Schiller versus Bürger: An Eighteenth-Century Debate on Nature of Popular Art

Critical review of performance is today one of the most common professional and commercial forms of music written response. Despite the availability of representative material and its impact on musicians’ careers, there has been little structured enquiry into the way music critics make sense of their experience of performances, and no studies have to date broached the key question of how music performance is reviewed by experts. Adopting an explorative, inductive approach and a novel combination of data reduction and thematic analysis techniques, this thesis presents a systematic investigation of a vast corpus of recorded performance critical reviews. First, reviews of Beethoven’s piano sonata recordings (N = 845) published in the Gramophone (1923-2010) were collected and metadata and word-stem patterns were analysed (Chapters 3 and 4) to offer insights on repertoire, pianists and critics involved and to produce a representative selection (n = 100) of reviews suitable for subsequent thematic analyses. Inductive thematic analyses, including a key-word-in-context analysis on ‘expression’ (Chapter 5), were then used to identify performance features (primary and supervenient) and extra-performance elements critics discuss, as well as reasons they use to support their value judgements. This led to a novel descriptive model of critical review of recorded performance (Chapters 6, 7, and 8). The model captures four critical activities – evaluation, descriptive judgement, factual information and meta-criticism – and seven basic evaluation criteria on the aesthetic and achievement-related value of performance reliably used by critics, plus two recording-specific criteria: live-performance impact and collectability. Critical review emerges as a highly dense form of writing, rich in information and open to diverse analytical approaches. Insights gained throughout the thesis inform current discourses in philosophy of art and open new perspectives for empirical music research. They emphasise the importance of the comparative element in performance evaluation, the complexity and potentially misleading nature of the notion of ‘expression’ in the musical discourse, and the role of critics as filters of choice in the recording market. Foremost, they further our understanding of the nature of music performance criticism as a form of reasoned evaluation that is complex, contextual and listener specific.

Innovative thinking is an innate human capacity geared towards adaptation and survival. Theories of education accordingly aim at developing teaching-learning strategies that promote creative, problem-solving reasoning referred to as higher order thinking. This essay briefly explains some of the assumptions underlying this concept, and then suggests how they may be reconfigured in a strategy suitable for education in and through music. The strategy involves a basic process of analysis, evaluation and creativity related to actual social experience. Higher order thinking therefore aims to equip learners with the capacity to synthesise relationships in and beyond particular fields of study so that their thinking may expand into the concreteness of the world.Keywords: social challenges, higher order thinking, education, music education, culture contact, Frère JacquesDisciplines: Disciplines: education, music education, musicology, history, anthropology, folklore studies, philosophy of art

Praised in its original edition for its up-to-date, rigorous presentation of current debates and for the clarity of its presentation, Robert Stecker's new edition of Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art preserves the major themes and conclusions of the original, while expanding its content, providing new features, and enhancing accessibility. Stecker introduces students to the history and evolution of aesthetics, and also makes an important distinction between aesthetics and philosophy of art. While aesthetics is the study of value, philosophy of art deals with a much wider array of questions including issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, as well value theory. Described as a 'remarkably unified introduction to many contemporary debates in aesthetics and the philosophy of art,' Stecker specializes in sympathetically laying bear the play of argument that emerges as competing views on a topic engage each other. This book does not simply present a controversy in its current state of play, but instead demonstrates a philosophical mind at work helping to advance the issue toward a solution.

The presented work expands the source base of S.A. Esenin’s theoretical article “Maria’s Keys” (1918) at the expense of previously unknown philosophical sources. Along with the ideas of representatives of the mythological school in folklore studies and the anthroposophical ideas of R. Steiner, Andrei Bely, as well as the work of N.A. Klyuev, Esenin enters into a dialogue with the positions of famous philosophers and art theorists of different eras. The initial sentence of the article “Ornament is music” deserves special attention, combining various issues of art theory into a single conceptual node. It is concluded that it is a cliche of catch phrases expressing the attitude of philosophers to various branches of art, especially popular among the German philosophers of the XVIII century, including I.V. Goethe. Based on the data of Esenin’s personal library, it is shown that the poet, who tends to the symbolic justification of art, is particularly close to Goethe’s ideas about music as a lullaby of all art and about the birth of a creative picture of the world according to nature, which were embodied in the work of the Russian poet in the “nodal ovary of nature with the essence of man”. Taking into account the experience of philosophical thought and the role of ornament in everyday folk art, Esenin puts forward an original theory of national Russian art and gives the keys to understanding the peculiarities of his own poetics.

Mind over Body?Stigma, Staring, and the Self Anna C. Spafford Novelty is fragile and staring volatile because the longer we look, the more accustomed a once surprising sight becomes … Seeing disability reminds us of what Bryan S. Turner (2006) calls "ontological contingency," the truth of our body's vulnerability to the randomness of fate. Each one of us ineluctably acquires one or more disabilities—naming them variably as illness, disease, injury, old age, failure, dysfunction, or dependence.1 The eighteenth-century German literary canon does not, as a rule, focus specifically on unexpected bodies in central characters, with some notable exceptions such as those discussed by my esteemed colleagues in this forum. This being said, there is an emphasis on stigma across literary genres and periods in this century of German literature. This thematization of stigma and the precarity of individual existence culminates in an intense interest in psychological pathologies in Sturm und Drang as well as Weimar classicism. This interest has problematized distinctions between mind and body and emphasized the influence of an individual's social and material context on their psychology. In this forum entry, I attempt to outline parallels in the portrayal and function of various stigmas in this broad literary period, which is credited with the development of modern individuality. I posit that Garland-Thomson's theory of the extraordinary body is an extension of this modern individual, who, contrary to popular understanding, is in fact born of, sustained, and afflicted by stigma. When we think of the individual in eighteenth-century German literature and especially the literature of the Goethezeit, we think of an individual with agency. All men, according to Locke, are Adam—created in God's image and sovereign over their inheritance. According to Kant, every individual is charged to use his own mind. With the rise of Lutheranism and especially among Pietists, it became the individual's responsibility to find his or her own private way to God. In literature, we see the creation and rise of the novel—an individualistic endeavor if ever there was one. In sentimental works, Enlightenment values and pure emotions lead the hero or heroine to a good life of moral steadfastness in the face of an immoral world. Gellert's Swedish Countess weathers political intrigue and physical capture. She witnesses incest and suicide—all unscathed. Her happy ending is directly attributed to her strength of character. Almost fifty years later, Caroline von Wolzogen's Agnes von Lillien suffers similar adverse circumstances, with similar reward. [End Page 141] Even if we look to the Sturm und Drang, where plots are characterized by human volatility and suffering, we find stories of individual strength where our protagonist is strong, just not strong enough. Karl Moor in Schiller's drama Die Räuber (The Robbers) is an excellent example of strong individuality that becomes bent towards its own destruction. Then we have Weimar classicism. The Bildungsroman: What greater act of individual strength is there than one's own journey to self-discovery? Gnothi sauton—know thyself. Any weakling—even Faust!—can conquer the world when given enough power. The true challenge of life becomes self-knowledge. Given this focus on individual fortitude in German literature of the mid- to late eighteenth century, we might want to characterize this period as one that neglects stigma and in which few, if any, extraordinary bodies may be found—existing only on the margins of these narratives: characters weakened with age, oddly androgynous youth. And yet we know from Rosemarie Garland-Thomson and Erving Goffman—one of her major theoretical inspirations—that stigma is a universal human experience. It is the nature of norms that deviation is the norm. Being the focus of attention—positive or negative—is an isolating experience. While Kant and Locke's ideals portray individual human fortitude of momentous proportion, they both knew themselves to be writing counterfactual narratives. Private property ought to exist. People ought to think for themselves and not just follow their local thought leaders. Similarly, the agency shown in late eighteenth-century literature demonstrates the difficulties of individuality: Gellert's countess only demonstrates her tempered morality by being forced to operate as a beleaguered...

This essay is an attempt to infer and systematize Nabokov's philosophy of art. Constantine Muravnik use the phrase "philosophy of art" in two senses: one refers to the philosophical study of art, that is, the relation of art to aesthetics, ethics, and metaphysics; the other to the ontological foundation of artistic production. Consequently, Nabokov's philosophy of art simultaneously stands for a study of the philosophical aspects of his oeuvre, including his own theoretical statements on art and the network of affinities with certain aesthetic theories, as well as for a transcendental deduction of the original and practical source of his artistic genius. This deduction, however, requires adequate philosophical tools, which Muravnik, in turn, borrows from Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics.

One of the most important artists of the twentieth century, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting over the course of his career. Rothko also wrote a number of essays and critical reviews during his lifetime, adding his thoughtful, intelligent, and opinionated voice to the debates of the contemporary art world. Although the artist never published a book of his varied and complex views, his heirs indicate that he occasionally spoke of the existence of such a manuscript to friends and colleagues. Stored in a New York City warehouse since the artist's death more than thirty years ago, this extraordinary manuscript, titled The Artist's Reality, is now being published for the first time. Probably written around 1940-41, this revelatory book discusses Rothko's ideas on the modern art world, art history, myth, beauty, the challenges of being an artist in society, the true nature of American art, and much more. The Artist's Reality also includes an introduction by Christopher Rothko, the artist's son, who describes the discovery of the manuscript and the complicated and fascinating process of bringing the manuscript to publication. The introduction is illustrated with a small selection of relevant examples of the artist's own work as well as with reproductions of pages from the actual manuscript. The Artist's Reality will be a classic text for years to come, offering insight into both the work and the artistic philosophies of this great painter.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Authors, Intentions and Literary Meaning

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Character strengths are central constructs in positive psychology, yet empirical evidence from collectivistic cultural contexts remains limited. This study aims to examine the distribution of the 24 character strengths and to compare character strength profiles between male and female university students. The participants consisted of 285 undergraduate students recruited from several private universities in Semarang, Indonesia, using an incidental sampling technique. The research instrument was the 72-item Values in Action Inventory of Strengths (VIA-72) developed by Peterson and Seligman (2004). Validity testing using Corrected Item–Total Correlation indicated that all items met the validity criteria, with correlation coefficients ranging from 0.320 to 0.661. Reliability analysis demonstrated excellent internal consistency, with a Cronbach’s Alpha of 0.966. Data were analyzed using descriptive and comparative statistical methods. Descriptive findings revealed that kindness, teamwork, appreciation of beauty and excellence, gratitude, and fairness were the five highest character strengths across the total sample. Specifically, male students showed the highest scores in teamwork, kindness, fairness, appreciation of beauty and excellence, and humor, whereas female students scored highest in kindness, gratitude, appreciation of beauty and excellence, teamwork, and fairness. Comparative analysis using the Mann–Whitney U test identified statistically significant gender differences in four character strengths – open-mindedness, bravery, social intelligence, and humor – although the observed effect sizes ranged from small to moderate. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of university students’ character strength profiles within the Indonesian higher education context and offer practical implications for the development of strength-based student interventions and educational programs.

What really distinguishes so-called artistic language from other types of language, and what sets the artistic text apart from other texts? Jurij Lotman and Boris Uspensky attempt to answer these questions in very different ways. Both works start from the premise that poetic language somehow deviates from a norm; that it is a type of expression made strange, according to Viktor Shlovskij's now famous formula (Iskusstvo kak priem, L'Art comme proc6de, in Tbeorie de la littdrature, ed. Tsvetan Todorov [Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1965], pp. 76-97). Uspensky generally makes many assumptions and gives answers, leaving the reader to supply the necessary questions; while Lotman proceeds to a step by step construction of his system which the reader has only to assess. These are the opening volumes in the series of Semiotic Studies in the Theory of Art which aims to acquaint the reader with structural research as a means of content analysis. Both works first appeared in Moscow in 1970. Their authors are members of the so-called Tartu Group and have published on a wide range of subjects, both in their original fields (Lotman as a specialist of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Russian literature; Uspensky as a linguist) and in various aspects of semiotic research. Many of the latter writings have either recently been translated into French and English or are forthcoming. The first volume to appear, Uspensky's, is certainly the less ambitious of the two. Uspensky makes little or no effort to deal with the general methodological questions raised by the title and sub-titles of his book, and never bothers, for example, to define such terms as structure, artistic, typology, etc. Indeed, it seems at times that for him the study of the of the work of art is interchangeable with that of the problem he considers central to its composition, point of view. Different approaches to the articulation and the fixing of the points of view of an artistic work correspond to different methods of describing the work's structure (p. 7). A Poetics of Composition lives up to its title only to the extent that it attempts to ennumerate, describe and classify the positions from which a narrative or an image is constructed.

In this volume, the third in his classic series of texts surveying the history of art theory, Moshe Barasch traces the hidden patterns and interlocking themes in the study of art, from Impressionism to Abstract Art. Barasch details the immense social changes in the creation, presentation, and reception of art which have set the history of art theory on a vertiginous new course: the decreased relevance of workshops and art schools; the replacement of the treatise by the critical review; and the interrelation of new modes of scientific inquiry with artistic theory and praxis. The consequent changes in the ways in which critics as well as artists conceptualized paintings and sculptures were radical, marked by an obsession with intense, immediate sensory experiences, psychological reflection on the effects of art, and a magnetic pull to the exotic and alien, making for the most exciting and fertile period in the history of art criticism.

Reviewed by: Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz Martin Kagel Enlightened War: German Theories and Cultures of Warfare from Frederick the Great to Clausewitz. Edited by Elisabeth Krimmer and Patricia Anne Simpson. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011. viii + 348 pages + 8 b / w images. $85.00. Enlightened War is a broadly conceived, ambitious anthology, which draws its readers’ attention to the different ways in which warfare and the military are reflected in eighteenth-century German thought. In twelve chapters, the volume explores the “intricate interrelations between the literature and culture” of the Enlightenment “and contemporary theories and practices of war” (2), contending that the institution of the military left its imprint on all areas of eighteenth-century life. Divided into four parts—“War and Enlightenment,” “Cultures of War in Classicism and Romanticism,” “War and Gender,” and “War and Theory”—the volume comprises contributions on a wide range of topics, from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s integration of the war experience into his theory of self-formation (Felix Saure) and the inverted perspectives on war embedded in Heinrich von Kleist’s anecdotes (Galili Shahar) to Immanuel Kant’s thoughts on the legitimate use of political violence (David Colclasure), Carl von Clausewitz’s hermeneutics (Arndt Niebisch) and the continuation of Clausewitz’s thinking in the current U.S. Army / Marine Corps Field Manual (Wolf Kittler). In toto, the volume gravitates to the time period around 1800, with a forward-looking trajectory rather than an emphasis on developments in the eighteenth century proper. In this sense, its title may be somewhat misleading, considering that only one contribution—Sara Eigen Figal’s stimulating essay on mid-eighteenth-century bellicism and conceptions of enmity in texts that “accepted war as an inevitable component of civilization” (22)—directly addresses the period around the Seven Years’ War, a time of intense nationalism in German letters inextricably connected to Prussia’s military campaigns. For in the only other contribution under the heading “War and Enlightenment,” Johannes Birgfeld’s apt discussion of Daniel Jensch’s war epic Borussias, the Seven Years’ War is no longer the actual subject, but rather “a Trojan Horse” (41) that allowed Jensch to insert himself into aesthetic debates of the 1790s. Not just for historical reasons, but also for reasons of the argument put forth by the volume as a whole, a more extensive treatment of the earlier period would have been desirable. The editors themselves contributed two of the essays in the volume. In her instructive discussion, Elisabeth Krimmer addresses the relationship between creative and martial genius as represented in Goethe’s Faust II and shows that Goethe “links [End Page 274] warfare and violence to human motivations that are assigned a negative moral value,” but also “portrays a bond between warfare and men’s highest aspirations,” including “the appreciation of beauty and art” (135). While Goethe’s text offers a rationale for the continued existence of warfare and recognizes the significance of war in relation to creativity, he does not endorse it wholeheartedly. Instead, Krimmer maintains, he critiques it and advocates “for art’s ability to temper the destructive force of war” (128). Patricia Anne Simpson reads three fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm—“The Devil and his Grandmother,” “The Devil’s Sooty Brother,” and “Bearskin”—as stories reenacting the war experience and the subsequent reintegration of soldiers into society. Her astute analysis demonstrates how the texts illuminate “the homologous relationship between military culture and civil society” (154), speaking in exemplary fashion to the volume’s overall aim. Simpson also addresses the question of gender as it is reflected in the texts, notably “the struggle to reimagine masculine identity in a postwar context” (151). Ultimately, she concludes, the soldiers’ tales “point to a disjuncture between the dominant discourse of a military ethos in reform and the popular ethics that embrace deserters, impoverished warriors, and newly civilized armed men” (168). Simpson’s discussion provides a smooth transition to what is arguably the strongest part of the volume, a section on “War and Gender,” which includes contributions by Inge Stephan, Waltraud Maierhofer, and Ute Frevert. Similar to Simpson, who had noted that the fairy tales did not...

The representation system was developed based on Plato's words in the seventh chapter of the Republic, according to which simulacra are copies of reality. The representation of reality or the nature of the image-reality relationship, has always been an essential topic of study in the philosophy of art. The mechanical recording and reproduction of the world by the camera in the modern era is the turning point in the representation of reality, ultimately leading to the collapse of the representation system. This study investigates the image-reality relationship using a descriptive-analytical approach to identify the relationship of cinematic images with reality. It first discusses the Realism in Film Theory centered on Andre Bazin and then Jean Baudrillard's thoughts on Hyperreality in postmodernism. The study shows that Realism in Film Theory has also addressed the problem of the representation of reality in cinema within the framework of the traditional concept of representation and based on the principle of referring images to external reality. However, by questioning the idea of representation in postmodernism and analyzing the process of separating reality from its visual signs, Baudrillard offers a new reading of the image-reality relationship.

Representations of Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern German Literature, by John D. Martin. Studies in German Jewish History 5. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004. 254 pp. $49.95. Incorporating recent discussions about distinction between anti-Judaism and antisemitism and hermeneutic John Martin contests almost universally negative portrayal of late medieval and early modern German representations of Jews formulated in modern scholarship. He rejects what he considers an uncritical acceptance of idea that only decline in Jewish and Christian relations in medieval Germany is depicted in medieval German literature as well as belief that medieval literature, especially medieval religious drama, played a large role in provoking anti-Jewish violence. In response to recent scholarship (especially work of Natascha Bremen Edith Wenzel, and Andrew Gow), Martin asserts that the facts of daily life in medieval Germany make it difficult to defend thesis that such conceptions of Jews as inhuman monsters exerted an unchallenged and unquestioned influence over minds of medieval (p. 29). He suggests instead that medieval Christians were aware of Jewishness of their own religion and that there existed a variety of literary Jews, who were complex and ambivalent. The monstrous image of Jew, however, was never sole, and often not prominent, image in literature. In his attempt to establish this contention, Martin examines a wide range of German literature, focusing on Passion plays, saints' legends, and fables. He notes that Jews could frequently be depicted in sympathetic light. Often Jews clearly identified in literature were depicted not as venal or irrational creatures but as people seeking truth about God. Even when late medieval literature cast Jews as associated with devil, Jews were more likely to be presented as dupes, not willing agents, of evil. Martin argues that emphasis on Jewish origins of Christianity in literature is multivalent, but that orientation does not necessarily imply a condemnation of Jews. He asserts that plays, for example, do not convey message that Christian Gospels do not offer hope to Jews or that Jews have no proper place in Christian society. What is more, literature at times portrays a realistic depiction of Jewish polemic and rabbinic teachings about Jesus. Martin concludes that Jewish resistance to Christian Gospels was nevertheless not seen as a symptom of an inherited race-based defect. Martin does note that certain literary productions clearly did include more anti-Jewish animus than others and that there were occasional, and often significant, shifts in representation. He points to two developments completed in several fifteenth-century texts, namely, shifting of blame for Crucifixion onto all Jews and creation of an anachronistic division between Jews and followers of Jesus. In some cases, this shift was also evident in dehumanization of Jews through use of animal imagery. Martin believes that even negative imagery needs to be properly contextualized, however. The degradation of Jews through use of scatological humor, for example, was entirely typical of Fastnachtspiele genre. Such contextualization, Martin argues, makes it possible to reconsider even some of apparently most vehement anti-Jewish portrayals. In work of Hans Folz, for example, he sees hostility toward Jews as an abstract, psychological phenomenon, not a credible, extant danger to lives and property of Christians. Folz, Martin contends, deals with Jews differently in his varying literary pieces, and overall evinces a disputative and theological interest in Jews. Even in literature that at times depicts Jews as sorcerers or magicians, some Jews, even when they remain unconverted, are depicted as righteous. …