Music as drama

Music Theory Spectrum

Volumn 10, Issue 1, 1988, Pages 56-73

  Maus, Fred Everett ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 84919865993     PISSN: 01956167     EISSN: 15338339     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/mts.1988.10.1.02a00050     Document Type: Article

References (36)

1. Stanley Cavell, Mus! We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridgc University Press, 1976), 186.
2. Joseph Kerman, Contemplaling Music (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 73.
3. Allen Forte, “Schenker’s Conception of Musical Structure,” in Maury Yeston, ed., Readings in Schenker Analysis and of her Approaches (New Hayen Yale UniversityPress, 1977)
4. Kcrman hascommentedon Forte’s paperto show the self-imposed restrictions of professionallheory and analysis
5. Fred Lerdahl and Ray Jackendoff, A Generative Theory of Tonal Musicl (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983), 8. In a footnote they add a further comment: “The affective content of music, we be1ieve, lies in its exploitation of the tonal system to build dramatic structure.” This suggestion is in accord with my argument in this paper, though Lerdahl and lackendoff would probably find my presentation unacceptably infonnal.
6. David Epstein, Beyond Orpheus (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1979), 11.
7. Kcrman, Contemplating Music, 73.
8. Peter Kivy. The Corded SheIl: Reftections on Musical Expression (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 9. Kivy expects that his dichotomy between ways of describing music will not be nove! for his readers. A$ he puts it, musicians write tecbnically at a “familiar” oost; tbe alternative is tbe “familiar” emotive stance.
9. Peter Kivy. The Corded SheIl: Reftections on Musical Expression.8-9.
10. Peter Kivy. The Corded SheIl: Reftections on Musical Expression. 9
11. Peter Kivy. The Corded SheIl: Reftections on Musical Expression, 6-7.
12. Peter Kivy. The Corded SheIl: Reftections on Musical Expression., 9-10.
13. Kivy introduces the discussion of emotive criticism by quoting some of Tovey’s analytica1 writing (p. 6), and at the end ofbis essay he indicates that his arguments bave vindicated Tovey’s critical practice (p. 149). Kivy mentions only one other contemporary writer, H. C. Robbins Landon, as a practitioner of emotive description (p. 120).
14. According to Josepb Kerman, “for richness, consistency, and completeness, Tovey’s Beethoven stands out as the most impressive acbievement, perhaps, yet produced by the art of music criticism.” (Kerman, “Tovey’s Beethoven,” in AJan Tyson, ed., Beethoven Studies 2 [London: Oxford University Press, 1977], 191.)
15. Kivy, The Corded Shell, 59.
16. Kivy, The Corded Shell., 46-56, 71-83.
17. Edward T. Cone, “Schubert’s Promissory Note,” Nineteenth Century Music 5/3 (1982): 233.
18. By working from a detailed analysis 10 more general claims, obviously I run the risk that some readers will disagree with some or much of the analysis. Such readers may still find interest in the generalizations that follow, provided they believe that there are satisfactory analyses that oonform to my generalizations. (In any case, the analysis is offered as one way of hearing the passage, one option among many for me or for any other listener)
19. focusing on musical action, and most obviously in my discussion of fictional “musical agents,” I have been inftuenced by Edward T. Cone’s excellent study The Composer’s Voice (Berkeley: University of Califomia Press, 1974). The importance of that book has not yet been sufficiently recognized by music theorists. To trace the precise pattern of agreement and disagreement between Cone’s ideas and mine would require aseparate and rather intricate essay; here I can only record my indebtedness to his work. I encountered Roger Scruton’s fine essay “Understanding Music” (in his The Aesthetic Understanding [London: Methuen, 1983) after formulating the claims and arguments of this paper, but I am pleased by the similarity between his position and mine. Three olher models that were influential for me: work by Flint Schier in aestbetics, and tbe art criticism of Adrian Stokes and Michael Fried.
20. For careful and influential explorations of the point, see Donald Davidson, Essays onActions and Events (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980). My account draws largely on Davidson’s views. Along with Davidson’s work, G. E. M. Anscombe, Intention (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1957) was crucial in establishing tbe study of action as a central preoccupation of current analytic philosopby. Sopbisticated, engaging, recent work includes Daniel Dennett, Brainstorms (Montgomery: Bradford Books, 1978)
21. Christopher Peacocke, Holistic Explanation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979)
22. Adam Monon, Frames of Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980)
23. Jennifer Hornsby, Actions (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)
24. These generalizations simplify, but not in ways tbat affect the musical applications. For dlscussion of necessary and sufficient conditions for an event to be an action, see Davidson, Essays, and Peacocke, Holistic Explanation
25. This point depends on a crucial distinction between Beethoven’s historical intentions and those of the agents in the piece. Suppose a dramatist writes that a character should trip and fall at a certain point in a play. The dramatist intends the clumsiness, but in an important sense it is not his Of her clumsiness, and within the world of the play the clumsiness is not intentional. A similar distinction holds for the quartet. Perhaps Beethoven iotended the passage to be clumsy. Still it makes sense to say that this is not Beethoven’s clumsiness, and that it is not intentional in the world of the quartet.
26. The last three paragraphs are indebted to Davidson. See especially “Agency,” “The Logica1 Form of Action Sentences,” and “The Individuation of Events,” in Essays on Actions and Events. Davidson’s views are controver· sial. Other positions on the individuation of actiODS and events would allow me 10 make the same points, but in a more cumbersome way
27. Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 58.
28. Tovey and Rosen have written influentially about the dramatic character of the c1assica1 style. For characteristic passages. see Donald F. Tovey, “S0nata Forms,” in his Musical Articles from the Encyclopedia Britannica (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), 208-232
29. Charles Rosen, The Classical Style (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972), 70-78.
30. Stanley Cavell, “Tbe Avoidance ofLove: A Readingof King Lear,” in his Must We Mean What We Say? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1969). 267-353, inc1udes insightful suggestions about music and drama. Cavell writes about music on pp. 320-22 and 352-53, but the point of his remarks depends on much of the rest of the essay. Elliot Carter describes hisown music as dramatic in conception. See, ior instance, his remarks on the Second String Quartet, in Else Stone and Kurt Stone, eds., The Writings of Elliott Carter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 278-79.
31. Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction to Poetics, trans. Richard Howard (Minneapolis: UniversityofMinnesota Press, 1981). Todorov hasconlribuled some of Ihe besl work loward Ihe conslruction of a “grammar” of narrative, analogous to the grammar of a language. Some other crucial works in Ihis areas are Vladimir Propp, Morphology ofthe Folktale, Irans. Laurence Scott (Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1968)
32. Claude Levi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” in his Structural Anthropology, trans. Claire Jacobsen and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf (Garden City: AnchorBooks, 1967)
33. Roland Barthes, “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative,” in his Image-MusicText, trans. Stephen Heath (London: Fontana, 1977), and SIZ, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hili and Wang, 1974). These studies are by now somewhat dated: theoretica! work on narrative has recentJy concentrated more on politipercal, psychoana!ytic, or rhetorica! issues ralber than the narrow!y formal issues of slructuralisl analyses. However, the structuralist accounls remain promising for work on musical narrative. TypicaUy such accounts abstract from specific actions and individual characters while generalizing about the patterns of events within “well-formed” narratives: accordingly, this approach seems peculiariy well-suited 10 bringing out similarities between musical and nonmusicaJ narratives.
34. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher (New York: Hili and Wang, 1961), 62-63.
35. Kivy’s The Corded Shell, as I indicated earlier, relies uncritically on a sharp distinction betwccn technical and emotive description of music. Curiousl” however, there is a brief passage in which one can glimpse a promising unification of his account of musical experience, along the same lines that I have been exploring. Kivy observes that 10 regard a piece as expressive is to regard it animistieally. In order to defend the ascription of emotional expression to musie, he argues that aseription 01 emotion to musie figures in a much more general paUern of animistic construal
36. These brief eomments on major theorists summarize detailed interpretations that I hope to publisb shortly