Papers by Lodewijk Muns
Many pieces of music of the 19th century are intended to evoke the rotating spinning wheel by a c... more Many pieces of music of the 19th century are intended to evoke the rotating spinning wheel by a certain type of figuration. One may approach this repertoire with a number of questions: to what extent such patterns form an identifiable type; how this type came about; how effectively these pieces actually represent what they’re supposed to represent, and why.
According to conventional literary theory, when we interpret the text of a poem or work of fictio... more According to conventional literary theory, when we interpret the text of a poem or work of fiction as a condensed or represented speech act, this implies a hypothetical speaker. The speaker may be a well-defined narrator who may also be a participant in the action. Often, however, the text offers few or no clues as to who is ‘speaking’. In such cases, the speaker is referred to as a ‘persona’; lacking any identity except that derived from the speech act, it is like an empty mask.
This literary concept has with some plausibility been applied to music, specifically, instrumental music as it has gone through a process of literarization in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The application of the persona concept to music is based on the premise that music may represent a form of utterance, expression or thought. As any action implies an agent, this premise implies an utterer, expresser or thinker – the ‘musical persona’. This persona should not be confused with the ‘implied composer’, which is an image of the composer that may be created by the listener on the basis of her listening experience.
The answer to the question ‘who’s (musically) speaking?’ is less interesting than the fact that sometimes it makes sense to ask this question. The mere sensation of human, subjective agency will cause us to approach the music with different expectations than when it is an autonomous, abstract process. It is through the performer’s enactment that the persona may most convincingly come to life.
Studies of musical quotation generally downplay the possible parallels with linguistic quotation,... more Studies of musical quotation generally downplay the possible parallels with linguistic quotation, and ignore the specialized debate around quotation in analytical philosophy. Basic to this debate is the idea that we can articulate (‘mention’) x without truly saying (‘using’) x. A quoted expression is set apart within the regular discourse in which it is embedded, and as a replication of its source refers back to its original context. Similar patterns of reference, replication and embedding can be shown to contribute to the discursive and grammatical features of European music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
The Nonassertion Theory of Fiction implies that fictional discourse is quoted discourse. It can s... more The Nonassertion Theory of Fiction implies that fictional discourse is quoted discourse. It can stand up against the critique in Walton’s Mimesis as Make-Believe, and avoids the undesirable consequences of that theory. The possibility of hearing music as discursive justifies thinking of (some) music as fiction, against Walton’s reservations.
Concepts borrowed from classical rhetoric have been frequently applied to the analysis and perfor... more Concepts borrowed from classical rhetoric have been frequently applied to the analysis and performance of eighteenth-century music since the 1970’s. Part of the justification for this scholarly and musical practice is the evidence of ‘musical rhetoric’ found in period theory. A more controversial premise is the high cultural status and the ubiquitous presence of rhetoric during this period. This contradicts an established consensus that during the Enlightenment rhetoric was in decline, surrendering much of its authority to aesthetics. This essay offers a broader perspective on this controversy, examining both the evolution of the disciplinary borders between rhetoric and aesthetics, and the interdisciplinary reappraisal of rhetoric in the late twentieth century.
Music and Letters, 2017
The rise of the German lied as a concert genre cannot be fully understood without taking into acc... more The rise of the German lied as a concert genre cannot be fully understood without taking into account the cultivation of declamation around 1800. As a musical interpreter of poetry, the lieder singer lends her voice and physical appearance to the imaginary voice or voices contained in the musical-literary work, without, however, fully embodying a character. In this ambiguous task, she had a predecessor and competitor: the declamation artist.
Christian Gotthold Schocher (1736-1810) is of some historical interest as the founder of a little... more Christian Gotthold Schocher (1736-1810) is of some historical interest as the founder of a little known school of German declamation around 1800. For Schocher, a notation system for speech similar to musical notation is crucial to the cultivation of the art. Among Schocher's followers, Johann Carl Wötzel (1765-1836) takes a special place as his self-proclaimed apostle and a notorious plagiarist, who may have incorporated parts of Schocher's lost 'System' into his own work.
An extended footnote to Concert Song and Concert Speech around 1800 (2017). Gustav Anton von Seck... more An extended footnote to Concert Song and Concert Speech around 1800 (2017). Gustav Anton von Seckendorff, author of 'Vorlesungen über Deklamation und Mimik' (1816), is among the many early nineteenth-century theorists of declamation the only one who had a noteworthy, if brief stage career. References to Seckendorff ’s ideas on declamation have become more frequent in recent scholarship, but little is known about his extraordinary life. Drawing upon period journalism and the memoires of contemporaries, this article presents a sketch for a fuller picture.
Tijdschrift van de Koninklijke Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis 63 (2013), 2014
Frederik Nieuwenhuysen (1756-1841) has been organist and carillonneur at Utrecht’s ‘Dom’ church (... more Frederik Nieuwenhuysen (1756-1841) has been organist and carillonneur at Utrecht’s ‘Dom’ church (St. Martin’s Cathedral) for sixty years, and was a prolific composer of cantatas and other works. His hitherto unknown letters to his poet friend Joannes Petrus Kleyn give us a rare glimpse into the private and public life of a Dutch musician during the 1780’s.
Ton van Kalmthout, Orsolya Réthelyi, Remco Sleiderink (ed.). Beatrijs de Wereld in: Vertalingen en bewerkingen van het Middelnederlandse verhaal. Lage Landen Studies 6. Gent: Academia Press [etc.], 2013
The Musical Times, Summer 2010, 3-17
The memoires of the German-Dutch musician G.A. Heinze (1820-1904) are a neglected source for the ... more The memoires of the German-Dutch musician G.A. Heinze (1820-1904) are a neglected source for the creation history of Schumann’s First Symphony (Frühlingssymphonie). Heinze describes how Schumann has used the evening call of a nightwatchman as the opening motif of his First Symphony, allegedly based on a line from a poem by Adolf Böttger.
In the world of music theory, the ideas of Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) cause a major divide. Th... more In the world of music theory, the ideas of Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935) cause a major divide. The disagreement goes far beyond technicalities: it involves principles of an aesthetic, epistemological and ontological nature.
The concept of ‘Empfindsamkeit’ in music has been insufficiently defined. An attempt to establish... more The concept of ‘Empfindsamkeit’ in music has been insufficiently defined. An attempt to establish the scope of the musical Empfindsamkeit has to take into account the moral-emotional aspects of the international movement of ‘sensibility’. Moses Mendelssohn’s concept of ‘vermischte Empfindungen’, which he developed around the central empfindsam concept of ‘pity’, articulates an awareness of greater complexity of emotional states in aesthetic context. Such complexity is expressed in some of the keyboard works of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and of Joseph Haydn.
Dissertation by Lodewijk Muns
Classical Music and the Language Analogy, Chapter 4, 2015
Lerdahl and Jackendoff's Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983) is an attempt to transform music... more Lerdahl and Jackendoff's Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1983) is an attempt to transform music theory into a theory of musical understanding by adopting the formal method and psychological premises of Generative Grammar, along with some Schenkerian elements. It has failed to fulfil its promise mainly because, like Schenker theory, it is compromised by what Leonard Meyer (1967) has called the ‘fallacy of hierarchic uniformity’. Considering the authors’ reluctance to compare music and language, it is paradoxical that its basic premise, the conception of a theory of music as a grammar, implies a stronger linguistic analogy than should be conceded.
Classical Music and the Language Analogy, Chapter 6.4, 2015
Late baroque 'topos' theory has little in common with the compositional 'topic' introduced by Leo... more Late baroque 'topos' theory has little in common with the compositional 'topic' introduced by Leonard Ratner, and developed most prominently by Wye Allanbrook, Kofi Agawu, Raymond Monelle and Robert Hatten. 1 Its direct source seems rather to have been 20 th century literary 'historical topology', the study of recurring themes and clichés in literature, though reference to this is curiously absent in the works cited. 2 There is a clear difference between the topic of invention, itself empty of content, and the cliché, even though, as Roland Barthes has noted, empty forms may have "the tendency to fill themselves always in the same manner". 3 Ratner's inspirational idea was to discuss as one domain certain disparate elements, meaningful stylistic stereotypes, the existence of which is implied by almost any discussion of classical music: stereotypes indicated by such terms as 'concerto style', 'marchlike flourish', 'military allegro' and 'horn-call'. Agawu quotes Charles Rosen using these terms, and concludes that implicitly "Rosen is alluding to topics". 4 Central to the notion of 'topics' is that these various figures or textures are carriers of meaning. Otherwise, they are quite heterogeneous. Some are conventional patterns which have recognizable origins in other kinds of music (such as earlier styles, or functional music). By conventionality and acculturation, if not by inherent properties, these phenomena have acquired relatively precise semantics, or at least a specific expressiveness which may be easily labeled. Formalist aesthetics and analysis tend to ignore these elements. For semiotic approaches on the other hand, such as those of Agawu and Monelle, collecting these under an overarching concept of 'topic' may be an attractive point of departure. Highlighting the obvious may have a revelatory effect. We often fail to see things just because we are too much used to their being there; and Ratner was no doubt right in drawing attention to the fact that classical music is full of stereotypes which carry some identifiable signification. The question must be asked, however, whether these can be treated as of one general kind, and whether this generalization is an adequate foundation for something like 'topics theory'. Agawu presents a list, a "provisional universe" of 27 topics, including various dances, amoroso, brilliant style, cadenza, sensibility, French overture, hunt style, learned style, Mannheim rocket, pastoral, Sturm und Drang and Turkish music. 5 This may strike one as an odd collection-another 'Chinese encyclopedia'. Dances are primarily defined as rhythm and form; 'learned style' as contrapuntal texture; 'Mannheim rocket' as a type of figure. 'Turkish music' is a genre, fast march maybe, with additional features such as percussive noisiness and simple square rhythms. Ratner introduces the subject in terms which suggest a provenance in rhetoric: topics are "characteristic figures" in a "thesaurus", which are associated with either gestural-emotional or pictorial
Is music, in some sense, similar to language? The question takes on a special meaning when we spe... more Is music, in some sense, similar to language? The question takes on a special meaning when we speak of Classical Music - music of the later 18th and early 19th centuries. The idea that music is some kind of language has become central to the aesthetics of the age.
Despite the fundamental differences between both, this analogy is not merely a manner of speaking. Music can borrow features from language. To identify these features we need to take a closer look at both, and face the fact that language is still one of the greatest and most controversial riddles of everyday life.
By taking a historical perspective, viewing both music and language as accomplishments of human culture, many features come into relief that tend to get lost in the quest for essences.
Book Reviews by Lodewijk Muns
Reviewing How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration, by Ellen Winner (OUP 2019); The Aesthetic ... more Reviewing How Art Works: A Psychological Exploration, by Ellen Winner (OUP 2019); The Aesthetic Animal, by Henrik Høgh-Olesen (OUP 2018); The Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution, by Stephen Davies (OUP, 2012).
Conference Presentations by Lodewijk Muns
of a paper presented at the conference Tracking the Creative Process in Music, IRCAM, Paris, 8-10... more of a paper presented at the conference Tracking the Creative Process in Music, IRCAM, Paris, 8-10 October 2015 New things are made with old things. In this sense, all creation is basically a combinatorial process -though not just that. It also implies novelty; but novelty comes into play in a dynamic space between random indeterminacy and routine regularity. This raises two basic questions about human cognition: how rules of combinatoriality arise, and how the freedom beyond the rules may be exploited.
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Papers by Lodewijk Muns
This literary concept has with some plausibility been applied to music, specifically, instrumental music as it has gone through a process of literarization in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The application of the persona concept to music is based on the premise that music may represent a form of utterance, expression or thought. As any action implies an agent, this premise implies an utterer, expresser or thinker – the ‘musical persona’. This persona should not be confused with the ‘implied composer’, which is an image of the composer that may be created by the listener on the basis of her listening experience.
The answer to the question ‘who’s (musically) speaking?’ is less interesting than the fact that sometimes it makes sense to ask this question. The mere sensation of human, subjective agency will cause us to approach the music with different expectations than when it is an autonomous, abstract process. It is through the performer’s enactment that the persona may most convincingly come to life.
Dissertation by Lodewijk Muns
Despite the fundamental differences between both, this analogy is not merely a manner of speaking. Music can borrow features from language. To identify these features we need to take a closer look at both, and face the fact that language is still one of the greatest and most controversial riddles of everyday life.
By taking a historical perspective, viewing both music and language as accomplishments of human culture, many features come into relief that tend to get lost in the quest for essences.
Book Reviews by Lodewijk Muns
Conference Presentations by Lodewijk Muns
This literary concept has with some plausibility been applied to music, specifically, instrumental music as it has gone through a process of literarization in the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The application of the persona concept to music is based on the premise that music may represent a form of utterance, expression or thought. As any action implies an agent, this premise implies an utterer, expresser or thinker – the ‘musical persona’. This persona should not be confused with the ‘implied composer’, which is an image of the composer that may be created by the listener on the basis of her listening experience.
The answer to the question ‘who’s (musically) speaking?’ is less interesting than the fact that sometimes it makes sense to ask this question. The mere sensation of human, subjective agency will cause us to approach the music with different expectations than when it is an autonomous, abstract process. It is through the performer’s enactment that the persona may most convincingly come to life.
Despite the fundamental differences between both, this analogy is not merely a manner of speaking. Music can borrow features from language. To identify these features we need to take a closer look at both, and face the fact that language is still one of the greatest and most controversial riddles of everyday life.
By taking a historical perspective, viewing both music and language as accomplishments of human culture, many features come into relief that tend to get lost in the quest for essences.