Event overview
Peter Kivy, Honorary Fellow, will be giving a public lecture.
Many of those who put narrative or dramatic fictional interpretations on works of the absolute music canon make what I call the “modest claim” that not all such works have narrative or dramatic fictional content, only certain ones, from certain periods. The bad news is that the modest claim will not stand up, for if the strategies used to put such interpretations on the absolute music canon are valid ones, they can be applied to any piece of absolute music in any period of music history. In other words, if these interpretative strategies are held valid, there is no absolute music, as “absolute music” is customarily construed. I consider this a reduction ad absurdum of the modest claim; and I have argued at length in numerous places that the interpretative strategies for producing narrative or dramatic interpretations of works in the absolute music canon are not valid. This by no means precludes the possibility of discovering that some work or other of the absolute music canon is not absolute music as customarily understood. In the present lecture I want to examine just such a possible case, and its implications.
Professor Peter Kivy is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey, where he specialises in aesthetics and the philosophy of art, including music and literature. He is credited with rejuvenating the now flourishing subject of music aesthetics: ‘Introduction to a Philosophy of Music’ (2002) is regarded as essential reading on the subject.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Jan 2009 | 5:30pm - 6:30pm |
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