Stockholmer Germanistische Forschungen 79
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ACTA UNIVERSITATIS STOCKHOLMIENSIS Stockholmer Germanistische Forschungen 79 Ideology in Words and Music Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum Stockholm, November 8–10, 2012 Edited by Beate Schirrmacher, Heidi Hart, Katy Heady, and Hannah Hinz © The authors and Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, Stockholm University 2014 ISSN: 0491-0893 ISBN: 978-91-981947-1-5 (print) ISBN: 978-91-981947-0-8 (e-copy) Printed in Sweden by US–AB, Stockholm 2014 Distributor. Stockholm University Library, Sweden Acknowledgements This volume presents a collection of articles based on papers given at the 2nd conference of the Word and Music Association Forum (WMAF). The WMAF is a network of emerging scholars in word and music studies under the auspices of the International Association of Word and Music Studies (WMA). Founded in 2009 by a group of young scholars, the aim of the fo- rum is to offer additional opportunities to present papers and to discuss both theories and research projects within word and music studies, as well as to establish a network for young scholars who share an interest in the field. The conference was hosted by the Department of Literature and History of Ideas, Stockholm University, November 8–10, 2012. We would like to express our thanks to the conference’s keynote speakers, Professor Lawrence Kramer and Professor Jørgen Bruhn, for their thought-provoking talks, as well as to all the speakers. We also thank the co-organizers of the confer- ence, Dr. Axel Englund and Dr. Markus Huss, for all their work in putting together this event. A generous grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundations and from Riks- bankens Jubileumsfond made the conference and the publication of Ideology in Words and Music possible. We would also like to thank the Department of Literature and History of Ideas at Stockholm University for all the support given in organizing the conference. In addition, we are grateful for the finan- cial support we received from the International Association of Word and Music Studies, the Research School of Aesthetics at Stockholm University, and the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University. Last but not least, many thanks to all of the authors for their patience and cooperation. Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................v Introduction ........................................................................................................................... ix I Theory: Words, Music, and Ideology ............................................................................. 15 The Impact of Cultural Studies on Musicology Within the Context of Word and Music Studies: Questions and Answers Mats Arvidson ..................................................................................................................... 17 “New Story from Old Words”: Word and Music Studies and the Poetics of Experience Joanna Barska .................................................................................................................... 31 Music and Ideology: Two Kantian Themes in Adorno Carl-Filip Brück .................................................................................................................. 49 II Interaction: Ideology in Songs ....................................................................................... 63 Traces of a Tune: Form and Ideology in Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler’s An die Nachgeborenen Heidi Hart ........................................................................................................................... 65 Shaping the Community through Songs: Ideology in the Song Collections of Johann Friedrich Reichardt Mårten Nehrfors .................................................................................................................. 87 Tone-setting Sacred Words: Evidence of Ideological Polarizations in Danish 19th-Century Church Songs Lea Maria Lucas Wierød................................................................................................... 105 III Reception: Ideological Presuppositions .................................................................... 125 Ideology and the Musical Narration of Jazz History Mario Dunkel .................................................................................................................... 127 The Common Grounds of Music and Violence: Depicting Violence in Literature with Intermedial References to Music Beate Schirrmacher ........................................................................................................... 141 West-Eastern Variations: Thomas Bernhard’s Musician’s Novel Der Untergeher (1983/1986) and its Contemporary Reception in the Two Germanies Christiane Tewinkel .......................................................................................................... 155 Contributors and Editors ................................................................................................... 171 Introduction At the first conference of the Word and Music Association Forum (WMAF), in 2010 in Dortmund, Germany, one of the last given papers investigated the German song “Der gute Kamerad” (“The Good Comrade”). Written in 1809 by Ludwig Uhland, and set to music by Friedrich Silcher in 1825, it still plays an important ceremonial role in the German Army. While Uhland’s lyrics can be said to reveal a critical stance towards war and the death of sol- diers, the song has also been used to glorify comradeship and justify milita- rism; it still therefore connotes nationalism and militarism for many lis- teners. The song’s intricate reception history as well as its multilayered con- nections to different ideological levels generated a lively debate that clearly demonstrated the importance of the question of ideology in word and music studies. The manifold questions raised in this discussion made clear that there is much to explore concerning the role of ideology in word and music contexts. “Ideology in Words and Music” thus became the topic of the net- work WMAF’s second conference, held at Stockholm University in 2012. Ideology The term “ideology”—from Greek idea (‘form,’ ‘pattern’) and logos (rea- son,’ ‘discourse’)—has taken on many meanings and associations through- out history. The critical debate on ideology is perhaps most often associated with the Marxist tradition of thought, which in turn has given rise to several generative perspectives on ideology. In Althusser’s work, for example, it is the agency that shapes human subjects by interpellating them, and in Ador- no’s writings it is frequently found at the nexus of discourse and music. From other theoretical vantage points, however, Thomas Kuhn has described ideology as the commitments, beliefs, and values shared by scientists within alternating scientific paradigms, while Clifford Geertz has stressed the meta- phorical nature of ideology by introducing cultural semiotics into the study of historical societal processes. Terry Eagleton therefore compares ideology 1 with a “whole tissue of different conceptual strands.” In his keynote address to the conference, Lawrence Kramer stressed the notion of ideology as “be- 2 ing in force without significance,” relating Giorgio Agamben’s use of the 1 Terry Eagleton, Ideology: An Introduction. London: Verso, 1991, 1. 2 Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. (Stanford: Stanford Uni- versity Press, 1998), 51. ix term to the playing-out of “empty signs” in Ludvig van Beethoven’s Wel- lington’s Victory. The different approaches to ideology in this volume mirror these varied conceptual strands. As one common trait in all conceptions of ideology, Eagleton names the fact that ideology might be understood as a function of the relation between an utterance and its social context. The im- portance of the historical context and ideological dimension in intermedial studies was stressed by Jørgen Bruhn in his keynote address. Bruhn’s discus- sion of the adaptation process of Dennie Lehane’s Shutter Island to Martin Scorsese’s movie fleshed out the importance of the musical soundtrack, the form of which responds not only to artistic considerations, but also to ideo- logical demands. This leaves open many possible ways of approaching the intersections be- tween words, music and ideology: combinations of words and music have historically interacted with ideological systems, and encounters between verbal and musical media have reflected ideological issues; similarly musi- co-literary intermediality may either be construed as a site where ideology can be questioned or established, and we must remember that ideological presuppositions underlie our own intermedial research. All of these ques- tions taken together highlight the need to investigate the connection of in- termediality to its social context. This means not only asking the question of how words and music interact but also investigating why, and toward what ideological ends? The articles in this volume address these and other conceptions of ideolo- gy in relation to interplay between words and music, opening a vast field of questions thereby. The essays invite us to consider more and therefore ap- pear as merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg: how are different combina- tions of words and music used toward ideological ends? Can music stand in a critical relationship to ideology? How is ideology provided through the use of melody and lyrics in song? How do different