Eero Tarasti

Semiotics of Classical Music

Semiotics, Communication and

Cognition

Edited by
Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull

Volume 10

Eero Tarasti

Semiotics of
Classical Music
How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us

DE GRUYTER
MOUTON

ISBN: 978-1-61451-154-0
e-ISBN: 978-1-61451-141-0
ISSN: 1867-0873
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress
Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie;
detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.
2012 Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin/Boston
Typesetting: Meta Systems, Wustermark
Printing: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Gttingen
Printed on acid-free paper
Printed in Germany
www.degruyter.com

For Eila

Contents
Preface

XI

Prelude:

Music A Philosophico-Semiotic Approach

Chapter 1
1.1
1.2
1.3
1.4
1.5

Introduction to a Philosophy of Music

Being in music (Ontology)
10
The subject
13
Me (Moi) and Self (Soi) in music
17
Towards music analysis
20
Results
25

Part I.

THE CLASSICAL STYLE

Chapter 2
2.1
2.2

31
Mozart, or, the Idea of a Continuous Avant-garde
What is the avant-garde?
32
Between individual and society; or, How the Moi and Soi of the
composer meet
35
The freedom and necessity of composing
47

2.4

Chapter 3
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5

71
Existential and Transcendental Analysis of Music
More on analysis
77
From modalities to metamodalities
80
Some theoretical results
83
Observations on the Beethovenian discourse
84
Beethoven, Sonata Op. 7 in E flat major, 1st movement: An
exercise in existential analysis
95

Chapter 4

Listening to Beethoven: Universal or National, Classic or

103
Romantic?
The performers Beethoven
104
British common sense
107
Music as conceptual activity
108
Adorno as pre-semiotician
111
And intonations
112

4.1
4.2
4.3
4.4
4.5

VIII

Contents

Part II.

The Romantic Era

Chapter 5
5.1

117
The irony of romanticism
Irony as part of Romantic ideology

Chapter 6

6.4
6.5

ein leiser Ton gezogen : Robert Schumann's Fantasie in C

major (op. 17) in the light of existential semiotics
131
Introduction
131
Genesis
133
From modes of being to the Z model and its
temporalization
135
Levels of musical signification in the Fantasie
142
Existential tones of the Fantasie?
168

Chapter 7
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4
7.5

Brahms and the Lyric I: A Hermeneutic Sign Analysis

Introduction
171
Semantics: Basic oppositions
174
Instrumentation of the poetic language
176
Musical paradigms
178
Interpretation Four musical-poetic situations
181

6.1
6.2
6.3

117

171

Chapter 8 Brnnhildes Choice; or, a Journey into Wagnerian Semiosis:

187
Intuitions and Hypotheses
8.1
Introduction
187
8.2
Wagners early operas
189
8.3
The Nibelungen Ring
197
8.4
Some remarks on the later operas
211
Chapter 9
9.1
9.2
9.3
9.4

215
Do Wagners leitmotifs have a system?
Leitmotif diagrams
215
Systematization in terms of content
221
Music-analytic point of view
224
Semiotic approach
232

Part III.

Rhetorics and Synaesthesias

Chapter 10 Proust and Wagner

241
242
10.1
Wagner in Prousts Correspondence
246
10.2
Wagner in Prousts writings and novel

Contents

10.3
10.4
10.5
10.6
10.7

Proust and musicians

249
250
Reynaldo Hahn (18751947)
The presence of Wagner
252
in la recherche du temps perdu
256
Species of narration
265
Ekphrasis and levels of texts

Chapter 11 Rhetoric and Musical Discourse

271
11.1
Rhetoric as Speech Act
272
11.2
The Classics
273
11.3
Applications to music
278
11.4
Rhetoric through the ages
286
Chapter 12 The semiosis of light in music: from synaesthesias to
narratives
301
12.1
Introduction
301
12.2
Bases for synaesthesias
305
12.3
Synaesthesias in artistic practices
308
12.4
Is it possible to measure timbre?
312
12.5
Semiotics of light
315
12.6
Theory of light in music
319
12.7
Light in music: Examples and analyses from music
history
322
335
Chapter 13 The implicit musical semiotics of Marcel Proust
13.1
Toward new areas of sign theory
335
13.2
Music at the salon of Madame Verdurin
339
13.3
The Proustian musical model: A Greimassian
explication
347
13.4
Semiotic analysis: Prousts description of a soire at Madame
Verdurins
351
Chapter 14 M. K. iurlionis and the interrelationships of arts
14.1
Analysis
360
Chapter 15 iurlionis, Sibelius and Nietzsche: Three profiles and
369
interpretations
15.1
Narrative space
371
15.2
Painted sonatas
372
15.3
Sibelius Synaesthetician
381

353

IX

Contents

15.4
15.5

and Nietzsche
386
Conclusion: Toward existential and transcendental semiotic
interpretations
388

Part IV.

In the Slavonic World

393
Chapter 16 An essay on Russian music
16.1
Emergent Russian qualities in music history
16.2
Glinka
397
16.3
Rimsky-Korsakov
399
402
16.4
Tchaikovsky
405
16.5
Rachmaninov
16.6
Shostakovitch
407
16.7
Semiotic interpretation
409

395

Chapter 17 The stylistic development of a composer as a cognition of the

413
musicologist: Bohuslav Martin
17.1
Orientation to the style of Martin
416
420
17.2
Fourth Symphony

Postlude I
Chapter 18 Do Semantic Aspects of Music Have a Notation?

437

Postlude II
445
Chapter 19 Music Superior Communication
19.1
Music and medicine: Some reflections
445
19.2
Transcendence and nonlinear communication
Glossary of Terms
Bibliography

453

462

Index of persons and musical works

481

447