Antithetical Arts On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music

by Kivy, Peter

• ISBN13: 9780199596294
• ISBN10: 0199596298
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-04-15
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Antithetical Arts constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specificattempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer isthat, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content.

Author Biography

Peter Kivy is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
The Founding of Formalism	p. 1
First the Music, and Then the Words	p. 3
Designs À La Grecque	p. 29
Body and Soul	p. 53
The Fortunes of Formalism	p. 77
Mood and Music	p. 79
Persona Non Grata	p. 101
Action and Agency	p. 119
Shostakovich's Secret?	p. 157
The Fate of Formalism	p. 177
The Failure of Formalism and the Failure of its Foes	p. 179
Attention, Ritual, and the Additive Strategy	p. 201
Musical Morality	p. 215
Empty Pleasure to the Ear	p. 235
Bibliography	p. 263
Index	p. 269
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