Izvorni znanstveni članak
Johann Mattheson’s Writings on Music and the Ethical Shift Around 1700
Beate Kutschke
; Universität der Künste, Berlin, Njemačka
Sažetak
It is well-known that the tractates of the courtier - first and foremost these ones of Castiglione, Faret, Gracían and Méré -, which were written from the early 16th century onwards, informed the life of the higher social classes, the aristocrats and, later, in the 18th century, the bourgeoisie. It is also well-known that the cultural determinants of the courtier manifested itself in music: in the emphasis on rhetoric and aesthetic ideas such as simplicity and musical ineffability, the so called “je ne sçais quoi”. Yet, musicologists neglected so far that the tractates of the courtier had far more “serious” an impetus than defining manners of conversation and other leisure time activities such as art, dance, and music. Advising the individual how to behave and act appropriately in various social situations, they defined a specific ethics of behaviour, an ethics centring around political prudence, simulatio and dissimulatio. It is the decades around 1700 when the feudal ethics of behaviour which ruled all over Europe has slowly been replaced by modern bourgeois-oriented ethics, ethics which can be categorized as ethics of virtue.
This moral transformative process and its impact on music and musical thought manifest itself most clearly in Johann Mattheson’s writings on music, especially his use of the term “gallant”, an originally clearly feudal term. In contrast to the courtly meaning of the term “gallant”, Mattheson adopts a re-ethicized notion of the term, a notion as propelled by Thomasius, Barth, and the moral weeklies. In this framework, Mattheson avails himself of the virtuous-ethical idea of inner-outer coherence and applies it to music.
Ključne riječi
Johann Christian Barth; Baldassare Castiglione; Nicolas Faret; Baltasar Gracían; Georg Friedrich Händel; Johann Mattheson; Chevalier de Méré; Christian Thomasius; Ethics and aesthetics; Galant; Galanterie; Inner-outer coheren
Hrčak ID:
71936
URI
Datum izdavanja:
26.2.2007.
Posjeta: 1.392 *