Quale paradigma per il ‘linguaggio della musica’? Verso una filosofia del gesto musicale / Which paradigm for the 'language of music'? Towards a philosophy of musical gesture

  • Stefano Oliva
Keywords: musical language, gesture, voice, Agamben, Berio

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to reflect on the metaphor of ‘musical language’ in order to find a satisfying paradigm for musical expressiveness. First, I will review the idea of music as ‘language of emotions’. Then, I will present some authors from continental tradition, with particular attention to Giorgio Agamben’s reflection on the link between music and Stimmungen, seen as prelinguistic moods which determine the orientation of the human being. I will refuse Agamben’s approache and I will present Wittgenstein’s comparison between musical and linguistic understanding, in which the concept of gesture is central. In conclusion, using Luciano Berio’s and Guerino Mazzola’s reflections on musical gesture, I will propose a gestural paradigm for understanding musical expressiveness. I will indicate in the complexity of musical gesture a synthesis between bodily immediacy and cultural tradition that will help to refuse both the linguistic paradigm, based on the concept of ‘musical meaning’, and the pre-linguistic model of musical expressiveness, which take back to the platonic theory of ethos.

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Published
2017-12-03
How to Cite
Oliva, S. (2017) “Quale paradigma per il ‘linguaggio della musica’? Verso una filosofia del gesto musicale / Which paradigm for the ’language of music’? Towards a philosophy of musical gesture”, Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 11(2). Available at: http://rifl.unical.it/index.php/rifl/article/view/432 (Accessed: 29March2024).