Metaphor and Musical Thought (review)

Abstract

Metaphor and Musical Thought. By Michael Spitzer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. [x, 380 p. ISBN 0-226-769720. $60.00.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index. At various times music has been called universal or most expressive of the arts, and, as such, is difficult to translate into any other medium. We therefore speak of music in terms of metaphor, mapping the abstract onto the concrete, conveying musical experience by way of analogy with other forms and feelings. Michael Spitzer's Metaphor and Musical Thought provides an impressive and thorough analysis of this process and synthesis of a wide range of fields: music history and theory, philosophy, aesthetics, semiotics, hermeneutics, art history, linguistics, literature, science, and theology. His critique of the literature of metaphor is comprehensive and his theory compelling and unique. the increasing interest in more abstract ways of thinking about music, his work should appeal to music historians and theorists, and students of philosophy and aesthetics. His book fills a major gap in interdisciplinary studies. Spitzer defines metaphor as relationship between the physical, proximate, and familiar, and the abstract, distal, and unfamiliar (p. 4). This relationship is bidirectional within music reception and production: With reception, theorists and listeners conceptualize musical structure by metaphorically mapping from physical bodily experience. production, the illusion of a musical body emerges through compositional poetics-the rhetorical manipulation of grammatical norms (p. 4). In other words, music structures and structures music. Spitzer's book is well-organized, clear in presentation and prose, with his theory elucidated by diagrams and music examples. His book is divided into two parts, Metaphorical Present and Metaphorical Tradition in accordance with his bi-directional view of metaphor's history, in which modern, cognitive Anglo-American approaches to music influence and are influenced by an older, hermeneutic, European tradition. Metaphorical Present encompasses the work of linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists such as George Lakoff, Mark Johnson, Ronald Langacker, Andrew Ortony, Eve Sweetser, and Paul Ricoeur. Metaphorical Tradition focuses on Austro-Germany, since it is simply a fact that composers of German-speaking lands-Schutz, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, and Wagner-happen to have been central to the formation of the canon and to our conceptualization of musical thought (p. 5). Spitzer limits his scope based on technical, not aesthetic, criteria and makes no value judgments. He explores well-known and less-known texts to arrive at a tripartite metaphorical tradition, corresponding to baroque, classical, and romantic styles: harmony and painting, rhythm and language, and melody and life, respectively. Although he makes a convincing case for his theory, based on intellectual tradition, a reader may question whether there is a broader application of within the music of the time, place, and composers chosen. His music examples are cogent; one might wish only for more of them. In Metaphorical Present, Spitzer reconciles the cognitive and aesthetic sides of metaphor, or the and the artistic kinds of imagination, through the notion of schema. The schema is the basis for and a hinge between intramusical and cross-domain metaphors, which are further projected onto analytical and cultural metaphors, respectively. In this model, metaphors interpenetrate and permeate each other. Spitzer thus accounts for complexities and avoids the pitfall of oversimplification in neat theories. He then proceeds to explain how schemata generate three compositional structures-radial, hierarchical, and processive, which correspond to his three historical pairs of metaphors. He relates basic-level mappings to linguistics, pedagogy, the notion of scientific paradigm, and ultimately, the concept of educational metaphor. …