‘Sonate, que me veux tu?’ Cover Image

„Sonate, que me veux tu?”
‘Sonate, que me veux tu?’

Author(s): Mary Sue Morrow
Subject(s): Cultural Essay, Political Essay, Societal Essay
Published by: Replika Alapítvány
Keywords: music; sonate; meaning; aesthetics; discourse; mimesis

Summary/Abstract: The paper addresses a peculiar transition in the history of music aesthetics at the turn of the 19th century. While the first Enlightenment aesthetic theories relegated music to the lower echelons of art for a lack of conceptual tools to address it, by the beginning of the 19th century music was elevated above all the other art forms, a process culminating in Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation and Wagner’s ouvre. Using Thomas Kuhn’s analyses on the dynamics of science, Morrow explains this sudden and perplexing change by uncovering a forgotten strand of contemporary German musical discourse which quietly worked out the conceptual foundations for the would-be revolutionaries. The paper is the first chapter of Music Criticism in the Late Eighteenth Century: Aesthetic Issues in Instrumental Music (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

  • Issue Year: 2005
  • Issue No: 49-50
  • Page Range: 195-209
  • Page Count: 15
  • Language: Hungarian