TY - CHAP
T1 - Decadence and music
AU - Sutton, Emma Sophie
PY - 2019/8/1
Y1 - 2019/8/1
N2 - The idea of decadent music may be as old as music itself, dating back at least to classical antiquity. This chapter offers a history of the concept from the classical period through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the eighteenth century, before concentrating on the explosion of the idea across Europe from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Classical writings often invoke a model of music that can be understood as proto-decadent ? for which read morally ‘bad’, formally flawed, hyper-affective, enervating, or corrupting in some way ? even if the term itself is not used. Then, as later, decadent music was perceived and defined by its effect on its listeners or by its formal properties, as Nietzsche understood Wagnerian opera in the nineteenth century. Music, it seems, has always been understood to contain the potential to disrupt and contaminate itself and its audience, requiring aesthetic, social, even state control ? control articulated via the idea of decadence.
AB - The idea of decadent music may be as old as music itself, dating back at least to classical antiquity. This chapter offers a history of the concept from the classical period through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the eighteenth century, before concentrating on the explosion of the idea across Europe from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Classical writings often invoke a model of music that can be understood as proto-decadent ? for which read morally ‘bad’, formally flawed, hyper-affective, enervating, or corrupting in some way ? even if the term itself is not used. Then, as later, decadent music was perceived and defined by its effect on its listeners or by its formal properties, as Nietzsche understood Wagnerian opera in the nineteenth century. Music, it seems, has always been understood to contain the potential to disrupt and contaminate itself and its audience, requiring aesthetic, social, even state control ? control articulated via the idea of decadence.
UR - https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108550826
U2 - 10.1017/9781108550826.010
DO - 10.1017/9781108550826.010
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9781108426244
VL - 1
T3 - Cambridge Critical Concepts
SP - 152
EP - 168
BT - Decadence and Literature
A2 - Desmarais, Jane
A2 - Weir, David
PB - Cambridge University Press
CY - Cambridge UK
ER -