Lecture 4

McClary teleological music related to death and violence

outlines 2 types of sexual desire
- first type predominantly female, second male (sonata form)
- writing in 80s and 90s
Beethoven 9 opening overlapping of teleological and non-teleological approach
drone-like first chords that seem to be ever-lasting, on top of that occasional snippets
McClary started a war against the wide-spread use of gendered language in musical
analysis
Nicholas Cook Were all ethnomusicologists now
Musicology still gender imbalance
Problem with identifying masculinity with teleology and femininity as nonteleological
Hypocrisy in protesting against gendered music analysis whilst performing gendered
music analysis
Contrast Garner (Sanders) and Trump ads both use non-teleological music ends
with imperfect cadence open
McClary idea that music can embody anything at all anger directed at people who
simultaneously claim that music is pure
absolute music Hanslick
on the one hand, absolute as in pure, that which is most fully music
German philosophy ultimate ground of being music that thinkers have thought
could give us access to that sphere of the absolute
18th C concepts were seen as giving us access to reality music could not give us
access then bad
19th C from being musics Achilles heel, becomes its strength
Wagner uses the term in a disparaging sense
Hanslick big intent to musicology about to what extent he was embodying the
German philosophy sense of absolute (read Absolute Music); what is clear though is
he wanted it to be pure
Music as intrinsically self-contained
1854 On The Musically Beautiful
Hanslicks argument series of binaries:

Objective / subjective
Serious enquirer / dilettante
Beautiful / feeling
New (scientific) systems of aesthetics / older systems of aesthetics
Beauty has no purpose parallel to the thought of Emmanuel Kant ie beautiful for
its own sake
In pure contemplation, the hearer takes in nothing but the piece of music being
played; every material interest set aside (find quote)
then contradicts himself
The intense feelings which music awakens in us and all the moods, painful as well as
delightful, into which it lulls us while we daydream: these we by no means wish to
minimize (whereas earlier was saying that when you listen to music you should not
have feelings)
ie feelings can equate to musical beauty
then distinguishes between different human faculties feeling, imagination
purpose of music as moving the emotions of the listener?
- to achieve ethical goal (eg to instill a sense of peace, to teach us something, to
make us more spiritually healthy)
- Hanslick mocks this view, music is supposed to be makes no sense
Makes a distinction between essence and effect - yes music makes us feel grand
emotions, but thats not what music is, its just what music does
Also makes a distinction between form and content difficult to make this distinction
in music as difficult to say what this is about
Idea that music cannot represent particular feelings, but can ideas (increasing,
diminishing, acceleration, deceleration etc.) pure ideas which have their
corresponding sensuous manifestation in musical tonal relationships without regard
to their ethical significance
only instrumental music is music purely and absolutely ( ie not vocal music)
Many whole vocal pieces have used different texts to the same music therefore
text and music must be separate
rhythm at the heart of musical beauty
most famous line: The content of music is tonally moving forms. saying there is
no separation to be made between content and music in form, and this makes music
unique

McAuley argues that Hanslick is wrong huge danger in thinking of anything as pure
language of music very easily transferred to political ground purity as
horrendously dangerous
Music will always be part of life
Turning back to McClary
Goal-directedness as equated to a certain kind of violent sexuality
Ambition is a goal-directed process fulfilling ambitions increasingly becomes
beating competition leads to societal inequality
constant distraction of constant partial attention were always looking ahead
were never satisfied even when ambition is satisfied never total fulfillment
what can we do about addiction to teleology living in future instead of the present
remain attentive to the non-teleological aspects of the music we love
include in our repertoires less teleological music
resist teleological narratives of music history
- turn our attention from the future to the present