Abstract
In this essay, I will highlight the role of music in the Gadamerian reflection. I claim that music helps show that Gadamer’s consideration of art is based on the paradigm of performance (as opposed to the misleading reduction of hermeneutics to a form of textualism). In particular, I will show how music emblematically represents such performative paradigm in three main aspects: (1) the concept of play as self-presentation and movements peculiarly fits the essence of music, which is such only insofar as it is performed; (2) music perfectly manifests the temporality of art, as explained by the paradigm of the festival as what is both unique and repeatable; (3) music manifests a specific kind of interaction between the work of art and the audience. Having no permanent material medium as its essence, music can best show the reassessment of art as a social activity conceived in a horizontal direction rather than a mere product or object created by the artist and given to the audience. On this basis, it will be possible to show the performative character underlying hermeneutic itself, which unfolds in the continuous movement and actualization of hermeneutic dialogue and in the democratic openness it entails.
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Notes
- 1.
The performative turn in aesthetics begins at the end of the twentieth century, at first pretending to be a paradigm opposed to hermeneutics. Recently, an important author like Fischer-Lichte has tried to reconcile the two positions, while still proposing a reductive reading of hermeneutics. For her, hermeneutics still considers art as “work”. For an introduction to the performative turn, see Fischer-Lichte (2008). On this point, I totally agree with Ruta (2018), who criticizes both the opposition and the complementarity between hermeneutics and the performative aesthetics, and shows the performative potentials of Gadamerian philosophy itself. For a general view of the philosophy of performance (not strictly related to aesthetics), see Cull Ó Maoilearca and Lagaay 2020.
- 2.
It is clear that Gadamer, unlike such authors as Schopenhauer, Nietzsche or – in the twentieth century – Adorno, cannot be considered a “philosopher of music”. My aim here is to show how the liminal role of music will help highlight a different reading of the Gadamerian aesthetics. For a relevant study on the application of Gadamer’s theory to music, and to jazz music in particular, see Nielsen 2016. On Gadamer on music, see Matassi (2004). For a hermeneutical approach to music, see Sawyer (2003), Savage (2010) and Kramer (2011). For a general view of the philosophy of music and the topic of performance, see Gracyk and Kania (2011).
- 3.
Here, I will refer to the term “performance” from an aesthetical point of view, distinguishing the concept of performance from that of “performative”. Moreover, the concept of performance relates to that of improvisation. Improvisation will not be the main concern of this paper. This topic has been addressed in recent studies by Bertinetto (2012) and Bertinetto (2022) (inspired by Gadamer’s work) and by Bertram (2019) and Bertram (2021). They both showed that improvisation is at the very core of art and human praxis. Feige (2014) and Benson (2003) analysed improvisation with specific reference to music. It can be argued that all such studies have a Gadamerian background, despite approaching the matter from different perspectives.
- 4.
Of course, one could say that the symphony belongs to who collects the royalties, but that would be a merely instrumental belonging. In general, a work of art cannot be said to belong to someone from a spiritual point of view.
- 5.
At the same time, this understanding of hermeneutics could help highlight something fundamental about the essence of music and show its intrinsic social character.
- 6.
He also wrote an essay about Bach and his role in Weimar cultural context, see Gadamer (1994, 109–117).
- 7.
- 8.
“But therefore the medium of sound proves to be more akin to the inner simple essence of a subject-matter than the sensuous material hitherto considered, because instead of being fixed in spatial figures and acquiring stability as the variety of things separated or juxtaposed in space it has rather assigned to it the ideal sphere of time” (Hegel 1975, 904). For a reading of Hegel on music, see Eldrige (2007).
- 9.
Gadamer addresses this topic in two specific essays Ende der Kunst? – Von Hegels Lehre vom Vergangenheitscharakter der Kunst bis zur Anti-Kunst von Heute, in GW VIII, 221-231 and Die Stellung der Poesie im System der Hegelschen Ästhetik und die Frage des Vergangenheitscharakters der Kunst, in GW VIII, 221-231. As to the fundamental influence of Hegelian philosophy in Gadamer’s thought, see among others Risser (2002) and Pippin (2002).
- 10.
This is a fundamental difference from Heidegger, who considers Hegel the emblem of the subjectivist vision of the metaphysical tradition. On this point, see Heidegger (1979).
- 11.
For a reading of the Gadamerian critique of Kant, see Schmidt 2021.
- 12.
For a reassessment of the value of the concept of Erlebnis, see Matteucci-Iannilli (2021).
- 13.
- 14.
Gadamer also maintains: “Essential to an emanation is that what emanates is an overflow. What it flows from does not thereby become less. The development of this concept by Neoplatonic philosophy, which uses it to get beyond Greek substance ontology, is the basis of the positive ontological status of the picture” (Gadamer 2013, 141).
- 15.
See also Gadamer (1998), 22ff and 122–130 (this text is the reworking of a radio conference titled “The Play of art”). Recently Nielsen (2022) stressed the relevance of this text, as well as the centrality of the concept of play for a definition of art as a dynamic, communicative and participatory event.
- 16.
Here, Gadamer quotes Aristotle and refers to the Heideggerian conception of time in a footnote, claiming that “the character of this time cannot be grasped in terms of the usual temporal experience of succession” (Gadamer 2013, 172, n. 34).
- 17.
This follows in the footsteps of the historicist “reconstruction” attributed to Schleiermacher, who falls in the trap of thinking that the point of view of the past author of a work of art can actually be acquired (see Gadamer 1898, 165ff). Quite the opposite, only historical mediation, the Wirkungsgeschichte, can build a true relation of contemporaneity with the work. Thomas (2018) similarly underlines the relevance of the Gadamerian critique of the attempted historical reconstruction of past executions, as in Early modern music.
- 18.
This feature should also provide food for thought about the essence of music, that, with the help of hermeneutics, can be reassessed as being emblematically dialogical, always trying to speak to alterity.
- 19.
In contrast with the reduction of Gadamer’s thought to mere linguisticism – as the famous statement “Being that can be understood is language” (Gadamer 2013, 490) was understood by Marquard (1981) –, after Truth and Method Gadamer stresses the limits of language itself, as in his essay Grenzen der Sprache (1984), in GW VIII, 350–361.
- 20.
This term was first used by Heidegger and then inherited by Gadamer. It constitutes a central word of Gadamerian philosophy, in particular in relation to the theory of art, as recently underlined by Risser (2022, 53–54). On a opposite point of view, Figal affirms that this terms “is not felicitous, because Vollzug indicates a subjective activity rather than an actuality reader of pictures and poems would take part in” (Figal 2022, 175). In opposition to the paradigm of performance in fact he aims to stress the centrality of “image” in relation to ontological objectivity. In order to correctly understand the paradigm of performance, I claim that we have to stress the fact that the work of art is not enacted by a subject, rather it enacts itself only in the interaction with the audience.
- 21.
- 22.
This point distinguishes Gadamer’s reading of art from Heidegger’s, where the poet takes on a mystical and messianic role (e.g., in the figure of Hölderlin), see Heidegger (2000). I defended this thesis in Romagnoli (2022b). For a comparison between Heidegger and Gadamer on the specific point of music as an ethical paradigm, see McAuliffe (2021). This work stresses the continuity between the two, rather than the difference.
- 23.
“In works of art, the nations have deposited their richest inner intuitions and ideas, and art is often the key, and in many nations the sole key, to understanding their philosophy and religion” (Hegel 1975, 7).
- 24.
- 25.
For a reading of Heidegger’s influence on the Gadamerian thought, see among others the fundamental Grondin (2001) and Risser (2005). Gadamer inherits this topic by using the German word “Anstoß”: “I think we must say that generally we do so in the experience of being pulled up short by the text. Either it does not yield any meaning at all or its meaning is not compatible with what we had expected” (Gadamer 2013, 280 emphasis added)
- 26.
Gadamer himself underlined the commonality between his conception and Wittgenstein’s reflections developed in the same years (see Gadamer 2013, 583).
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Romagnoli, E. (2024). The Hermeneutics of Performance and the Performance of Hermeneutics: Music as a Paradigm for Gadamer’s Conception of Art. In: McAuliffe, S. (eds) Gadamer, Music, and Philosophical Hermeneutics. Contributions to Hermeneutics, vol 12. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41570-8_16
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