MUSICA - A CHANGING CONCEPT IN EUROPEAN SOCIETIES

• Authors: Strohm Reinhard
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Musical myths are relevant to both music history and cultural anthropology. They typify a culture not simply through their contents, but through their very existence. Interpretations of music as material culture prevail, but there are also anthropomorphic myths. Considered as a world-wide phenomenon, is 'Music' one thing or many different things? The relative continuity of the term itself encourages, despite Foucault's misgivings, the assumption of a coherent entity that is modified by processes of 'translation'. Music's 'autonomy' - from social context, for example - is taken for granted in some cultures, and seems demonstrated by the possibility of decontextualising cultural transfers; but there is much less evidence of an autonomous history of music, for example from other histories. As an object of social practice, music may be regarded as heteronomous, being identifiable with the social 'Self'; as a structure and pursuit in its own terms, music may be an autonomous 'Other' (as in Schubert's song 'An die Musik'). Ancient Jewish, Greek and Roman cultures already used music in socially divided spheres and forms. Ancient music theory, as transmitted to early Christianity, is a multifarious package in which ethics and structure are about equally emphasized. The Church first regulates musical practice in its struggle against the pagan world, then transfers the divisions thus established into its own hierarchy (e.g., in the distinctions between practice and theory, or 'cantor' and 'musicus'). Legitimation through script is used pro and - increasingly - contra the central authorities; musical production attains a high status and transcends traditional performance of the 'opus Dei', often becoming the 'opus' of a composer. Well before the Renaissance, music diversifies into 'public' and 'private' spheres as well as 'sacred' and 'secular' functions; music-producing institutions rival the Church. Humanists promote the work-character but also the communicative (rhetorical) and imitative powers of music, requesting it to 'add something to the world'. Courts, Church and schools of early modern Europe offer music as their ideology-led 'world interpretation' in concert, ritual and theatre. In the eighteenth century, the bourgeois 'public' becomes the arbiter of musical practice as well as signification. This 'public', politically and socially in crisis, reflects itself in a critically diversified musical concept today.

Keywords

EN

MUSICAL CULTURE; SOCIOLOGY OF MUSIC

Discipline

• ARTS_&_ARCHITECTURE: ARTS & ARCHITECTURE

• Publisher: Polska Akademia Nauk. Instytut Sztuki PAN
• Journal: Muzyka
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 53
• Issue: 2(109)
• Pages: 3-24
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Strohm Reinhard

• Reinhard Strohm, University of Oxford, Faculty of Music, St. Aldate's, Oxford OX1 1DB, Great Britain

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

09PLAAAA057723