Enhet och sammanhang

Något om musikanalysens estetiska förutsättningar

Abstract

The aim of this article is to illustrate a group of esthetic problems with direct relevance to the commonest methods of music analysis, to indicate a number of problems connected with them and to at least suggest a way of finding a possible solution to the problems. The starting-point is the debate on the "to be or not to be" of music analysis which has been raging during recent years in the USA where traditional music analysis has been attacked foremost by Leo Treitler and Joseph Kerman. These critics have asserted that a lot of music analysis represents music esthetic formalism which, in the same spirit as 19th century German philosophy, regards works of music as "organisms". When considered in general, the history of analysis implicates two different approaches. There is the Aristotelian analytical approach where the analysis of an occurrence is based on the actual occurrence's
means of existing, on its origin and its qualifications. In addition, there is a more modern analytical approach which does not start from such ontological conditions. This, however, is of little importance in connection with analysis of music. Recent descriptions of music analysis do not perhaps always assume a given comprehensive ontological view but usually implicate that works of music have at least unity and coherence as defining properties even if they do not have an organic property. This points to the well-known esthetic and epistemological theories of Aristoteles where in both cases unity plays a central role. The concept that unity and coherence should be fundamental conditions for knowledge was actualized during the 18th century by David Hume and a few decades later played a central role in the philosophy and esthetics of Immanuel Kant. It is mainly against the background of
Kantian, and to some extent Husserlian, views that one must regard the circumstance that modern methods of music analysis take unity and coherence for granted. The terms 'unity' and 'coherence' in Kant are so general that it is difficult to regard them as properties with artistic definitions. The principles involving unity and coherence which are of importance have, in addition, been found to have restricted usefulness as regards certain types of modern western art music and in connection with music from cultures outside the western sphere. In addition, the traditional methods of music analysis are apparently essential tools for the researcher of music. One way out of this dilemma might be to link the methods of music analysis to an understanding of a work of music which does not assume unity and coherence in the sense discussed here. The basis for such an approach might possibly be found in a view towards sociology and anthropology similar to that expressed in George Dickie's widely discussed "institutional concept of art".