Mawer, Deborah
(2018)
‘Jolivet’s Rameau: Theory, Practice and Temporal Interplay’.
In:
Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960.
Routledge, London and New York, pp. 176-197.
ISBN ISBN 9781472474759; 9781315586847 (ebk)
Full text not available from this repository.
Abstract
Jolivet is often related to a non-Western otherness, but this French-on-French mapping examines how, in a wartime essay, the composer portrays his forebear Rameau and, in so doing, what he says about himself. A loosely symmetrical form (chiasmus) leads contextually from philosophies of temporality, especially à la Bergson, through an overview of Jolivet’s wartime theoretical-historical writings and Rameau’s theoretical work, to the essay in question. A close reading of Jolivet on Rameau develops the special concern with music theory and theory–practice relations (Bourdieu-like), and extends through an eighteenth-century historicity, to Jolivet’s engagement here with temporal interplay. Mawer argues that, overall, despite a measure of hagiography, Jolivet creates an impressively insightful, knowledgeable account of his predecessor, in part because ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are so well matched. Inevitably, however, some re-inflection occurs in overplaying intuition and spirituality, so betraying his own authorial priorities. Most interesting is Jolivet’s perception that Rameau had time to pursue his discoveries thoroughly: it is salutary that, as early as 1946, Jolivet felt hurried – something regarded typically as a bane of modern postmillennial lives.
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
Tools
Tools