Page 32 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2024. Glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes ▪︎ Music Criticism – Yesterday and Today. Koper/Ljubljana: Založba Univerze na Primorskem in Festival Ljubljana. Studia musicologica Labacensia, 7
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glasbena kritika – nekoč in danes | music criticism – yesterday and today
a plea?” He might as well have been talking about music, about the use of
music, or even about criticism, the use of criticism. This is the answer that
he gave:
It is hard to think of a thing more out of time than nobility. Looked at
plainly it seems false and dead and ugly [...] something that was noble
in its day, grandeur that was, the rhetorical once. But as a wave is a force
and not the water of which it is composed, which is never the same, so
nobility is a force and not the manifestations of which it is composed,
which are never the same. [...] It is not an artifice that the mind has add-
ed to human nature. It is a violence from within that protects us from
a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pres-
sure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do
with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of
it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.19
Those last sentences come close to articulating the philosophy that I pursue
in my own work, even if I am always doomed to fall far short of it.
Bibliography
Literature
Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, part 3, edited by Rolf Tiedemann
and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 1004. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991.
Hoffmann, E. T. A. Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese. Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1963.
Huneker, James. “The Preludes.” In Frédéric Chopin, Complete Works for the Pi-
anoforte, Book Nine: Preludes, edited by Raphael Joseffy. New York: Schirm-
er, 1915.
Robin, William. “Public Musicology,” annotated syllabus. https://willrob-
in251824868.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/musc-699p-syllabus.pdf.
Scott, A. O. Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure,
Beauty, and Truth. New York: Penguin, 2017.
Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New
York: Vintage Books, 1951.
Taruskin, Richard. The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009.
Thomson, Virgil. Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson. Edited by Tim Page and Va-
nessa Weeks Page. New York: Summit, 1988.
19 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New
York: Vintage Books, 1951), 35.
32
a plea?” He might as well have been talking about music, about the use of
music, or even about criticism, the use of criticism. This is the answer that
he gave:
It is hard to think of a thing more out of time than nobility. Looked at
plainly it seems false and dead and ugly [...] something that was noble
in its day, grandeur that was, the rhetorical once. But as a wave is a force
and not the water of which it is composed, which is never the same, so
nobility is a force and not the manifestations of which it is composed,
which are never the same. [...] It is not an artifice that the mind has add-
ed to human nature. It is a violence from within that protects us from
a violence without. It is the imagination pressing back against the pres-
sure of reality. It seems, in the last analysis, to have something to do
with our self-preservation; and that, no doubt, is why the expression of
it, the sound of its words, helps us to live our lives.19
Those last sentences come close to articulating the philosophy that I pursue
in my own work, even if I am always doomed to fall far short of it.
Bibliography
Literature
Benjamin, Walter. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 1, part 3, edited by Rolf Tiedemann
and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 1004. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991.
Hoffmann, E. T. A. Schriften zur Musik, Nachlese. Munich: Winkler-Verlag, 1963.
Huneker, James. “The Preludes.” In Frédéric Chopin, Complete Works for the Pi-
anoforte, Book Nine: Preludes, edited by Raphael Joseffy. New York: Schirm-
er, 1915.
Robin, William. “Public Musicology,” annotated syllabus. https://willrob-
in251824868.files.wordpress.com/2018/08/musc-699p-syllabus.pdf.
Scott, A. O. Better Living Through Criticism: How to Think About Art, Pleasure,
Beauty, and Truth. New York: Penguin, 2017.
Stevens, Wallace. The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination. New
York: Vintage Books, 1951.
Taruskin, Richard. The Danger of Music and Other Anti-Utopian Essays. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2009.
Thomson, Virgil. Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson. Edited by Tim Page and Va-
nessa Weeks Page. New York: Summit, 1988.
19 Wallace Stevens, The Necessary Angel: Essays on Reality and the Imagination (New
York: Vintage Books, 1951), 35.
32
