Tilbake til det neumiske: Fortolkning og dialektikk hos Adorno og Harnoncourt

My aim in this article is to develop a possible understanding of Adorno’s thoughts on musical interpretation as they appear in a collection of fragments posthumously published in 2001 under the title of Zu einer Theorie der musikalischen Reproduktion [Towards a Theory of Musical Reproduction]. I do this by using an actual sounding example, with emphasis on the dialectical relationship between the written text and the sounding realization. On the one hand, I use a passage by Beethoven (Symphony No. 1, First Movement) that is characterized by some philological uncertainties regarding articulation, explained in slightly different ways in three so-called Urtext-editions of the score. On the other hand, I use a recorded interpretation of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Austrian Nikolaus Harnoncourt. I will argue that, in this performance, Harnoncourt’s articulation of the actual passage provides a useful illustration of the tension between text and sound. Moreover, as the interpretation is also musically intriguing, it seems to function as a thought-provoking example of the dialectical relationship which for Adorno characterizes a successful musical interpretation. Thus, the article aims to shed light on both Adorno’s somewhat intricate speculations and Harnoncourt’s personal practice of interpretation.

Nuets responsivitet – når det fremmede og det uperfekte setter premissen! Et filosofisk essay om musikalsk improvisasjon

As we improvise in music and become increasingly engrossed in the activity, we are intuitively engaged in a playful negotiation of various aesthetic possibilities in the Now. We are in a state where random impulses and irrational, unintentional actions become key premise providers along with everything we have learned through knowledge and experience. This essay reflects on the responsiveness of the Now in musical improvisation. We ask: What does the experience of the Now offer? Does it come with any kind of ethics and accountability and, if so, what kind and to whom does it apply? In our elaborations we are influenced by our own experiences of, and reflections on, compositional and music therapeutic practice. We refer to the theory of musical improvisation and early interaction, and also philosophical texts, especially those by Mikhail Bakhtin. We suggest that the responsiveness of the Now in musical improvisation is a mindset that challenges us both ethically and aesthetically. It does so by seeking creative satisfaction, joy and insight, taking shape through sensory perception that is close to intuition, mimesis and imagination. Its meaning remains unfinalised and foreign to us. It is also risky and is situated on the boundary between music and performer, between performer and other performers, and between the past and future of our actions. The ideal is to strive for a Now that can be experienced as the right now but also as a Now that suits the responses we try to find room for when we improvise.

Den glatte musikken og muligheten for en erfaring

A word often used to describe music is “smooth”. It is mostly meant as a negative term, used to label music as commercial, light, superficial and easily forgotten. However, smooth music is also well-made, with a high level of professionality. In this chapter I take as a starting point the criticism of beauty as smoothness found in Byung-Chul Han’s book Die Errettung des Schönen [Saving beauty], and investigate how this criticism applies to music. Furthermore, I try to define what makes music smooth. While smoothness can easily be defined when speaking about physical objects, music is evasive. Hence, smoothness is defined metaphorically, and according to what it is not, e.g. a work of art, or something that can lead to an experience, a concept I discuss in light of Gadamer, Heidegger, Adorno and Vetlesen. I claim that due to the elusive character of music almost any music can lead to an experience, but it is not a product of the subject’s efforts alone. Moreover, smoothness as a characteristic of music seems to have a liminal quality to it, as it cannot be defined in light of its opposite, but is trapped in its own perfection.

Det klingendes meningspotensial og dets slumrende klangbunn i lytteren: Utkast til en musikkinspirert livsanskuelse

In this essay I am aiming to sketch a context of my view of music, taking the form of a musically-inspired Weltanschauung [world view]. Confronted with “great” music of all types, I experience the particular ability of music to bring consciousness into a state of listening, attentive “passivity”, without the need for an explanation of what it is about. Afterwards, the thinking consciousness may rise to active reflection on the unique potential of meaning in music – so unlike anything else – and on the equally enigmatic resonant disposition in me that responds to music as an essential meaningful appeal. Although music has all the characteristics of its human origin and historical context, it may be considered as a spring welling from the very source of the world: Its potential of meaning is rooted deeper than human culture. Thus, music offers a confrontation with objective reality, not with something “staged” by our consciousness or, not to mention, by our brain. This musical confrontation with reality has led to my questioning the subjectivism of Kant and especially Fichte, and to an interest in Schelling’s philosophy of nature as a convincing refutation of subjectivistic epistemology. In the name of reality, I touch on the problematic interpretations and conclusions of neuroscience and brain research concerning self-perception. This sort of “philosophy”, where the very self (i.e. the “I” or the subject) is identified with the object studied, i.e. the brain itself. This view may also imply a reductionistic understanding of the experience of meaningful music as “staged” by the reward system of the brain.

Musikkfilosofiske tankekonstellasjoner om musikalsk mottakelighet og språk

This essay focuses on two themes: man’s receptivity to music, and the verbalization of musical experience in a philosophical context. I begin with the listener’s attraction to music and then move on to longing as a basic concept in understanding musical receptivity. In the philosophy of music, the aesthetic-musical experience is of central importance to being able to verbally express what happens in the meeting between music and listener. Three central philosophers of music, Nietzsche, Adorno and Jankélévitch, all address the possible language character of music, although they do so in different ways and with different aims. I expand on some thoughts of these philosophers that open up for three different constellations of thought about the path from the aesthetic-musical receptivity to music to the philosophical verbalization of man’s attraction to music.

Kunstverkets nødvendighet

A work of art is never just a thing or an object. In the art experience, a relationship is established between a person and a part-subject/part-object, never between a person and just a “thing”. These claims are in a certain tension with the well-known critique of the traditional western focus on music as works or objects. The discussion in this essay is based on three premises. The first premise is that our object-oriented understanding of music is historically and socially constructed. The second premise is that the historical and social origins of all ways of thinking in no way prevent some ways of thinking from being “better” than others. This opens up the possibility of being able to think that some ways of relating to music are more meaningful than others. The third premise is that a fundamental prerequisite for moving encounters between the human subject and music is the very idea of music as a work of art (as a part-subject/part-object). The necessity of a rethinking of the work of art as a part-subject/part-object is related to the possibility of re-romanticization, re-describing the world poetically.

Musikalsk-estetisk erfaring som tilsynekomsthendelse

The essay examines the notion of musical–aesthetic experience as an event of appearance in the light of the aesthetic theories of Heidegger, Gadamer, Adorno, Seel, and Gumbrecht. Despite their radically different responses to the challenges posed by late modernity and their distinctive ways of rethinking metaphysics, some underlying common concerns and insights can be detected. What appears in aesthetic experience is, for all of them, not merely a construction by the subject, as implied by Kant’s aesthetics, but rather ‘something’ that arises from the work of art itself. For Heidegger, this happens through the process of ‘enowning’ (Ereignis), while Gadamer speaks of ‘presentation’ (Vollzug), Adorno of ‘epiphanies’ of the ‘non-identical,’ Seel of ‘appearance,’ and Gumbrecht of the ‘production of presence’. There is a common insight that the status of the subject must be changed by such experiences. Instead of ‘using violence against the object’ (Adorno), a certain passivity is appropriate. Gumbrecht suggests applying Heidegger’s notion of ‘releasement’ (Gelassenheit) to aesthetic experience as a response to the ‘loss of world’ in late modernity. The essay shows how the event of appearance points towards features typically associated with the notion of musical experience as existential experience.

La oss snakke om musikk: Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroders og Ludwig Tiecks musikalske fantasier

In this article, I take as my starting point an opinion that many share: it is difficult to talk about music (Barthes, 1977). This opinion is rooted in the romantic ideal of autonomy (Dahlhaus, 1994), leading to the emancipation of music from language (Neubauer, 1986). I discuss some aspects of this tension between language and music through close readings of the essays in Phantasien über die Kunst [Fantasies on Art] (1799/2000) by the Early German Romanticists Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder (1773–1798) and Ludwig Tieck (1773–1853). They emphasize music’s distinctive ability to convey various forms of transcendental experiences and insights that language falls short of. At the same time, their essays on music demonstrate an inner tension between a rich and literary experimental discourse discussing the limitation of language in relation to music’s transcendental meaning. In the essays in Phantasien, Wackenroder and Tieck constitute an innovative art-critical discourse that in many ways deals with art by making itself a work of art (Naumann, 1990). The literary-poetic approach to music exemplified in these essays changed the understanding of music itself, and enabled hearing music as an ideal for poetic language. I argue that the tension between language and music, as a historical legacy from the Romantic period, enables us to recognize language’s co-constitutive significance for our musical experience while at the same time making us attentive to language’s own musicality. The effort to say something about what we hear enriches and expands our linguistic involvement with music, as well as other parts of our lives.

Musikk som kontrafaktisk meningsskaping

Why is music so important to us? There have been numerous attempts to answer this question, from a variety of perspectives. And yet, somehow this phenomenon that pervades so many aspects of our lives transcends attempts to capture precisely why it moves us. Contemporary philosophers and musicologists have at their disposal different and conflicting philosophies when it comes to exploring issues concerning music. In this chapter I will move beyond divergent philosophies of music, like essentialism and contextualism, and explore counterfactual perspectives on the musical experience as a distinctive form of meaning-making. Although metaphorical qualities of music have received considerable attention from philosophers, the significance of the counterfactual for the musical experience has largely been overlooked. However, by virtue of the fact that they are paradoxical configurations, metaphors provide the key to understanding counterfactual meaning-making. Based on philosophical texts and insights into how meaning is created counterfactually in our daily consciousness, I argue that, on the one hand, musical experience is counterfactually conditioned and, on the other hand, that music – through the counterfactual – contributes to meaning-making in our lives. The chapter contributes to the philosophy of music by advancing an alternative understanding of musical meaning-making through the counterfactual. By shedding new light on concepts like the irreducible and ineffable qualities of music, this understanding may also open new avenues to explore how music can be such a potent medium for understanding reality, for self-knowledge, liberation, pleasure, discipline and the exercise of power.

En økologisk musikkforståelse

Music is conceptualized in a myriad of ways according to musicological traditions, epistemologies, cultural contexts, knowledge interests, and more. How music is conceived takes form when people are engaged in an ‘artful practice’ that weaves together music, words, acts, objects, meanings, perceptions and people. This article considers how the materiality of music, musical structures, musical semantics and, not least, how music(king) is practiced within a specific historical, cultural and practical context, determines how it is conceived and conceptualized.