Original scientific paper
Music Theory, Analysis and Deconstruction: How They Might (Just) Get along Together
Christopher Norris
; Philosophy Department, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
Abstract
This article criticises certain aspects of the "New Musicology", in particular its somewhat promiscuous deployment of ideas from other disciplines such as literary theory and cultural studies. It argues that these cross-disciplinary ventures often run the risk of ignoring or devaluing what is specific to the experience of music, i.e., its uniquely effective power of combining sensory-perceptual with analytically-informed and socio-politically aware modes of listener-response. However this power to challenge our acculturated (ideological) preconceptions can only be realised through better, more acutely trained musical perceptions and a willingness not to take refuge in doctrinaire theories which reject the very notion of "structural listening", along with those of thematic integration, tonal development, and "the work" as an object of duly perceptive and keen-eared formal analysis. I also make reference to recent ideas in cognitive psychology as a counter to the textualist bias of "deconstructive" music theory which risks losing touch with whatever is most distinctive and potentially transformative in our experience of music.
Keywords
Adorno; analysis; cognitive psychology; critical theory; deconstruction; de Man; Derrida; formalism; New Musicology; structural listening
Hrčak ID:
63359
URI
Publication date:
14.1.2005.
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