Bonds, Mark Evan - Absolute Music

In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, author Mark Evan Bonds examines how writers have struggled to isolate the essence of music in ways that account for its profound effects on the human spirit. By carefully tracing the evolution of absolute music from Ancient Greece through the Middle Ages to twentieth-century America, Bonds provides the first comprehensive history of this pivotal concept, and provokes new thoughts on the essence of music and how this essence explains music's effect. A long awaited book from one of the most respected senior scholars in the field,

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CONTENTS

Introduction 7
Part One
Essence as Effect: To 1550 23
1. Orpheus and Pythagoras 23
2. Isomorphic Resonance 30
Part Two
Essence and Effect: 1550-1850 39
3. Expression 41
The Separation of Powers 41
Music and Language 48
Music as Language 58
Mimesis 69
4. Beauty 79
5. Form 90
Form as Number 91
Form as Content 98
6. Autonomy 103
Material Autonomy 103
Ethical Autonomy 108
7. Disclosure 112
The Composer as Oracle 112
Beautiful Insights 117
Cosmic Insights 121
Part Three
Essence or Effect: 1850-1945 127
8. Wagner's Absolute Music 129
9. Hanslick's Pure Music 140
Hanslick the Conventional 156
Hanslick the Radical 171
Hanslick the Ambivalent 181
10. Liszt's Program Music 205
11. Polemics 214
12. Reconciliation 231
13. Qualities Recast 244
Expression 246
Beauty 263
Form 264
Autonomy 278
Disclosure 284
Epilogue: Since 1945 292
Appendix: Hanslick's Vom Musikalischen-Schonen:
Early and Selected Later Reviews and Commentary 294
Works Cited ] 304