On the musically melancholic
Temporality and affects in western music history
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11344730 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yonatan Bar-Yoshafat (0000-0002-6833-3034, The Department of Literature, Language and Arts, The Open University of Israel, Ra’anana, Israel, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 918-938 |
| Publication date | 2021-08-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | History of European Ideas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0191-6599 • E-ISSN: 1873-541X |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01916599.2020.1857031 |
| OpenAlex | W3114156756 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 30 |
Music’s power to express and arouse feelings has been one of its principal attributes from antiquity. While the topic remains prevalent in contemporary discourse, relatively little attention had been given to specifically melancholic expressions in European music. The article examines various stages in western music history vis-à-vis the changing formulations and receptions of melancholy as a cultural phenomenon, from the time it was perceived as a sign of either a physical or a moral problem to later historical periods, when positive and negative views on melancholy intertwined. In this article, I point at an interesting connection between melancholic representations in music works and music’s unique relationship with time. As I show, prevalent conventions of pre-modern music, which manifest cyclical (or ‘theological’) structures of time, keep the listener’s experience simultaneously rooted in the present and floating in eternity. Alternatively, the linear (or ‘teleological’) sense of temporality found in early-modern and modern music works allows for the possibility of ‘looking back’ and experiencing longings. Various diachronic and synchronic temporal sensitivities, which manifest explicit (via titles or texts) or implicit melancholic feelings, are explored. Music’s linearity is shown to provide it a lost past to mourn
Aesthetics · Analogy · Art · Epistemology · Eternity · Feeling · Literature · Musical · Musicality · Phenomenon · Sign (mathematics · Teleology · Temporality · Music History and Culture · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Neuroscience and Music Perception · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0.33 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2023 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |