In the Name of the Law: Schoenberg and his Critics
Buch, Esteban
In the Name of the Law: Schoenberg and his Critics - 2004.
59
Throughout his career, Arnold Schoenberg was a regular target for music critics, who were fond of linking technical issues to a political vocabulary and to images of bodily and psychic deviance. This discursive shift between music and society was current usage by the times of the first atonal works, and was mainly grounded on concepts having an established meaning, litteral or metaphorical, in both fields. The notion of law ( Gesetz), anchored in the scientific idea of natural law, was particularly instrumental in viewing the abandonment of tonality as a political or a moral fault. This paper deals with the concept of musical lawfulness, focusing on both the rhetorical impact and the logical relevance of the analogy between the tonal system, as described by treatises on harmony, and a “legal system”, as defined by the theory of law.
In the Name of the Law: Schoenberg and his Critics - 2004.
59
Throughout his career, Arnold Schoenberg was a regular target for music critics, who were fond of linking technical issues to a political vocabulary and to images of bodily and psychic deviance. This discursive shift between music and society was current usage by the times of the first atonal works, and was mainly grounded on concepts having an established meaning, litteral or metaphorical, in both fields. The notion of law ( Gesetz), anchored in the scientific idea of natural law, was particularly instrumental in viewing the abandonment of tonality as a political or a moral fault. This paper deals with the concept of musical lawfulness, focusing on both the rhetorical impact and the logical relevance of the analogy between the tonal system, as described by treatises on harmony, and a “legal system”, as defined by the theory of law.
Réseaux sociaux