ASAGE - American Society for Aesthetics Graduate E-Journal
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The Psychodynamics of Chronic Depression in Music: An Agentially-Enriched Narrative Reading of Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata, Op. 47, Movement I
No full textAnalyzing Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata using the lenses of virtual agency and musical narrativity reveals a failure of the tragic-to-transcendent expressive genre. Adopting a psychodynamic perspective yields an agentially-enriched narrative reading, highlighting a tragic flaw that serves as an expressive premise for the musical discourse. The musical subjectivity cannot complete a positive or transcendent thought, but slips inexorably into the tragic. From a psychopathological perspective, this characteristic suggests chronic depression, a connection solidified by musical suggestions of rumination and alexithymia. The burgeoning practice of musical semiotics offers fresh insight into the “aboutness” problem from the philosophy of aesthetics. Specifically, interpretation combined with Julian Dodd’s concept of music’s displaying properties to attain referentiality[1] enables music to be profound, pace Peter Kivy.[2] Even the Kreutzer Sonata,a tragic narrative displaying characteristics of chronic depression, offers crucial insight into aspects of life and may thus more than adequately warrant the description of profound.[1]. Julian Dodd, “The Possibility of Profound Music,” British Journal of Aesthetics 54, No. 3 (July 2014): 304, 309.[2]. Peter Kivy, Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990): 8, 204, 217
Musical Gestures. Toward a Theory of Musical Expressiveness
No full textMusical expressiveness is commonly explained by connecting it with emotions. However, what we now know about emotions shows more differences than similarities between them and musical experience. In this thesis, I propose a better account of musical expressiveness on which emotional expression is supplemented by the expression of other affective processes, like feelings.The idea that music is expressive of emotions has been challenged on the basis that it does not present an intentional object, nor an evaluation of the situation, which are the elements that permit an individuation of the emotions. A popular reply to this problem is given in the Resemblance Theory, according to which music resembles characteristics of emotional gestures. Even though this theory successfully faces the problems derived from the lack of intentional object, it also reduces the scope of musical expressiveness to those emotions that have distinctive acoustic gestures.My proposal is to extend the Resemblance Theory to include feelings, as these both do not require an intentional object, and are capable of better explaining music’s subtle expressiveness. In support of this, I present some musicological examples that show that the search for resemblance between musical elements and feelings has formed a practical basis for the composition and performance of expressive music throughout history.Going further, I suggest that the relationship between music and what it expresses is not an iconic relationship, but an indexical one. Using a simulation theory of musical experience, based on the activation of mirror neurons, I argue that music indexically presents a sonic landscape that the listener explores offline, thereby triggering the associated feelings. This permits us to construct a concept of musical gestures that is consistent with contemporary theories of emotions, musical practices, and philosophical rigor
