Musik & Ästhetik, 2021, Jg. 25, Ausgabe 98

Since Leibniz developed his conception of the monad and presented it as a nutshell, as it were, of his philosophical thought this intellectual atom, or imagined embodiment of an idea, never lost its attraction as a model for self-contained entities. The monad is a philosophical figuration, seemingly tangible and immaterial at the same time. Somewhat surprisingly, and hitherto rarely considered, Goethe connected his aesthetic reflections on music with this Leibnizean notion. This contribution examines and assesses this intriguing connection, which, for Goethe, came close to a symbol in music. It discusses the contextualizing variants of the monad from Novalis to Deleuze and E.T.A. Hoffmann to Adorno and thus investigates its place in discourses on musical aesthetics.

The majority of the musicians around 1700 were forgotten, and this is even more the case for the women musicians. At first sight, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre seems to be a remarkable exception among the musicians of her era. This fact justifies the great interest that is shown in her today. But her current »fame« is due above all to the fact that in the 20th century her compositions were rediscovered, which are generally rated as of very high quality. In order to understand the adoration that the artist received in her day, other factors must be taken into account. They are of a cultural, social and epistemological nature and can therefore also be found in other biographies of women musicians. The research shows that in the case of Jacquet de la Guerre, one can assume a mixture that is advantageous for a career, consisting of talent, favorable external circumstances, personal determination and a clear view of the possibilities open to a musician. The comparison between Jacquet de la Guerre and her colleagues shows the scope of action and the limits that determined the artistic life of the women musicians of the Ancien Régime.

Due to the tasks of the organist, improvisation is one of the essential foundations of composition, not only in French organ culture. This finding is not only valid for the 20th century: Already in the 19th century, »improvisation« is documented as a genre in its own right. In this respect, a great deal of emphasis is placed on Gregorian chant. The article examines the findings on the basis of a late composition by Olivier Messiaen from the Livre du Saint-Sacrement of 1984, »Institution de l’Eucharistie« – and thus on the basis of a work whose constructive peculiarities hardly seem to allow for improvisational liberties, but which was explicitly composed in the context of the mass. The work of Charles Tournemire plays a special role in the genesis of this composition, but also generally in Messiaen’s use of improvisational devices.

This text examines multimedia productions by four female composers born around 1980 – Brigitta Muntendorf, Jagoda Szmytka, Julia Mihály and Kasia Głowicka, to ascertain how far the person becomes part of the performance, and thus an object of art-aesthetic reasoning, in each case. Common elements and procedures in performances include dealing with found material (texts, music, images). The location of this undertaking turns some observers and listeners into lovers, while others become connoisseurs whose aesthetic attentiveness is easily absorbed by knowledge – which at least helps reduce the pain of exposing themselves to the lover.

Opera and film are two different forms oft art; if they are connected (and cinematic representation is not only a means of do­cumenting opera on stage) they will be integrated – transforming conventions of stage performances to those of narrating and dramatizing the story that is told by the opera as well as the affectivity and dramaticality of music to the forms and strategies of cinematic narration. An in an extreme form the adaptation of both forms is a transfer of dramatic constellation of the opera to film drama, using the expressivity of music as modelling the affective charge of film scenes. Thus the relation of opera and film is an active process of building up intertextual and intermedial relations constituting scenes of a discrete semanto-dramatic character based on both opera and film. The article discusses the problem of relating opera and film and shows some examples of the practice of creatively handling the transfer of semantic integration of operatic and filmic forms of expression.