Musik & Ästhetik, 2016, Jg. 20, Ausgabe 78

Musical Eschatology – This text examines the structure of music history understood in aesthetic terms. The starting point is the controversial notion of the tendency of the musical material, which inscribes history into the musical work of art itself. It follows from the material’s tendency that music history has a forwards direction. An eschatological structure is posited as this direction’s condition of possibility.

Blurred Sounds, Buzzing, the Beautiful Illusion: Theorizing Austria via Georg Friedrich Haas – Polytonality, fractional degrees and microtones were a subject addressed in treatises on harmony a hundred years ago and, with little success, in compositional efforts too. It was only with Georg Friedrich Haas that a composer succeeded in bringing microtonal composition to the major concert halls and the programmes of their orchestras. Using his concerto grosso Nr. 1 for four alphorns and orchestra (premiered in 2014), the article examines the causes of his microtonal approach’s success. Here microtonality is tied to specific instruments and early musical experiences of the author. Haas locates his music. He refers to a local sound at three levels: Viennese orchestral performance culture before the First World War, the invented tradition of an alpine instrument, and acoustic experiences with electrical everyday appliances. Haas’s microtonal approach gives foreign elements the chance to come from Central Europe. The discussion about the exotic in hundred-year-old pre-postcolonial theories of harmony (von Oettingen, Louis/Thuille, Capellen, Ziehn, Riemann) is recapitulated in this context.

The Model of Axial Symmetry in Schönberg’s op. 19, no. 4 – This essay thematizes axial symmetry in the fourth movement of Arnold Schönberg’s op. 19. The position of note groups and motifs (in mm. 1-10) is explained with reference to five levels of order on the basis of a horizontal axial symmetry. The axis of symmetry is the only passage in the piece with pedal (in mm. 4/5), which stands out for its sonic variety and density. The axisymmetrical perspective reveals a palindromic construction in which the course of the composition seems largely predetermined. The author subsequently examines mm. 10/11-13 in detail: previously unknown connections and unsolved questions are described and explained.

Romantic »Universal Poetry« Versus »Forms Moved in Sound«. Traces of Transcendence in the Symphonies of the 19th Century – Using symphonies by Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms as examples, this essay discusses which of its »truths« music loses if one only views its »pure« structure and attempts to explain the compositional process purely in terms of immanent laws – in keeping with Eduard Hanslick’s motto: »Forms moved in sound are the only content of music«. Aspects that, to cite the literary scholar Karl Heinz Bohrer, could be described as the »idea of the sudden«, »déjà-vu« (Proust), or »epiphany« (Joyce) would then be discarded. And yet those very aspects, as Umberto Eco writes, can be understood as a productive »shock« that – as the irruption of the »other« into the self-referential structure – manifests the transcendental aspects of music in an immediate sensual form. While Romantics like Ludwig Tieck and E.T.A. Hoffmann propounded this art-religious level of experience, and thus a specific aura to the works, music analysis in the Hanslick tradition tends to argue away such matters. It thus ignores musical experiences that can still be had by unbiased listeners – who can, to use Robert Schumann’s phrase, be described as »re-creative listeners« – to this day.

The Question of Quality – Contemporary music is experiencing an upheaval, moving away from the great works with their claims to truth and quality towards a practice of activity and casualness. The present text examines this situation critically, searches for the reasons and risks, and discusses the criteria for an accomplished music that sets its own standards and therefore has a chance of being substantial and long-lived.