By Christian Thorau (NHC Fellow, 2008–09)
Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms Verlag, 2012
From the publisher’s description:
“What is still a description in any other art is already a metaphor in the art of music.” Eduard Hanslick already pointed out the special role of metaphors in understanding music in his work Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854). From sound to metaphor takes up the metaphor-theoretical discussions of the 20th and 21st centuries and makes them fruitful for an analytical approach to music. The investigation shows ways in which the principle of the metaphor can be expanded into a basic reflection model for musical analysis. For this purpose, using examples of Beethoven's and Schumann's music, various constellations of signs are examined for their metaphor-like nature: the transfer of specific musical passages into a metaphor-containing description, the relation of theme and variation in instrumental music as a model of a music-internal, non-lingual metaphor and the symbiosis of music and language in the titled piano piece and in the art song. The book explores the possibilities and limits of an integration of the metaphorical dimension into the analytical procedure and reflects them methodically. It opens music-analytical perspectives on and with the help of the metaphor.
Subjects
Music / Musicology / Music Theory / Metaphor / Aesthetics /Thorau, Christian (NHC Fellow, 2008–09). Vom Klang zur Metapher: Perspektiven der Musikalischen Analyse. Studien und Materialien zur Musikwissenschaft. Hildesheim, Germany: Georg Olms Verlag, 2012.