c o u r s e s

h e r m e n e u t i c s   a n d   m u s i c   c r i t i c i s m

Course Description
[based on a course by Dr. Roger W. H. Savage]
Contemporary music criticism is faced with a dual challenge. On the one hand, the question of music’s social and cultural relevance has sparked a renewed interest in critical theories which relate music’s formal characteristics to a wider context of meaning. On the other hand, the question of music’s value has also led to a renewed consideration of the way music’s aesthetic significance might be interpreted historically. The course investigates the philosophical resources that contemporary music criticism can draw upon when addressing these issues. Narrative theory provides one way of identifying music’s social and cultural referent. In contrast to the formalist conception of music as "non-referential" or as "absolute", this theory offers one possible way out of the deadlock of formalist aesthetics. The nature of the relationship between music’s aesthetic and historical significance are further illuminated with the help of hermeneutic theory, pointing to the importance of musical time and its relationship to a cultural community’s self-understanding.