Bibliograph

Helmholtz and the modern listener, Benjamin Steege

Type

Label

Helmholtz and the modern listener, Benjamin Steege

Language

eng

Index

index present

Literary Form

non fiction

Main title

Helmholtz and the modern listener

Medium

electronic resource

Nature of contents

dictionaries

Oclc number

804664374

Responsibility statement

Benjamin Steege

Series statement

Cambridge Social Sciences eBooks

Summary

The musical writings of scientist Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) have long been considered epoch-making in the histories of both science and aesthetics. Widely regarded as having promised an authoritative scientific foundation for harmonic practice, Helmholtz can also be read as posing a series of persistent challenges to our understanding of the musical listener. Helmholtz was at the forefront of sweeping changes in discourse about human perception. His interrogation of the physiology of hearing threw notions of the self-possessed listener into doubt and conjured a sense of vulnerability to mechanistic forces and fragmentary experience. Yet this new image of the listener was simultaneously caught up in wider projects of discipline, education and liberal reform. Reading Helmholtz in conjunction with a range of his intellectual sources and heirs, from Goethe to Max Weber to George Bernard Shaw, Steege explores the significance of Helmholtz's listener as an emblem of a broader cultural modernity.--, Provided by publisher

Table Of Contents

Introduction. Henry Higgins, professor of phonetics ; Helmholtz as modern -- Popular sensations. The popular impulse ; Renovating musical knowledge ; Sensation, interest, value ; The wider campaign -- Refunctioning the ear. Hearing and erring ; The ear and its doubles ; Das körperliche Ohr (sensation) ; Das geistige Ohr (signification) -- The problem of attention. Temporalities of attention ; The third ear ; Fixity and difference ; Attention and apperception -- Music theory as liberal progressive history. The theory of "affinity" ; The history of "affinity" ; Between choice and necessity ; The double choice -- Voices of reform. Refunctioning the voice ; Helmholtz in England : the Tonic Sol-fa Society ; "Natural" intonation in theory and practice -- Epilogue : Helmholtz and modernism. The modernity of sensation ; Helmholtzian Wagnerism? ; Schoenberg's expressionist Empfindungswelt ; Max Weber and the modern listener ; Conclusion

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Helmholtz & the Modern Listener

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