For a Musico-Rhetorical Approach Informed by Semiotics and Narratology
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17561/rtc.28.9636Keywords:
Music, Rethoric, Semiotic, Narratology, Musical performanceAbstract
Postmodernity has brought about countless transformations in the conception, staging, and modes of consumption of all the arts. The vehemence with which music—especially that stemming from the European tradition from the 15th century onwards, commonly referred to as “classical music”—has entered the art market in the age of technical reproducibility and “snack culture,” its reification and dissolution into a consumable in effigie, and its apparent omnipresence in contemporary society, are only comparable to the rigidity of its academic precepts, the archaic and senescent nature of its consumption rituals, the extreme degree of refinement and specialization of its performers, and the lamentably low status of cultural valuation to which it is presently relegated.
In light of this, the present research proposes new paradigms for classical music—particularly—across virtually all of its levels: in the creative, deductive, and analytical processes undertaken by the performer when first approaching a piece; in the stages of constructing an interpretation of one’s own and translating that vision into instrumental technique; in its staging; and in its planning during processes of production and musical management. To this end, this work draws on questions and agents that are often overlooked throughout the higher education of classical musicians and beyond, such as musical hermeneutics, rhetoric, narratology, and musical semiotics, as well as the multiple dimensions that musical interpretation can—and indeed must—assume.
The aim is thus to reconstruct, or at least to reframe, the life cycle of the musical product, rendering it more approachable, meaningful, and constructive for all those involved, by developing an interpretation that is personal in every sense—rooted in a narrative generation informed by rhetorical, hermeneutic, and semiotic analysis of the score and its contexts.
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