DOC Seurat (French Edition) by Lucie Cousturier in Arts-Photography

Description

This pathbreaking work reveals the pivotal role of music--musical works and musical culture--in debates about society; self; and culture that forged European modernity through the "long nineteenth century." Michael Steinberg argues that; from the late 1700s to the early 1900s; music not only reflected but also embodied modern subjectivity as it increasingly engaged and criticized old regimes of power; belief; and representation. His purview ranges from Mozart to Mahler; and from the sacred to the secular; including opera as well as symphonic and solo instrumental music. Defining subjectivity as the experience rather than the position of the "I;" Steinberg argues that musics embodiment of subjectivity involved its apparent capacity to "listen" to itself; its past; its desires. Nineteenth-century music; in particular music from a north German Protestant sphere; inspired introspection in a way that the music and art of previous periods; notably the Catholic baroque with its emphasis on the visual; did not. The book analyzes musical subjectivity initially from Mozart through Mendelssohn; then seeks it; in its central chapter; in those aspects of Wagner that contradict his own ideological imperialism; before finally uncovering its survival in the post-Wagnerian recovery from musical and other ideologies. Engagingly written yet theoretically sophisticated; Listening to Reason represents a startlingly original corrective to cultural historys long-standing inhibition to engage with music while presenting a powerful alternative vision of the modern.