《音樂美學》讀書筆記——2. Absolute Music by Thomas Grey

• The term absolute music is first introduced by Wagner in his programmatic commentary for a performance of Beethovens Ninth Symphony in 1846.
• Eduard Hanslicks treatise of 1854 On the Musically Beautiful has traditionally been viewed as a theory of absolute music.
• For them the term only denotes pure instrumental music.

Three propositions:

• Some music is absolute (the normative view in music scholarship and criticism)
  • Includes most classical instrumental genres such as the fugue, the string quartet and the symphony.
  • They could be understood and appreciated without reference to concepts, images or verbal data.
  • Does not include texted vocal music.
  • They are conceived to match at least some elements of linguistic features such as meter, rhythm and rhyme.
  • Does not include works of a descriptive title.
  • Compositional style and substance are the determining factors, not liturgical function.
• All music is absolute (German Romantic-metaphysical tradition)
  • Arthur Schopenhauer The World as Will and Representation
    • Music is a direct reflection of the all-encompassing principle of the Will. (Lack of reference to the phenomenal world)
    • Thus any titles or texts may serve an illustrative function, but our perception of the music itself is not fundamentally altered by them.
  • Our attitude toward the music may be inflected by textual and cultural contingencies, but the music is what we hear first.
• No music is absolute (post-modern)
  • Richard Wagners open letter On Franz Liszts Symphonic Poems
    • No music is absolute. Anti-Schopenhauerian
    • All empirical musical practices are conditioned by aspects of the human body, voice and fundamental cultural practices.

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