Antithetical Arts
On the Ancient Quarrel between Literature and Music
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4849034 |
|---|---|
| Authors | L Goehr (Columbia University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 313-317 |
| Publication date | 2010-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The British Journal of Aesthetics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-0904 • E-ISSN: 1468-2842 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/aesthj/ayq007 |
| OpenAlex | W2079947606 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Peter Kivy's book offers a rigorous and witty defence of musical formalism. It is a pleasure to read. He defends a position of ‘enhanced formalism’, according to which ‘absolute music’ is expressive without being expressive of. This implies that one does not need to look beyond music's tonally moving forms to account either for music's meaning or for why music moves or has so great an impact upon some people. Kivy grants that some people find meaning in absolute music by imputing to it subjective, literary, or social meanings ‘external’ to it, but such a mode of interpretation conflicts with music's ‘internal’ demand to be listened to in and for itself. Kivy aims to ground this demand through ‘logically proper’ means. Kivy does not tell us much about form despite his interest in defending formalism. He is more focused on formalism's ‘enhancement’, hence, on the expressiveness internal to a work's dynamic form. His focus is explained by the reliance his present argument has on a number of his earlier writings devoted to similar topics. Yet, while this book offers a defence of formalism in familiar terms—terms made familiar in part by Kivy's contribution to the debate—it dedicates significant space to resituating the debate in unfamiliar contexts. That the contexts are unexpected and the arguments provocative legitimates his conviction that formalism still needs both enhancement and defence
Aesthetics · Art · Conviction · Epistemology · Formalism (music · Literature · Musical · Pleasure · Political science · The arts · Visual arts · Law · Musicology and Musical Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,56 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2024 (8) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |