Orchestrating creativity

Subtitle:the musical canon as a regulative concept

Music is often said to be a universal language. Many discussions on the cultural significance of music seem to be underpinned by this widely shared consensus. But although we implicitly assume that music is capable of carrying and transferring meaning, there is hardly any consensus over the kind of meaning it transfers, where it comes from and on what basis it could be called universal. Furthermore, despite this claim on universality, it is common knowledge that music not only transcends cultural boundaries but also stipulates them. Clearly, if music is indeed a language, it is a language in which different songs can be sung. For a proper understanding of what is being sung, it seems critical to first ask ourselves: who is singing? This dissertation undertakes a quest towards a sustainable musical culture, in which musical culture is explicitly portrayed as an aesthetic practice taking place in a concrete historically situated environment. Throughout this dissertation, I will argue that aesthetic forms are inseparably tied to a variety of actors and factors (ranging from individuals and institutions to historical occurrences and policy shifts), that together constitute a very complex but intelligible environment that stands in a structuralrelation to these aesthetic forms. Questions of sustainability, therefore, must take this relation into account. In a way, this amounts to little more than pushing at an open door. In our daily lives, we continue to ascribe to music a moving force that cannot be deduced from music’s own formal characteristics, and one that cannot be reduced to cultural convention. As listeners, we constantly navigate in the space between what music is as an autonomous and delineated aesthetic entity, and what music is within a certain specific context. We may feel like blasting Led Zeppelin or Aerosmith through the radio when driving to soccer practice, while we may prefer the company of Bach and Schubert for our Sunday breakfast, and Mozart around teatime. Glenn Miller is an excellent choice during a whiskey tasting with friends but makes a very poor running companion. Even more fascinating is the observation that these different occasions and purposes very often lead to different judgments over the same music. For example, the shower-scene music from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 thriller Psycho became one of the most popular film music excerpts of the 20th century, while same-sounding classical music in a concert setting would annoy some audiences to a point of bitter frustration. Apparently, the undeniable moving force of music is as much connected to the music itself as it is connected to the context in which it is played. In this dissertation, I will argue that music needs these contexts in order to be fully understood. More specifically, an argument will be developed that music discloses a significant part of its meaning by grace of the stories we create for it.

Publication year:2020

Keywords:Doctoral thesis

Accessibility:Open