Autonomous music ( German autonome Musik, eigenständige Musik , English autonomous music , Italian musica autonoma ) in the Western European musical aesthetics of the 20th — 21st centuries is “ideal” music, that is, one that exists for its own sake and is not connected by any applied tasks - first of all, illustrative and entertaining [1] .
Content
Brief
The concept of autonomous music is contrasted with the concept of functional music ( German funktionale Musik ), which means any kind of applied musical creativity (film music, pop music, cult music, dance music, etc.).
In musical aesthetics (and in the “philosophy of music”) the main problem is the search for criteria by which autonomous music should be distinguished from functional music. Most often, scientists call autonomous music of the highest aesthetic and ethical order, since it does not arise from the need to illustrate, accompany and explain anything. Accordingly, in this value hierarchy, functional music is located a floor below, since it serves some extra-musical purpose.
Historical Review
The concept of autonomous music is close to the concept of absolute music , which arose in the middle of the 19th century. Unlike absolute, autonomous music at the concept level does not exclude vocal and program music. In 1903, K. Kretschmar contrasted music as “free art” (freie Kunst) to music as “official art” (dienende Kunst) [2] . The phrase “autonome music” (autonome Musik), moreover, as a synonym for “absolute music”, was used by T. Adorno in 1936, describing the independence of music from stage performance in the opera of A. Berg “Lulu” [3] . The terms of G. Bessel (1959) are “everyday music” (Umgangsmusik) and “representative music” (Darbietungsmusik) [4] , which are based on Heidegger's concept of contrasting “improvised means” (das Zuhandene, an entity dependent on the instrument used) and “ present ”(das Vorhandene, a distantly observed object), emphasize the social component of music, characterize it from the point of view of perception by the recipient. The peak of discussions about autonomous and functional music came in the 1950s and 1970s. According to one of the authoritative participants in these discussions, G.G. Egghebrecht , the concept of autonomous music does not make sense in itself, but only in binary opposition ("polarization") with functional music. For this reason, Egghebrecht declares both the “historical categories” (historische Kategorien) [5] .
This opinion is echoed by C. Dalhouse :
A clear distinction between autonomous music and the opposite notion of functional music is difficult, because the functions that are carried out thanks to the music (such as accompanying a dance or worship) can include less tangible tasks; these include, for example, the communicative, ethical, representative, entertaining and educational functions of music ... Extremely pointed, it can be argued that autonomous music does not exist at all.
Discussions about autonomous music (especially in connection with a discussion of the so-called musical content, or “musical semantics”) do not stop today.
See also
- Counterfeiting
Notes
- ↑ Definition of Karl Dalhouse / Brockhaus-Riemann Musiklexikon Bd. 1. Mainz, 1995, S. 72).
- ↑ Kretzschmar K. Musikalische Zeitfragen, Leipzig, 1903.
- ↑ Rottweiler H. (pseudonym Adorno) Zur Lulu-Symphonie // Eine Wiener Musikzeitschrift 1936, Nr. 24-25.
- ↑ In the brochure "Das musikalische Hören der Neuzeit" (see the full description in the bibliography). Much earlier, Besseler expressed the same concepts in terms, respectively, of “Gebrauchsmusik” and “eigenständige Musik” (in the 1925 article “Grundfragen des musikalischen Hörens”, SS.12-14).
- ↑ Eggebrecht HH Was ist funktionale Musik // Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 30 (1973), S.7. Wed at Dahlhaus: “Die Bedeutung, die die Wörter" autonom "und" funktional "zunächst ... in der musikästhetischen Umgangssprache hatten, scheint durchaus unverfänglich zu sein. Man bezeichnet ... Musik als "funktional", wenn sie einen äußeren Vorgang - eine liturgische Handlung, einen repräsentativen Akt, ein Bankett oder einen Tanz - begleitet und stützt, dagegen als "autonom", wenn sh fie ihrer selbst willen gehört werden soll ... ”(Dahlhaus C. Was ist autonome Musik, Sp. 618).
Literature
- Besseler H. Grundfragen des musikalischen Hörens // Jahrbuch der Musikbibliothek Peters (1925), SS. 35-52.
- Besseler H. Das musikalische Hören der Neuzeit. Berlin, 1959 (Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig. Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Bd. 155)
- Besseler H. Umgangsmusik und Darbietungsmusik im 16. Jahrhundert // Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 16 (1959), SS.21-43.
- Dahlhaus C. Was ist autonome Musik // Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 133 (1972).
- Eggebrecht HH Funktionale Musik // Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 30 (1973).
- Dahlhaus C., Eggebrecht HH Was ist Musik. Wilhelmshafen, 1985, SS. 85-100, 139-167.
- Massow A. von. Autonome Musik // Handwörterbuch der musikalischen Terminologie. Freiburg, 1994.
- Dahlhaus C. Autonome Musik // Brockhaus-Riemann Musiklexikon. 2. Auflage, Mainz: Atlantis-Schott Musikbuch-Verlag, 1995.
Links
- Massow A. von. Autonome Musik ( Dictionary of Music Terms )