The ‘Day of Wrath’ as Musico-Political Statement in Dallapiccola's Canti di Prigionia
One of the most interesting modern ‘borrowings’ of the famous ‘Dies irae’ chant comes within the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola's Canti di Prigionia of 1938–1941. Written at a time of extreme political tension, the Canti were—from the composer's own testimony—a protest against Mussolini's introduction of the infamous racial laws in 1938. But while the composer's own hermeneutic proposes the ‘Dies irae’ as a symbolic representation of oppression overlaid onto a ‘purely’ dodecaphonic work, one senses that this will not do: politically, this viewpoint is problematic, and musically, it is simply not borne out by analysis. In this article, I offer a new reading of this work as a ‘confessional’ piece, and in interrogating the relationship between the very old (plainchant) and the very new (a natal serialism), suggest that the Canti evince a sophisticated type of musical ‘paradox’.
Music and ideology in Cold War Europe
List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: issues and perspectives 1. Back to the future: Nabokov's selection criteria for L'Oeuvre du XXe siecle 2. Nabokov, Shostakovich and the view from the bridge 3. Articles of war: the Prague Manifesto and the Progressistes 4. Creative freedom or political obligation? Serialism and Stalinism in France 5. Culture and confrontation at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees 6. Neither you nor they: the avant-garde and neutralite 7. Music and Sartrean commitment 8. Rene Leibowitz and the musician's conscience 9. A forlorn hope: Sartre's 'virtual' audience 10. Serialism, scientism and the post-war world view Epilogue: the aftermath of L'Oeuvre du XXe siecle Appendix: the musical programme L'Oeuvre du XXe siecle Notes Bibliography Index.
The honesty of thinking : reflections on critical thinking in Nietzsche's middle period and the later Heidegger
This dissertation engages with contemporary interpretations of Nietzsche and Heidegger on the issue of self-knowing with respect to the notions of honesty and authenticity. Accounting for the two philosophers' developing conceptions of these notions allows a response to interpreters who conceive the activity of self-knowing as a primarily personal problem. The alternative accounts proposed take as a point of departure transitional texts that reveal both thinkers to be engaged in processes of revision. The reading of honesty in Chapters 1 and 2 revolves around Nietzsche's groundwork on prejudice in Morgenrothe (1880-81), where he first problematizes the moral-historical forces entailed in actuating the 'will to truth'. The reading of authenticity in Chapters 3 and 4 revolves around Heidegger's lectures on what motivates one's thinking in Was heist Denken? (1951-52). The lectures call into question his previous formal suppositions on what calls forth one's 'will-to-have-a-conscience', in an interpretation of Parmenides on the issue of thought's linguistic determination, discussed further in the context of Unterwegs zur Sprache (1950-59). Chapter 5 shows how Heidegger's confrontation with Nietzsche contributed to his ongoing revisions to the notion of authenticity, and to the attending conceptions of critique and its authority. Particular attention is given to the specific purposes to which distinct Nietzschean foils are put near the confrontation's beginning--in Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche's second Unzeitgemasse Betrachtung (1938), and in the monograph entitled Besinnung (1939) which they prepare--and near its end, in the interpretation of Also Sprach Zarathustra (1883-85) presented in the first half of Was heist Denken? Chapter 6 recapitulates the developments traced from the vantage point of the retrospective texts Die Zollikoner Seminare (1959-72) and the fifth Book of Die frohliche Wissenschaft (1887). Closing remarks are made in relation to recent empirical research on the socio-environmental structures involved in determining self-identity.