Sound Figures of Modernity: German Music and Philosophy

The rich conceptual and experiential relays between music and philosophy--echoes of what Theodor W. Adorno once called Klangfiguren, or "sound figures"--resonate with heightened intensity during the period of modernity that extends from early German Idealism to the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This volume traces the political, historical, and philosophical trajectories of a specifically German tradition in which thinkers take recourse to music, both as an aesthetic practice and as the object of their speculative work.

The contributors examine the texts of such highly influential writers and thinkers as Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Bloch, Mann, Adorno, and Lukács in relation to individual composers including Beethoven, Wagner, Schönberg, and Eisler. Their explorations of the complexities that arise in conceptualizing music as a mode of representation and philosophy as a mode of aesthetic practice thematize the ways in which the fields of music and philosophy are altered when either attempts to express itself in terms defined by the other.

Contributors: Albrecht Betz, Lydia Goehr, Beatrice Hanssen, Jost Hermand, David Farrell Krell, Ludger Lütkehaus, Margaret Moore, Rebekah Pryor Paré, Gerhard Richter, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Samuel Weber

Author: Jost Hermand
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 11/01/2005
Pages: 276
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.15lbs
Size: 9.28h x 6.30w x 0.85d
ISBN: 9780299219307

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2007 pg. 246

About the Author
Jost Hermand is William F. Vilas Professor Emeritus of German at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Gerhard Richter is associate professor of German at the University of California, Davis.