Music, Politics, and the AcademyAdvocates of "new musicology" claim that technical methods of music analysis are conservative, elitist, positivist, and emotionally arid. Pieter C. van den Toorn challenges those claims, asking why cultural, sociopolitical, or gender-studies approaches to music should be deemed more democratic or expressive of music's content or impact. Why should music analysis be thought incapable of serving larger aesthetic ends? Van den Toorn confronts Susan McClary, Leo Treitler, and Joseph Kerman in particular, arguing that hands-on music analysis can penetrate the complexity of music and speak to our experience of it. He criticizes new musicologists for retreating from issues of musical immediacy by focusing on cultural issues. In later chapters van den Toorn defends Schenkerian methods and demonstrates the usefulness of technical analysis in the appreciation of Beethoven, Debussy, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. |
Contents
In Defense of Music Theory and Analysis | 44 |
Politics Ho | 65 |
S The Ninth and Beyond ΙΟΙ | 143 |
Epilogue | 220 |
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Common terms and phrases
abstraction aesthetic analytic-theoretical analytical applied Atonal Music Babbitt Bartók bass Bb major Beethoven Beethoven's Ninth Cambridge Carl Dahlhaus chord composers Concerto context criticism cycle Debussy detail diatonic Example experience falling fourths feminist formalist Forte's heard and understood Heinrich Schenker hexachord Historical Imagination humanistic idea Igor Stravinsky immediacy implications individual interval issues Kerman Leo Treitler matter McClary's means Milton Babbitt Model movement Music Theory Music Theory Spectrum Musicology neighbor note neoclassical neoclassicism nonoctatonic octatonic passion Perspectives pitch pitch-class set pizz politics positivist post-tonal prelude Pulcinella reference reflection relations relationship Remaking the Past rhythmic Richard Taruskin Rite of Spring Robert Craft Russian Schenkerian Schenkerian analysis Schoenberg scholarship segmentation sensed and felt sexual sociopolitical Sonata specific Straus Stravinsky Stravinsky's music structure Susan McClary Symphony technical tetrachordal theory and analysis tion tonal music tones tonic Toorn traditional trans transposition Treitler triads twelve-tone underlying variation theme whole