Musik & Ästhetik, 2024, Jg. 28, Ausgabe 111

The author reads Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey as a coherent work, or as a work to be perceived as such, at the center of which is the handling of emotions. Starting from the first line of the Iliad, which sings of Achilles’ anger, he traces the »emotional curves« of important protagonists in the Trojan War. The story ends with the shared mourning of Achilles and Priam, who both try to come to terms with the loss of someone close to them (best friend and son respectively) – across the line of enmity that divides them. This portrayal of dealing with moving emotions continues in the Odyssey, which ends with the violent conflict between the returning war hero and the suitors being ended by the humane power of the voice.

E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Six canzonas (1808) are among the first compositions aiming at regaining an historical musical style, that one of late Renaissance. But according to composers’ names he mentioned in a letter and some years later in reviews, he obviously at this time had no real knowledge of the composition technique of that period, even more as music from the late 1500s was rather hard to find. In Hoffmann’s first writings composers from the Bach era (and younger) serve as examples for the »old style«, and only in an article from 1814 he mentioned Palestrina. On the other hand around 1800 there was circulating a number of pieces allegedly written by that composer (but in fact weren’t) which were not characterized by polyphonic setting, but written in a rather homorhythmical chordal style. Thus, the ali­enness of old music for Hoffmann and his contemporaries likely rather consisted in being performed a cappella than in vocal polyphony. As in the Six canzonas polyphony is rarely used, those pieces likely served as templates for their style, combined with a number of harmonic features which come from Hoffmann’s own time. A real awareness of the historically changing character of music didn’t yet exist.

In the conventional historiography of early nineteenth-century German-language opera, the aesthetic beliefs of the early Romantic German poets often play a significant role. This article points out that their aesthetic explanations were not actually predictions for future operas, but rather the result of their reflection on the Opera buffas of the eighteenth century, especially those by Mozart. To elucidate the Romantic image of Mozart reflected in his Opera buffas, this text first outlines the poetic and artistic perspectives on irony and humor of the early Romantic writers (Friedrich Schlegel, Jean Paul, Ludwig Tieck), as well as their aesthetic connections to Mozart’s Opera buffas. Subsequently, this article highlights the positive reactions that romantic irony elicited among German music criticism and German composers. Only then does the significance of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s idea of opera in the Romantic reception of Mozart and Mozart’s often overlooked influence on subsequent times become clear.

In »musique sa­turée« (»saturated music«), a relatively young movement in French music whose main re­presentatives are the composers Franck Bedrossian (*1971) and Raphaël Cendo (*1975), the instrumental sounds taken to extremes resemble the process of audio-technical distortion: The acoustic signal is misinterpreted by a microphone, creating a variety of sound artifacts. As a result of this interpretation, new frequencies are created that are not contained in the original signal and which also construct a new sound quality. But already advanced playing techniques such as the circular bow or overpressure in string instruments can be related to electronic music techniques such as granular synthesis. Musique saturée is linked to spectral music in many ways, because it places the parameter of timbre at the center of composing and derives further musical fields of relationships from its properties. Contrary to what the adjective »saturée« suggests, compositional saturation is not only related to high volume, but also to the density of the use of a sound gesture. Therefore, an important feature of this compositional style is an excessive (or saturated), almost excessive use of one or more sound gestures within a composition, which creates a saturation of the structure that spans the entire piece. Such sound trajectories, in which sound, texture and form are inextricably interwoven, are examined in the article using Bedrossian’s string quartet Tracés d’ombres (2007).

How can one understand the hopelessness of a victim or feel empathy for it when there are no words left? At a time when language and its arguments seem to trigger more contradictions and controversies than ever before, music apparently makes it possible to reflect more calmly and thus to develop a more attentive and, above all, more differentiated sense of the increased vulnerability among people in the context of war and violence in the current world. The essay focuses on two music projects related to Israel. In the Caravan Orchestra & Choir joint project of Haifa University, the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar and the Yiddish Summer festival Weimar, Jewish and Arab students from Israel, together with students from the Weimar University of Music, develop a concert program with Eastern European Jewish or Yiddish and Arabic music. Another recent project is Iván Fischer’s Compassion (Kompasszió), based on J. S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, where Jewish and Arab music enter into a dialogue with Bach’s composition. Fischer defines this concert project as St. Matthew Passion and other passion stories. Individual parts of an abridged version of Bach’s passion work are alternated with Jewish music and the repertory of the Arabic lute Ud and the Near Eastern frame drum Daf. Both projects seem absolutely necessary in contemporary musical life. The important role of music in a time of conflict proves as effectful, at least for those involved. In the end, perhaps a strong humanity supported by music may awake legitimate hopes for more optimistic visions of the future.