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"Defining Subjectivity. The title invites hubris. How does one attempt to define such an all-pervasive yet hopelessly nebulous notion? Frustratingly polysemous in its application, subjectivity is one of the most popular and yet at the same time obscurest terms in the modern human sciences. Not without justification does one of the most valuable previous musicological accounts of the topic disclaim any direct approach to this question, insofar as subjectivity, in the author's view, escapes definition by its very nature. The difficulty arises in part as subjectivity appears not to be a single thing. Neither is it, at least by some accounts, reducible to a group of things. Slightly more securely subjectivity might be argued to be a relation between things. But it is one where its apparent basis - the subject or self - is itself hotly disputed, even denied by some commentators. And then, even after coming to some provisional answer to all of these concerns, how do we begin to relate this concept to music, which similarly appears to elude all verbal confinement? Faced with this state of affairs one might be forgiven for dismissing the whole topic as yet another musicological example of conceptual diffuseness, humanistic hermeneutics at its idlest and most fuzzy"--
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Preamble: Schumann, Subjectivity; Prosopopoeic Preliminaries: 1. Defining subjectivity; Part I. Hearing Subjects: 2. Hearing the self; 3. Hearing selves; Part II. Hearing Presence: 4. Presence of the self; 5. Presence of the other; Part III. Hearing Absence: 6. Absence of the other; 7. Absence of the self; Part IV. Hearing Others: 8. Hearing another's voice; 9. Hearing oneself as another; Epilogue: 10. Hearing ourselves.
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Benedict Taylor is Reader in Music at the University of Edinburgh and editor of Music & Letters. His publications include The Melody of Time: Music and Temporality in the Romantic Era (2015) and, as editor, Rethinking Mendelssohn (2020) and The Cambridge Companion to Music and Romanticism (2021).
Zusammenfassung
A timely and much-needed critical examination of the idea of musical subjectivity, this book draws on philosophy, critical theory and music analysis to probe the meaning of this elusive concept. Benedict Taylor focuses on the music of Robert Schumann, with whose music the term 'subjectivity' is probably most closely associated.
