The melodramatic style in musicology consists of describing harmonic progressions as startling and cataclysmic. They might be, in some cases, or this might be a discursive by-product of analysis itself. In one instance I've found recently, the writer makes these kinds of statement but then brings us up short:
"I should warn you that several of the points I have made in this chapter may not be audible on many recordings..."
Well that's a relief, I guess.
The writer goes on to say it's her duty to combat over-prettified interpretations with a call to make the music sound more drastic and conflictive, more in tune with her own "gnostic" reading of the score.
A little later we get an "abject collapse into C minor."
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