a genre proper to inspire poets for whom lyrical musicality is entirely produced by poetic language alone. (...) Without perceiving, perhaps, the novelty of this poetic aesthetics, he thus opens the avenue for a new poetry, freed from Rhetorics and from added music, more precisely for a poetic art. (shrink)

Eustache Deschamps writes in 1392 his Art de Dictier, an art of writing (ars dictandi) and, according to its added title, an art of “making songs, balads, virelais and rondeaux.” He introduces it, therefore, as a versification treatise that is exemplary for his generation of nonmusician poets, unlike Machaut, his most probable initiator into metrics. In so doing he introduces the concept of natural music, a genre proper to inspire poets for whom lyrical musicality is entirely produced by poetic (...) language alone. Without perceiving, perhaps, the novelty of this poetic aesthetics, he thus opens the avenue for a new poetry, freed from Rhetorics and from added music, more precisely for a poetic art. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the early nineteenth century, the German Association of Investigators of Nature and Physicians drew upon the cultural resource of choral-society songs as a way to promote male camaraderie and intellectual collaboration. Investigators of nature and physicians wished to forge a unified, scientific identity in the absence of a national one, and music played a critical role in its establishment. During the 1820s and 30s, Liedertafel and folk songs formed a crucial component of their annual meetings. The lyrics (...) of these tunes, whose melodies were famous folk songs, were rewritten to reflect the lives of investigators of nature and physicians. Indeed, the singing of these Liedertafel songs played an important part in the cultivation of the Naturforschers’ persona well into the twentieth century. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay offers a chronological survey of the range of songs and musical productions inspired by Darwin and his theory since they entered the public sphere some 150 years ago. It draws on an unusual set of historical materials, including illustrated sheet music, lyrics and librettos, wax cylinder recordings, vinyl records, and video recordings located in digital and sound archives and on the Internet. It also offers a characterization of the varied genres and a literary analysis of (...) the forms as a way of understanding the diverse audiences engaging, and indeed “entertaining,” Darwin and the implications of his theory. It argues that the engagement with Darwin and his celebrated theory is far more creative than has been appreciated and recommends that historians of science further explore Darwin and his theory as embodied in a fuller range of cultural expressions. This will lead to an understanding of Darwin's “iconic” status that draws on a fuller range of human sensory experience and that also enables us to appreciate his—and his theory's—enduring power to engage the human imagination. (shrink)

Introduction : music and abstraction -- Music and fantasy -- German romanticism and music -- Negative poetics : on skepticism and the lyric voice -- Rethinking the scale of literary history -- Mozart, Bach, and musical abjection -- Moods at mid-century : Handel and English literature, 1740-1760 -- Passion and love : anacreontic song and the roots of romantic lyric -- Haydn's whimsy : poetry, sexuality, repetition -- Non Giovanni : Mozart with Hegel.

What kind of Theory of Music and Theory of Metric was taught to the young Pindar or the young Sophocles? So far are we from an answer to this question that we do not even know how far extra study was necessary, or usual, for the professional poet as compared with the ordinary educated Greek citizen. The interdependence of music and metric in lyric poetry gave complexity to the word-rhythms but kept the study of music, the subordinate (...) partner, theoretically simple. Doubtless by the time the young poet had learnt by heart the words of past masters of lyric verse, sung or accompanied them on the lyre, and danced them in choir or κ⋯μος, he had absorbed by practice and somewhat rule-of-thumb methods of training a great deal of the τ⋯χενη which his calling would require. He would have to learn, in common with the χοροδιδ⋯σκαλος, how to read and write a simple score, and so he must know the symbols of pitch in such scales as were then in use. The notation of arsis and thesis may have been required too, and if we knew that this was so, and how he was taught to apply it, we might be in a much better position to assess the kind of theory he learnt. But of one thing we may be sure: genius apart, it was his practical training, as performer and spectator, rather than theoretical teaching which gave his ear its cunning and technical skill to compose new rhythms. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This essay offers a chronological survey of the range of songs and musical productions inspired by Darwin and his theory since they entered the public sphere some 150 years ago. It draws on an unusual set of historical materials, including illustrated sheet music, lyrics and librettos, wax cylinder recordings, vinyl records, and video recordings located in digital and sound archives and on the Internet. It also offers a characterization of the varied genres and a literary analysis of (...) the forms as a way of understanding the diverse audiences engaging, and indeed “entertaining,” Darwin and the implications of his theory. It argues that the engagement with Darwin and his celebrated theory is far more creative than has been appreciated and recommends that historians of science further explore Darwin and his theory as embodied in a fuller range of cultural expressions. This will lead to an understanding of Darwin's “iconic” status that draws on a fuller range of human sensory experience and that also enables us to appreciate his—and his theory's—enduring power to engage the human imagination. (shrink)

The symmetrical inter-displacements of corresponding blocks of text between strophes and antistrophes in lyrical odes, earlier proposed for A. Supp. 88–90 ∼ 93–95, 872–75 ∼ 882–84, and 906–7 ∼ 909–10, have affected all parts sung or spoken by the Egyptian herald in the amoibaion in Supp. 843–910. An ancestral text similar to a modern musical score, in which the corresponding lines of strophe and antistrophe run parallel with musical notation, could explain this type of corruption. Such a hypothetical ancestor in (...) the textual tradition would also explain apparent interpolations in Supp. 852 and 865 from 842 and 843. The corruptions may have arisen very early in the tradition, the hypothetical textual arrangement possibly being that of the author himself. (shrink)

What kind of Theory of Music and Theory of Metric was taught to the young Pindar or the young Sophocles? So far are we from an answer to this question that we do not even know how far extra study was necessary, or usual, for the professional poet as compared with the ordinary educated Greek citizen. The interdependence of music and metric in lyric poetry gave complexity to the word-rhythms but kept the study of music, the subordinate (...) partner, theoretically simple. Doubtless by the time the young poet had learnt by heart the words of past masters of lyric verse, sung or accompanied them on the lyre, and danced them in choir or κμος, he had absorbed by practice and somewhat rule-of-thumb methods of training a great deal of the τχενη which his calling would require. He would have to learn, in common with the χοροδιδσκαλος, how to read and write a simple score, and so he must know the symbols of pitch in such scales as were then in use. The notation of arsis and thesis may have been required too, and if we knew that this was so, and how he was taught to apply it, we might be in a much better position to assess the kind of theory he learnt. But of one thing we may be sure: genius apart, it was his practical training, as performer and spectator, rather than theoretical teaching which gave his ear its cunning and technical skill to compose new rhythms. (shrink)

In Zimbabwe, popular music, particularly the Zimdancehall music genre, has become a cultural site where Shona moral values clash with explicit sexual lyrical content despite a censorship regime in the country. This article examines the nature and cultural consequences of the moral decadence that emerges in popular Zimdancehall song lyrics by several musicians. The article illustrates how vulgar language popularises Zimdancehall songs in unheralded ways that foster identities laced with cultural ambivalences that may portray the artists as (...) both famous and depraved. This qualitative study does textual and content analysis of 11 purposively sampled songs with sex terms to elucidate the cultural inconsistencies in Zimdancehall song narratives. Analysis is informed by the Neuro-Psycho-Social theory, which recognises how socio-cultural restrictions are challenged by an emerging ghetto culture like new wine in old bottles. Alternative unsanctioned new popular music genres can be used to permeate the sociocultural system. (shrink)

This article, taking a social semiotic approach, analyses two pieces of music written, shared and exalted by two pre-1945 European fascist movements – the German NSDAP and the British Union of Fascists. These movements, both political and cultural, employed mythologies of unity, common identity and purpose in order to elide the realities of social distinction and political–economic inequalities between bourgeois and proletarian groups in capitalist societies. Visually and inter-personally, the fascist cultural project communicated a machine-like certainty about a vision (...) for a new society based on discipline, conformity and the might of the nation. In this article, we are interested in the ways that these very same discourses are also communicated through sound and music in two songs: The Horst Wessel Lied and the BUF marching song, two songs that used the same melody. We analyse the discourses communicated by the semiotic choices made in melody, arrangements, sound qualities, rhythms as well as in lyrics. The article first identifies some of the underlying semiotic resources for meaning making in sound and then shows how these are used in order to communicate specific ideas, values and attitudes. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to examine the objective side of subjectivity formation through music. I attempt to show how music is a way to configure subjectivity in its interiority, but in a way that it can be shared between other individual subjectivities. Music has an objective structure, but this structure is the temporal and sonorous interiority of subjectivity. It has as its objective manifestation and consequence the feelings and emotions. These feelings are subjective, and in (...) the level of subjective Geist they are related to intuition. Hegel believes that such intuition cannot be properly communicated, due to its exclusive access to the individual subject himself. Despite that, music is an art, and it takes part in the level of absolute Geist. That means that music is the connection between the objective and subjective sides of Geist, being a product of social relations, including the sharing, experience and recognition of subjective operations by the participants in society as something in common. Art is related to intuition but it is not intuition itself, nor it is reduced to the capacity of intuition. All three capacities of the subjective Geist in the theoretical Geist (namely intuition, representation and thinking) can be part of the relationship between art and the individual perspective.However, the link between art and intuition is an analogy between the subjective Geist and the absolute Geist, considering that art is a level of manifestation of social self-consciousness where the people and the social group have not yet become conscious of its content in its manifestation. The exposition of the ideal content of social relations is manifested through absolute Geist, beginning with its sensible manifestation. After this process, it is signified through a practice related to representation, and finally it is related to a conceptually and linguistically mediated practice, philosophy. These products cannot be a consequence of a mere subjective connections, but must be (as part of absolute Geist) a consequence of the objective relation between individuals in its subjective manifestations. Furthermore, subjective capacities are a condition without which the development of the absolute Geist is not possible. At the same time, it is not possible that subjective Geist’s capacities can be fully realized without social relations. Science is not a product of an individual-solipsistic relationship with the environment, but a product of a social relations, including language, shared experiences and shared ways of comprehension, such as the common way to feel and receive the environment in a subjective level discussed below. I divide this exposition into three parts: (1) music and subjectivity, where I deal with the relation between body vibration, time, sound and the formal interiority of the listener/musical subject, analyzing the form of music in its subjective side (the relation to the listener); (2) music and content, where I examine the content generated by music as being the process of formation itself (i.e. the process of given form to the interiority of subjectivity through sounds becomes its own content, namely, the feelings); and (3) music and words, where I scrutinize the relationship between music and words’ capacities to make reference and to have content, considering the connection between pure music and lyrics, and between music and poetry as singular forms of art. I conclude with the idea that music has a specific role in Hegel’s system, which is to bring to light and develop absolute Geist’s (understood as the objectivation and formation of a social and cultural subjectivity) internal aesthetic form. (shrink)

Japanese pop idols occupy an ambiguous position in the broader popular music landscape, straddling a line between fiction and non-fiction, simultaneously characterological yet physically instantiated. As idealized representations of the girl or boy next door, idols serve as both ‘image characters’ who can be used to sell a variety of products, as well as ‘quasi companions’ meant to provide fans with a manufactured sense of intimacy. Using a joint quantitative and qualitative approach, this article analyses the lyrics of (...) female idol groups. Specifically, I demonstrate how the combination of first- and second-person pronouns and sentence-final expressions are utilized to construct both female-coded and male-coded gendered personae, revealing that idol lyrics engage in the process of cross-gender performance. As a result, through their performance of these personae, female idol groups explicitly reinforce a binary imagination of normative gender expressions, allowing such idol groups to capitalize on idealized heterosexual adolescence through affective resonance and nostalgia. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPrevious research on the development of emotion recognition in music has focused on classical, rather than popular music. Such research does not consider the impact of lyrics on judgements...

The most famous sentence in Igor Stravinsky’s autobiography reads: “Music is by its very nature powerless to express anything at all.” When it appeared, this sentence surprised his audience. After all, Stravinsky had composed some of the most expressive music of the twentieth century, from the lyrical Petrouchka to the dramatic Le sacre du printemps to the elegaic Symphony of Psalms. But ever the polemicist, Stravinsky was in actuality blasting those whom he regarded as his aesthetic opponents, such (...) as the followers of Richard Wagner; such “impurists” were always marshaling music in the service of extramusical ends, from national solidarity to religious freedom. Seeking to repair a perceived imbalance, Stravinsky portrayed the musician as a craftsman whose materials of pitch and rhythm in themselves harbor no more expression than the carpenter’s beams or the jeweler’s stone. (shrink)

There have been remarkable evolutions in the Nigerian gospel music industry for the past decades. These revolutions have led to the emergence and survival of various modern and controversial musical cultures/traditions, modes and performances including worldliness and paganism in the industry. In view of these relatively nefarious musical cultures, a good number of scholars and observers tend to arguably redefine and brand Christian communication in general and Nigerian gospel music in particular. It is in following this premise that (...) this paper examines the phenomenon of religiosity and worldliness in the Nigerian gospel music industry. Based on observations and secondary data, the paper argues that the Nigerian gospel music industry is just a vivid reflection of the country’s gloomy socio-religious landscape, characterized by the emergence/prevalence of fake ministers and various ubiquitous instrumentalities that perpetrate spiritual bareness in the country. Aspects of religiosity observed in some Nigerian gospel songs include controversial rhythms, imitations/adaptations of worldly songs, lyrical emphasis on prosperity at the detriment of spirituality/salvation, gospel artists being associated with sex scandals and occult practices. (shrink)

This paper seeks to think creatively about the body of research which claims there is a link between heavy metal music and adolescent alienation, self-destructive behaviours, self-harm and suicide. Such research has been criticised, often by people who belong to heavy metal subcultures, as systematically neglecting to explore, in a meaningful manner, the psychosocial benefits for individuals who both listen to contemporary heavy metal music and socialize in associated groups. We argue that notions of survival, strength, community, and (...) rebellion are key themes in contemporary heavy metal music. Through literary-lyrical analysis of a selection of heavy metal tracks, this paper aims to redress the balance of risk and benefit. We argue that listening to this type of music, the accompanying social relationships, sense of solidarity and even the type of dancing can ameliorate tumultuous and difficult emotions. Songs which could be read as negative can induce feelings of relief through the sense that someone else has felt a particular way and recovered enough to transform these emotions into a creative outlet. This genre of music may therefore not increase the risk of untoward outcomes in any simple sense but rather represent a valuable resource for young people in difficulty. (shrink)

Criminal labeling is an important process in the typical modern hegemony, serving not only to name and marginalize selected criminals but also to underscore and rationalize the hegemony’s norms. In the contemporary United States, such labeling is especially harsh and reductive. It predictably involves the established criminal justice institutions—police departments, criminal courts, and prisons—and also a wide range of community spokesmen, political figures, and the mass media. Yet despite the hegemony’s apparent determination to criminally label individual men and women and (...) also entire social groups and classes, many popular songs identify and sympathize with the people who have been labeled. Indeed, the criminals themselves are often the most winning voices in those songs’ lyrics. A consideration of three singer/songwriters and three popular songs from different genres reveals how these voices humanize the criminal, thereby problematizing the hegemony’s tendency to label criminals and to reify and then condemn crime. Overall, the selected voices from American popular music illustrate the role the popular arts might play in challenging the hegemony. (shrink)

The Pseudo-Plutarchan De musica provides us with the oldest history of Greek lyric poetry from the pre-Homeric epic poetry to the lyric poetry of the fourth century B.C. Importantly, the work contains also an evaluation of the role of music in the process of educating and training the citizens. Ps. Plutarch considers the καλόν in the aesthetic and ethical sense, which makes it incompatible with the καινόν dictated by the new poetic and musical season.

This article demonstrates how Iranian classical music and Persian medieval poetry, taken as separate semiotic systems, form together, in certain contexts, a single hybrid semiotic system with overlapping structural features and shared aesthetic principles. Hjelmslev’s description of connotative semiotic systems serves as a theoretical framework to show the modalities of this hybridization. This phenomenon can be observed through comparative analysis of the interdependence of poetry and music in the Persianate World from a semiotic point of view. On the (...) one hand, the quantitative (chronemic) meter of the Persian classical versification, called ‘aruz, as well as its extraordinarily heavy use of rhyme display a formal structure that evokes that of a musical phrase. On the other hand, the dependence of the structure of the Iranian musical system upon the rhythmic structure of classical poetry suggests a unique character of which few examples exist. This interdependence manifests itself particularly in the mystic (Sufi) poetry of the medieval period, specifically in the work of such renowned poets as Rumi, Sa’di Shirāzi, and Hāfez, who are among the best-known in the West. Examples of their lyric works are examined here to demonstrate occurrences of the collusion between the two semiotic systems. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 28.1 (2004) 220-223 [Access article in PDF] Doing Our Own Thing. The Degradation of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like Care, by John McWhorter; xiv & 279 pp. New York: Gotham Books, 2003, $26.00. In 2002, the first anniversary of the September 11th attacks was marked in New York City by the reading of the Gettysburg Address. It was, as many commentators noted, (...) an odd choice of eulogy, comparing as it did the unwitting and innocent victims of a terrorist attack to the willing and active [End Page 220] participants in a bloody civil war. In Doing Our Own Thing, the Berkeley linguist John McWhorter asserts that this strange choice was the result of a decline in American public discourse. A "particular kind of artful English, formerly taken for granted as crucial to legitimate expression on the civic stage has" he argues, "virtually disappeared" (p. xiv). For McWhorter, this lack of contemporary public oratory is merely part of a broader linguistic decline that has affected all aspects of American life and culture.There has, he suggests, been a dumbing-down of the language. Whereas Americans once took care to craft their language, public and private, McWhorter argues, there is now a casualness to their speech and writing which affects all aspects of their existence. The nature of this decline is best captured by McWhorter's anecdote about his research into Gullah, an obscure Creole dialect. In response to his inquiries about local speech patterns, an elderly black woman in Greenwood, Mississippi responded: "Well, seems like most folks, they speak pretty good English, but some people, it seems like they just talk" (p. 2). Whereas Americans once spoke pretty good English, McWhorter believes, now, for the most part, they just talk. In Doing Our Own Thing, he seeks to identify not only evidence for his thesis, but also the causes and consequences of this decline.Evidence of linguistic decline is, McWhorter believes, to be found in our public discourse (as evidenced by the contemporary use of the Gettysburg Address), and in the rise of rap music and popular lyrics at the expense of poetry—he notes that as late as the 1960s, the poet Marianne Moore was a guest on The Tonight Show twice. Less intuitively perhaps, he identifies the same decline in the decreased popularity of piano bars, and the rising popularity of cell-phones. What all these examples of have in common, McWhorter suggests, is a turn towards an oral as opposed to a written culture. Speech has, he says, become something of a "dress-down affair" (p. 49), and this has infected both our written word and public oratory. The "modern American speech writer" he notes, "tends strongly to operate under a guiding imperative not to sound too high a note" (p. 47). McWhorter contrasts this with examples from the nineteenth-century—with letters from ordinary soldiers to their sweethearts, and with Edward Everett's two-hour plus address at Gettysburg—which show that "we live in an America with a distinctly different relationship to the English language than an America still within living memory" (p. 167).For McWhorter, the causes of this decline are clear. The 1960s counterculture, in its efforts to "Speak Truth to Power, abandoned the formal conventions of previous generations' speech, and adopted its own more casual approach to public discourse. Indeed, McWhorter feels confident enough to identify "a single year when America lost its love for its language": 1965 (p. 183). The consequences of this decline are, for McWhorter, similarly obvious. Among them, the shift to an oral culture is held to be responsible for: the election of George W. Bush—Al Gore's "studied articulateness is certainly one of the major [End Page 221] factors that blocked him from winning the presidency" (p. xxi); the decline of contemporary political debate—more formal written language is, says McWhorter, "a better vehicle for objective argument than speech" (p. 35); and the increasingly obtuse nature of academic language. Indeed, McWhorter asserts that Judith Butler... (shrink)

With this study we have done on the nawba, which was widely performed until about a century ago, but whose examples we can not find very often in our geography today, new information has emerged about its performance in different places and times. We first became aware of the nevbe record, which was recorded with the personal efforts of Hasan Sevil, in 2018, and as of 2021, we started to work on this record for approximately one hour. We examined the (...) flow of this performance, which was performed with the participation of 14 people, and recorded some of the naşîde and hymns. We talked to the head of the nawba, Sheikh Muhammed Kayali, for detailed information about our deficiencies in the lyrics and the performance of the nawba. The Kayali family has continued the mystical tradition in Haleb since Sheikh İsmail Kayali. In 2013, a part of the family immigrated to Turkey by necessity. In this way, we gained new information about İsmail Kayali, Kayaliya tariq and mystical culture, about which we do not know much. With this study, we aimed to give the general flow of the nevbe form and some examples of naşîde through the example of Kayaliya. Since the notation of all the performances in the recording would be too much for the volume of the article format, we thought it appropriate to consider them in a larger study. (shrink)

Let us look first at poetry. It is well known that by the fifteenth century, lyric poetry had undergone a radical transformation; the early lyric fluidity and formal variability had hardened into the nonlyric and even, some maintain, antilyric forms fixes which characterize the poetic formalism of late medieval France. Dispensing with the details of how and why this occurred, the essential point is that by the end of the Middle Ages, the poet in France and Burgundy saw himself as (...) an artisan of words, not as a singer.6 He refers to himself as a craftsman , and it is plain, sometimes painfully so, to anyone who reads the works that the rhétoriqueur is, indeed, an artisan of forms—or, if you will, an architecte de la parole, a specialist in verbal matter. He works words, sounds, metric and strophic forms into intricate patterns and arranges his elaborate designs in blocks of exact and harmonious symmetry. He is, in fact, from Machaut on, a virtuoso of the verbal equivalent of the architectural art of carrelage which adorned the princely château in which he worked and lived. No one familiar with the period will avoid noticing the strikingly similar types of patters in the poet’s works and in his surroundings.I have gathered elsewhere the visual documentation which bears out Zumthor’s suggestions quoted above with respect to the meticulously constructivist mentality of the Franco-Burgundian artisan. But the analogies I found are much more than perceptual. It is true that the elaborate designs on the walls, floors, ceilings, windows, woodwork, and so forth of the early Renaissance château are, indeed, composed of intricate blocks of material; but their function is not merely decorative , it is also narrative, with emblematic motifs and allegorical figures arrayed in linear patterns of “visual” discourse—the invariable “discours de la gloire” which silently proclaims the magnificence of the patron prince and proprietor of the château .7 6. A summary of internal and external factors in the transformation of lyric to Rhetoric is provided in my review of Die musikalische Erscheinungsform der Trouvèrepoesie by Hans-Herbert S. Räkel , in Romance Philology 34 : 250-58.7. This following collage of fragments from ML was constructed ôto serve as commentary on photographs of tile designs compared with verbal texts, in an earlier version of this paper , from which the examples in figs. 1-4 are taken.Culte de l’objet subtilement travaillé, au-delà de toute fonctionnalité primaire *** primat du labeur ardu, patient, du difficile, de l’inattendu *** les mots mêmes semblent travaillés d’un besoin de scientificité fictive, d’anoblissement par le savoir *** les … mots ne sont plus que les particules d’une parole dont la seule signification est globale *** matériau émancipé des contraintes de la phrase, transposé sur un plan où le signe devient le nom vide de ce signe *** goût du bricolage plutôt que de l’industrie; … du bariolage plus que du fondu et de la nuance; de l’équilibre numéral des parties plus que de la synthèse; du multiple plus que de l’un. Outil forgé martelé d’ “aornures” sans fonction utilitaire; enchâssements cubiques, coniques, pyramidaux, cruciformes du bâtiment … meubles marquetés, forrés de tiroirs minuscules et secrets [and so forth].For the iconography of these examples , see Emile Amé, Less Carrelages émaillés du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance , pp. 61-108. Jonathan Beck is associate professor of French at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Théâtre et propaganda aux débuts de la Réforme , a sequel to his edition and study, Le Concil de Basle: Le Origines du theater réformiste et partisan en France. (shrink)