Michael Cherlin - Böcker

No composer was more responsible for changes in the landscape of twentieth-century music than Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and no other composer's music inspired a commensurate quantity and quality of technical description in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet there is still little understanding of the correlations between Schoenberg's musical thought and larger questions of cultural significance in and since his time: the formalistic descriptions of music theory do not generally engage larger questions in the history of ideas and scholars without understanding of the formidable musical technique are ill-equipped to understand the music with any profundity of thought. Schoenberg's Musical Imagination is intended to connect Schoenberg's music and critical writings to a larger world of ideas. While most technical studies of Schoenberg's music are limited to a single compositional period, this book traces changes in his attitudes as a composer and their impact on his ever-changing compositional style over the course of his remarkable career.

No composer was more responsible for changes in the landscape of twentieth-century music than Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and no other composer's music inspired a commensurate quantity and quality of technical description in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet there is still little understanding of the correlations between Schoenberg's musical thought and larger questions of cultural significance in and since his time: the formalistic descriptions of music theory do not generally engage larger questions in the history of ideas and scholars without understanding of the formidable musical technique are ill-equipped to understand the music with any profundity of thought. Schoenberg's Musical Imagination is intended to connect Schoenberg's music and critical writings to a larger world of ideas. While most technical studies of Schoenberg's music are limited to a single compositional period, this book traces changes in his attitudes as a composer and their impact on his ever-changing compositional style over the course of his remarkable career.

Irony, one of the most basic, pervasive, and variegated of rhetorical tropes, is as fundamental to musical thought as it is to poetry, prose, and spoken language. In this wide-ranging study of musical irony, Michael Cherlin draws upon the rich history of irony as developed by rhetoricians, philosophers, literary scholars, poets, and novelists. With occasional reflections on film music and other contemporary works, the principal focus of the book is classical music, both instrumental and vocal, ranging from Mozart to Mahler. The result is a surprising array of approaches toward the making and interpretation of irony in music. Including nearly ninety musical examples, the book is clearly structured and engagingly written. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to those interested in the relationship between music and literature as well as to scholars of musical composition, technique, and style.

Irony, one of the most basic, pervasive, and variegated of rhetorical tropes, is as fundamental to musical thought as it is to poetry, prose, and spoken language. In this wide-ranging study of musical irony, Michael Cherlin draws upon the rich history of irony as developed by rhetoricians, philosophers, literary scholars, poets, and novelists. With occasional reflections on film music and other contemporary works, the principal focus of the book is classical music, both instrumental and vocal, ranging from Mozart to Mahler. The result is a surprising array of approaches toward the making and interpretation of irony in music. Including nearly ninety musical examples, the book is clearly structured and engagingly written. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to those interested in the relationship between music and literature as well as to scholars of musical composition, technique, and style.

A personal voyage of discovery drawing on musicology, literary theory, Jewish studies, and philosophical phenomenology.As a work of musical theory, or meta-theory, Music's Making draws extensively on work done in philosophy and literary criticism in addition to the scholarship of musicologists and music theorists. Music's Making is divided into two large parts. The first half develops global attitudes toward music: emergence out of self and hearing through (drawing on Kabbalah and other sources), middle-voice (as discussed in philosophical phenomenology), liminal space (as discussed in literary theory), an ethics of intersubjectivity (drawing on Levinas), and character, canon, and metaleptic transformations (drawing chiefly on Harold Bloom). The second half embodies a search for metaphors, figurative language toward understanding music's endlessly variegated shaping of time-space. The musicians and scholars who inform this part of the book include Pierre Boulez, Gilles Deleuze, Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, and James Dillon. The book closes with an extended inquiry into the metaphors of horizontal and vertical experience and the spiritual qualities of musical experience expressed through those metaphors.

A personal voyage of discovery drawing on musicology, literary theory, Jewish studies, and philosophical phenomenology.As a work of musical theory, or meta-theory, Music's Making draws extensively on work done in philosophy and literary criticism in addition to the scholarship of musicologists and music theorists. Music's Making is divided into two large parts. The first half develops global attitudes toward music: emergence out of self and hearing through (drawing on Kabbalah and other sources), middle-voice (as discussed in philosophical phenomenology), liminal space (as discussed in literary theory), an ethics of intersubjectivity (drawing on Levinas), and character, canon, and metaleptic transformations (drawing chiefly on Harold Bloom). The second half embodies a search for metaphors, figurative language toward understanding music's endlessly variegated shaping of time-space. The musicians and scholars who inform this part of the book include Pierre Boulez, Gilles Deleuze, Anton Webern, Morton Feldman, and James Dillon. The book closes with an extended inquiry into the metaphors of horizontal and vertical experience and the spiritual qualities of musical experience expressed through those metaphors.

Both dramatic and musical theater are part of the tradition that has made Austria - especially Vienna - and the old Habsburg lands synonymous with high culture in Central Europe. Many works, often controversial originally but now considered as classics, are still performed regularly in Vienna, Prague, Budapest, or Krakow. This volume not only offers an excellent overview of the theatrical history of the region, it is also an innovative, cross-disciplinary attempt to analyse the inner workings and dynamics of theater through a discussion of the interplay between society, the audience, and performing artists.