As a rejoinder, though perhaps not in defense of Ranciere as I have not read much of him yet, I quickly open Adorno's Aesthetic Theory. One of the fragments from the Paralipomena serves almost as a thesis regarding Beethoven:
The concept of tension frees itself from the suspicion of being formalistic in that, by pointing up dissonant experiences or antinomical relations in the work, it names the element of "form" in which form gains its substance by virtue of its relation to its other. Through its inner tension, the work is defined as a force field even in the arrested moment of its objectivation. The work is at once the quintessence of relations of tension and the attempt to dissolve them. I cannot read this as reductive nor as "killing off" the art it addresses. On the contrary, the last two weeks or so I have been restudying the Appassionata, and perhaps for this reason I chose this passage to quote, I would argue Beethoven's sonata exemplifies this. Without ideological tendencies toward this concept of tension or analytical familiarity with the work, on hearing it this is experienced emphatically. I could certainly elaborate on the compositional techniques that generate this tension (his use the Neapolitan and its structural consequences), but even without naming them, the listener, if really listening, will experience the form gaining substance from its harmonic expansions, the first movement's second recapitulation, the dominant pedal in the first recap (I will refrain from effusions over its expression...it's such a gripping moment). All of the harmonic advancements in the work, its structural chromaticism (really the first piece of its kind) show the music for what music is here and had been as the motivation for diatonic tonal music as such, the play of tension and resolution (or dissolution). The Appassionata is a stone's throw from Tristan (the harmonic core is the same, well, with a different augmented sixth...Wagner just stretches it over 5 hours and endlessly decorates it, but its effect is famous for a reason and not just for Wagner idolaters). Perhaps what "brings art to life" for me is slightly different, but more to the point, good theoretical considerations of music in this case capture essential aspects of that music and its experience. -Brian -----Original Message----- From: Derek Allan [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2008 6:45 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: a suggestion Re: 'For more evidence of the profitless straining for topics, read the ASA journal.' For me it's more the deadening affect of analytic philosophy applied to art that makes the ASA journal - and the British equivalent - so painfully tedious to read. Art itself is rarely mentioned and when it is, it seems to wither like leaves under acid rain. Not that continental aesthetics is any better. Witness the Ranciere stuff under discussion at the moment. Which is just one of the reasons I have so much admiration for Malraux. He is the one art theorist of art in modern times who manages to develop a powerful theory of art while also bringing art alive for the reader - instead of killing it off. DA
