A01=Berthold Hoeckner
Absolute music
Aesthetic Theory
Allusion
Antithesis
Aphorism
Aporia
Arnold Schoenberg
Author_Berthold Hoeckner
Caesura
Category=AVLA
Chorale
Composer
Cosima Wagner
Dialectic
Dichotomy
Doctor Faustus (novel)
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Erwartung
Explanation
Felix Mendelssohn
Franz Liszt
Genre
Goethe's Faust
Gustav Mahler
Hector Berlioz
Hermeneutics
Hexachord
Idealism
Ideology
Irony
Jean Paul
Kindertotenlieder
Leben
Lessing
Libretto
Lohengrin (opera)
Ludwig Tieck
Ludwig van Beethoven
Modernity
Music criticism
Music Is
Musical language
Musicology
Narration
Narrative
Novalis
Oratorio
Phenomenon
Philosopher
Philosophy
Philosophy of music
Phrase (music)
Physiognomy
Poetry
Postmodernism
Program music
Quarter note
Richard Wagner
Robert Schumann
Romanticism
Schumann
Soren Kierkegaard
Subjectivity
Suffering
Symphonic poem
The Origin of German Tragic Drama
The Philosopher
Theodor W. Adorno
Theory
These Words
Tonality
Treatise
Walter Benjamin
Product details
- ISBN 9780691001494
- Weight: 652g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 10 Nov 2002
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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Programming the Absolute discusses the notorious opposition between absolute and program music as a true dialectic that lies at the heart of nineteenth-century German music. Beginning with Beethoven, Berthold Hoeckner traces the aesthetic problem of musical meaning in works by Schumann, Wagner, Liszt, Mahler, and Schoenberg, whose private messages and public predicaments are emblematic for the cultural legacy of this rich repertory. After Romanticism had elevated music as a language "beyond" language, the ineffable spurred an unprecedented proliferation of musical analysis and criticism. Taking his cue from Adorno, Hoeckner develops the idea of a "hermeneutics of a moment," which holds that musical meaning crystallizes only momentarily--in a particular passage, a progression, even a single note. And such moments can signify as little as a fleeting personal memory or as much as the whole of German music.
Although absolute music emerged with a matrix of values--the integrity of the subject, the aesthetic autonomy of art, and the intrinsic worth of high culture--that are highly contested in musicology today, Hoeckner argues that we should not completely discard the ideal of a music that continues to offer moments of transcendence and liberation. Passionately and artfully written, Hoeckner's quest for an "essayistic musicology" displays an original intelligence willing to take interpretive risks. It is a provocative contribution to our knowledge about some of Europe's most important music--and to contemporary controversies over how music should be understood and experienced.
Berthold Hoeckner is Associate Professor of Music and the Humanities at the University of Chicago.
