The dawn of music semiology showcases the work of ten leading musicologists inspired by the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez. Reflecting the energy and diversity of the young field of music semiology, chapters in this volume discuss music and gesture, the psychology of music, and the role of ethnotheory, and offer new research on topics as diverse as modeling folk polyphony, spatialization in the Darmstadt repertoire, Schenker's theory of musical content, and modernism from Wagner to Boulez.

In this collection of previously unpublished essays Jean-Jacques Nattiez applies his theoretical foundations of musical semiotics to theorists such as Levi-Strauss, Hanslick, and Brailoiu; novelists such as Proust; and poets such as Baudelaire. The author treats problems which musicologists and music lovers alike need to address: the artistic product in music of oral tradition, the nature of musical facts, and questions of fidelity and authenticity in performance practice. Nattiez tackles these perennial issues with an originality born out of (...) his focus on the status of time in the works considered. This approach allows him to take sides, sometimes in a provocative manner, in the ongoing debates which pit adherents of modernity against apologists of postmodernism. (shrink)

What it was called “the anthropology of music” finds its roots in two founding papers: The Anthropology of Music by Alan Merriam and How Musicalis Man? by John Blacking. In these two books, the musical structures are designed as a product of the culture. The methodological consequence is: the ethnomusicological investigation should begin from the study of the cultural context. The consequence of this position, quite widely used in the field, was to emphasize the music environment, rather than analyse its (...) structure, with a few notable exceptions. A fortiori, the research of universals, considered ethnocentric, was regarded in the field as inadmissible. After having proposed a setting up of this situation, the author examines the manner in which the issue of Blacking approaches the link between culture and musical structures, then reconsiders his positions with regard to universals, and possible biological foundations of music. The article ends with a plea for reconciliation, with a view to the ethnomusicology of tomorrow, from the point of view of the anthropology, taking into account the cultural determinations, the comparative study of the musical structures, and the search for universal. (shrink)

Of all Wagner's operas, the Tetralogy has a special status. Indeed, beyond the myth related by the plot, the four operas it comprises also contain the presentation of a myth of the origin of music and the total work of art. The latter is based on an androgynous myth uniting poetry and music, seen respectively as the incarnation of male and female principles, symbolized by the different characters – Siegfried, Brünnhilde, Fafner, Mime – who are all tied up with androgyny. (...) The theme appears both in Wagner's theoretical writing penned around 1850 and between the lines of the libretto of the Ring, which concludes with the impossible reunification of the sexes on the Platonic model. Nevertheless, even if biological androgyny belongs to the world of utopia, the creative artist does have the opportunity to bring together the opera's two sexualized components, music and poetry, and thus produce the total work of art that Wagner aspired to. (shrink)

After describing the main features of the literary narrative and demonstrating its analogy with music, the author underlines the necessity not to consider a priori a musical production as a narrative. He analyses the intonation of musical contours as a form of proto-narrative which he later explains from the standpoint of Daniel Stern’s developmental psychology. It is then emphasized that music should be considered as a proto-narrative and the authors suggests a criticism of the so-called narratological musicology.

In his essay “La judéité dans la musique,” Richard Wagner’s horrid portrayal of a Jew by way of physical, economical, linguistic and musical description exposed his anti-Semitic convictions. Much of this aspect has either been forgotten or softened, however, when evoking Wagner, it is in fact the relationship between his anti-Semitism and his work that is the most problematic. This paper proposes to consider three symbolic forms through which this reticence is expressed by looking at the the theoretical writings, opera (...) booklets and their music. Using the Beckmesser character in Les Maîtres Chanteurs de Nuremberg, although Beckmesser is not introduced as a Jew but rather a good German bourgeois, one cannot deny the allegory positioning him as a Jew. First element of demonstration: the analogical resemblance between Beckmesser and the Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick to whom Wagner accused of hiding his Jewishness. Second element: it has already been proven that Beckmesser’s serenade sung during the second act to the Master Singers was a mockery of a Jewish prayer. Third element: in Cosima’s, Wagner’s wife, diary she explains that this particular piece generated at that time a strong reaction by the Jewish community in Vienna, thus supporting the claim that his antisemitism was already known and problematic to his contemporaries. (shrink)