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Formalism III

Formalism III. Edmund Gurney (1847–88). Edmund Gurney (1847–88). English writer on music, philosophy and psychology. Read classics at Cambridge between 1866–77.

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Formalism III

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  1. Formalism III Edmund Gurney(1847–88)

  2. Edmund Gurney (1847–88) • English writer on music, philosophy and psychology. • Read classics at Cambridge between 1866–77. • Chief interest, however, was music, and studied both the violin and the piano, but by 1875 gave up hopes of becoming a professional musician.

  3. Gurney • Interest in the problem of perception led him began medical studies in 1877, at the age of 30. • Abandoned the study before the final exams in 1881 and took up law, but only for two years. • His medical training together with his musical studies and an active interest in philosophy, physics, psychology and the physiology of sound gave him the unique combination of insights needed to write his most important work, The Power of Sound (London, 1880).

  4. Gurney • Gurney took account of Charles Darwin’s theory on the origins of music, which was associated by man's ancestors with mating calls. • In his development of Darwin’s theory, Gurney determined that humans must possess a special mental faculty for the discernment of musical form in such a way as to give rise to the essentially emotional impression that is an integral part of the experience of music, without recourse to extra-musical referents.

  5. Darwin (1809–82) and his wife at the Piano

  6. Gurney • In making his case, Gurney argued strenuously against the more popular ‘Speech Theory’ for the origin of music, most notably advanced by Herbert Spencer. • Conducted experimental studies of hypnosis and telepathy, and a statistical survey of hallucinations. • One of the founding members of the Society of Psychical Research in 1882. • Gurney was probably a manic depressive, and committed suicide (?) at the age of 41.

  7. Gurney’s The Power of Sound (1880) • Gurney as the “English Hanslick” • agrees with Hanslick that music’s power is not referential or representational, but insists that it is primarily a matter of emotion • From romantic speculation to empiricism • searches for the evolutionary foundation of the emotions as well as a scientific basis of judgment and criticism • Suggests that the beauty of music is the beauty of melodic form in “ideal motion” • “enjoyment of a series of notes perceived as forming a connected group” • cf. Hanslick: “tonally moving forms,” language-like with sense and logic

  8. Klimt, Music, 1895 Sphinx Lyre (Apollonian) Silenus(Dionysian)

  9. Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) • Ceiling paintings commissioned (but finally rejected and the drafts destroyed in 1945!) by the University of Vienna for the new hall, representing 3 of the 4 faculties

  10. Klimt, Philosophy (1900) Sphinx Philosophy

  11. Death Klimt, Medicine, 1901 Hygeia

  12. Truth, Justice, Law Klimt, Jurisprudence, 1903–7 3 Furies The Criminal/Victim?

  13. Klimt, Schubert at the Piano, 1899

  14. The Power of Sound (1880) • Ch. 14: Music as impressive and music as expressive • “… that there is a difference between • music which is expressive in the sense of definitely suggesting or inspiring images, ideas, qualities, or feelings belonging to the region of the known outisdemusic, and • music which is not so expressive, and in reference to which terms of expression and significance, however intuitive and habitual, could only be logically pressed by taking them in a quite peculiar sense, and postulating an unknown something behind phenomena, which the phenomena are held to reveal or signify, or according to Schopenhauer, to ‘objectify’.”

  15. The Power of Sound (1880) • “Our whole argument as to the nature of musical impressions and the roots of musical pleasure, with their deep and separate place in the human organisation, our whole survey of that independence of intellectual, moral, and external conditions which specially characterises Music, tend to the same result, a uniqie width and depth of popular instinct for it.

  16. Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden, Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt, Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden, Hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt! Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf' entflossen, Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen, Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür! Oh sacred art, how oft in hours blighted, While into life's untamed cycle hurled, Hast thou my heart to warm love reignited To transport me into a better world! So often has a sigh from thy harp drifted, A chord from thee, holy and full of bliss, A glimpse of better times from heaven lifted, Thou sacred art, my thanks to thee for this. Schubert, An die Musik D.547 (1817)

  17. The Power of Sound (1880) In its peculiar isolation lies its peculiar strength: in the fact that its utterances pass direct to the consciousness, without the chance of obscuration or distortion from vulgarity, ignorance, or prejudice, lies its power to awaken in thousands who are inaccessible to any other form of high emotion a mighty sense of beauty, order, and perfection.”

  18. Problems • Evolutionism • primacy of melody as aesthetic “progress”? • polyphony? harmony? tone color? large scale structure? • music historicism? • Mystification • “ideal motion” of melody indefinable, only perceptible by a special “musical faculty”? • music analysis? • practical theory?

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