Musik & Ästhetik, 2009, Jg. 13, Ausgabe 50

Adorno Listens to Records e.g. Klemperer´s »Don Giovanni«

Adorno´s work as a music critic was always supported by a well-founded recording aesthetic latent in many of his writings but not formulated beyond a fragmentary state. Taking Adorno´s review of Otto Klemperer´s 1967 recording of Mozart´s Don Giovanni as an example the author reconstructs Adorno´s ideas. For him the central issue is the text or »matter« itself consisting of the triad as balanced as possible of mensural neumic/mimetic and idiomatic elements – i.e. notation interpretation and tradition. Although he traces the genesis of the text to the invention of musical notation he does not recognise that this new medium of sound recording must likewise alter the musical text. Rather Adorno views the record as the saviour of the autonomous work of art in the age of its enrichment with external and superficial elements. The article reflects upon Adorno´s approach from the perspective of the present which is experiencing a further medial upheaval through CDs and mp3s.

Finis musicae.
Angst of the future in the works of Thomas Mann and Hans Pfitzner

At first glance it appears surprising that Thomas Mann should write in his extremely extended essay Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen in 1917 a long digression on Hans Pfitzner´s opera Palestrina which had its premiere in the same year. Feeling alone in his conflict with the »progressive« trends of his time he was glad to find an ally in Pfitzner and his opera. He was able to identify his own conservatism in this opera and became more conscious of it. But the »ironic conservatism« which to his satisfaction predominated in the opera seemed to contradict the political views of the composer. In addition the formula »sympathy with death« which he used to identify the opera did not agree with the uniquely human character of this work which he appreciated. So it appears that the fortunate convergence between Thomas Mann and Hans Pfitzner became a hidden source of new reflections on the part of Thomas Mann and at the same time dissociation with the composer.

Between Feeling and Illusion.
Towards the Problem of the Immanence of Musical Meaning in Susanne K. Langer´s Theory

According to Susanne Langer music is a presentative symbol par excellence which in virtue of a structural resemblance between musical works and human subjectivity can directly present and provide access to »the morphology of feeling«. Exhibiting dynamic patterns analogous to the dynamic patterns of emotive life music however does not refer to them. Langer argues that the meaning or import of music does not point beyond the symbol but is intrinsic by its nature. The focus of the article is on Langers claim about the immanence of musical meaning. The author begins with a reconstruction of Langer´s theory and then critically examines the arguments which Langer advanced in support of her immanence thesis. It is argued that Langer´s theory suffers from the conflict between two notions of musical meaning – qua logical picture of feeling and qua tertiary quality.

Marsyas Defeats Apollo: The Reinterpretation of a Central Cultural Myth in the Aesthetics of the No Longer Fine Arts

The story of Marsyas and Apollo tells of the first instrumental competition in Western music history; it ended fatally for Apollo´s challenger. Since the Renaissance this has been a central myth of European aesthetics. Its reinterpretation in the 20th century – the affront against Apollo and the sympathy for the victim the skinned satyr – became the paradigm for an epochal change in aesthetics. The essay sketches the prehistory of this reinterpretation from Ovid to the painters Titian and José de Ribera to Winckelmann Lessing Friedrich Schlegel and Heine and finally to Friedrich Nietzsche whose elevation of Dionysus assisted the subsequent support for and identifications with Marsyas in modernity. Kafka´s story »In the Penal Colony« can be considered the esoteric key text of this aesthetic turn and its exoteric counterpart is Günter Eich´s essay »An Epilogue by King Midas«.

Theses on the »Threepenny Opera«

The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill originally conceived as a reworking of The Beggar´s Opera by John Gay and Christoph Pepusch was written for actors and premiered at the Theatre am Schiffbauerdamm. To a certain extent the work can be classified as a play with music. At the same time however it incorporates what its final title names: opera as a genre and a theatrical presentation. One finds elements of Baroque opera opera buffa the catalogues of leitmotifs to which Wagner´s dramas were reduced as well as a few bars from Mozart´s Magic Flute and Humperdinck´s Hansel and Gretel. In addition there are central formal principles of opera (scene and duet ensemble overture finale) and finally also insignias of sacred music. For »three pennies« transformed into beggar´s fare – because it deals with beggars and those who exploit them with the poor and the rich? It is sooner about the culture industry that profits from the misery than the »what if« element that is inherent in opera in more than simply its everyday plays on words.