Absolute Music: The History of an Idea by Mark Evan Bonds (review)

Abstract

Music: The History of an Idea. By Mark Evan Bonds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. [xiii, 375 p. ISBN 9780199343638. $35.] Figures, appendix, bibliography, index.In wake of new musicology, several important studies have focused on some (un)critically-acclaimed concepts that became regulative during nineteenth century. Scholars have deconstructed our assumptions about musical canon, work-concept, contemplative listening, and even musicology itself. The common target of all these concepts is aesthetic autonomy. Absolute music, unsurprisingly, has also found inside crosshairs of similar critical inquiries, including one by Mark Evan Bonds currently under review. Despite monographs by Carl Dahlhaus and Daniel Chua on topic, Bonds states that the history of idea of absolute has never been adequately documented (p. 13). He sets out to remedy situation by approaching absolute regulative concept, which he quirkily defines a premise that can be neither proven nor disproven but that provides framework for discussing other ideas (p. 6). According to Bonds, failing to do so has led scholars to treat absolute as monolithic concept rather than construct that has history (p. 15).Bonds divides his argument into three parts (Essence Effect: To 1550, Es - sence and Effect: 1550-1850, and Essence or Effect: 1850-1945) and an epilogue (Since 1945). The titles convey both author's focus on relationship between music's essence and effect, and his belief that this relationship changes over time. Each part is preceded by helpful summary. The author supplies an appendix (which presents responses to Eduard Hanslick's Vom Musikalisch-Schonen), good bibliography, and an index. The footnotes, which include many quotations in their original language, are valuable.Part I of Bonds's book draws on figures of and Pythagoras to personify music's effect (what it does) and music's essence (what it is) (p. 17). The author reminds us that, for Pythagoras, was audible manifestation of number (p. 23) and, such, a perceptible manifestation of cosmic order (p. 25). The isomorphic resonance between and cosmos reappears throughout book. Unfortunately, figure of Orpheus becomes progressively absent. But, several quotations from Boethius to Guido of Arezzo make clear, essence of is source of its effect; former weighs heavier than latter.Part II opens with advances of empirical science, cosmically-ordered gives way to sounding (p. 39). The five qualities that author believes were used to explain the connection between nature and power of music from sixteenth century onward make up five chapters of second part, namely Expression, Beauty, Form, Autonomy, and Disclosiveness (p. 40). Bonds seemingly favors dualities. He broaches expression through relationship between and language, discussing several topics, ranging from textual intelligibility to mimesis. Immanuel Kant's notion of beauty allows author to distinguish between sensuous and intellectual pleasure, which allows for further distinction between an art of sentiment (without concepts) and an art of Geist. Bonds then connects form, central quality by which eighteenthcentury writers related music's essence to its effect, to Pythagoreanism, which he divides into hard and soft versions. The uneasy relationship between form and content highlights ambivalence of nineteenth-century writers regarding question whether is representative of something other than itself. Bonds divides notion of in itself into mate - rial and ethical autonomies. The former rejoins question of music's capacity to imitate emotions, while latter refers to ideology of l'art pour l'art. …