Musik & Ästhetik, 2020, Jg. 24, Ausgabe 95

The intention of this essay is to open up and understand, in resonance-theoretical terms, multi-layered musical approaches and thus the role of music for the late modern human being’s relationship with the world. It begins by introducing the core ideas of sociological resonance theory, as well as certain particularities of music as a resonance sphere. Resonance theory describes late modern humanity’s relationship with the world as predominantly instrumental, indifferent or alienated, as it revolves around the availability of the world, instrumentalisation, increase in resources and expansion of reach. Nonetheless, a relationship with the world is still possible in which the world, or sections of it, are experienced as an answering, living and touching Other. This resonant relationship with the world can be characterised via the aspects of affection, self-efficacy, transformation and unavailability. In the main part of the text, three dimensions of resonance are used to develop a systematics of music as a resonance sphere and elucidate it through examples from different musical areas: the diagonal dimension concerns experiences of resonance with sounds, instruments and musical apparatuses; the horizontal dimension concerns experiences of social resonance among musicians and between musicians and the audience; and the vertical dimension concerns the way music renders palpable the human relationship with the world as a whole. Finally, the authors discuss the relationship between resonance experiences and alienation, as well as questions of resonance for sensibilities. These reflections are intended to open up perspectives for a resonance-theoretically guided disclosure of musical approaches that enable a deeper understanding of music’s role in the human relationship with the world, and of the processes for developing and cultivating resonance for sensibilities and experiences of resonance.

Kierkegaard’s metaphor of the demonic, which he applies especially to the experience of music, is well-suited to elucidate critically the concepts of resonance currently under discussion in the social and cultural sciences and the humanities. The phenomena to which the metaphor of resonance is usually applied are largely the same ones that Kierkegaard, and Paul Tillich after him, attempt to understand via the demonic. Confronting resonance-oriented thought with the metaphor of the demonic using the same phenomena can reveal the blind spots and a number of the serious problems in conceptions of resonance, and allow them to be viewed from a different angle. This especially allows those implications of resonance which are frequently avoided to come into view. What is viewed as a connection to things in the world from the perspective of resonance often reveals itself, when viewed from the perspective of the demonic, as an illusion. In addition to a critique of resonance, this essay seeks to find a way into Kierkegaard’s complex philosophy of music.

Eisler composed the six songs of the cycle Hölderlin Fragments in 1943, while exiled in California. Like his German Symphony, they are an expression of how he envisaged Germany in the shadow of the Battle of Stalingrad. He consciously continued along the path of this legacy while in exile by taking recourse to classical German literature: he adapted Hölderlin’s texts, reducing them to what, in 1943, he considered the essence of their content. The overall theme of the songs is a remembrance of the past, lost Germany, an idealised retrospective, but also a portrayal of the catastrophic present. The cycle does not display any continuous process; rather, Eisler places a central point of departure and precondition at the middle of the cycle: Elegy 43 (originally titled Der Frieden [Peace]). This points to the date from which everything else that Eisler wishes to articulate through the Hölderlin fragments receives its »now« (Gregor Wittkop).

Current discussions in the arts, sound studies and globalization contexts give the impression that both the concept of music and our perceptions of music are increasingly losing their distinctiveness. Added to this is the progressive dissolution of the distinction between art music and other kinds of music as well as the blurring of the boundaries between production and reception or professionalism and dilettantism in the wake of new digital music technologies. In order to understand the resulting new confusion, the paper uses approaches from differentiation theory. A critique of a modernization theory perspective based on Hegel, Max Weber and Niklas Luhmann then leads to a discussion of music in the light of recent sociological contributions by Andreas Reckwitz and Luc Boltanski/Arnaud Esquerre on understanding late capitalist present since about 1970.