Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction: Setting the Stage, and Then Exiting It
- 1 On Critique; or, Two Paths through the Art-Critical World
- 2 On Transcendence; or, Mozart among the Neoplatonists, Present and Past
- 3 On Intention
- 4 On Being
- 5 On Chance and Necessity
- 6 On Ambiguity
- 7 On Mimesis
- 8 On Pleasure
- 9 On Concepts and Culture
- 10 The Flaws in the Finale
- Conclusion: An Other Modernism?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - On Mimesis
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- Introduction: Setting the Stage, and Then Exiting It
- 1 On Critique; or, Two Paths through the Art-Critical World
- 2 On Transcendence; or, Mozart among the Neoplatonists, Present and Past
- 3 On Intention
- 4 On Being
- 5 On Chance and Necessity
- 6 On Ambiguity
- 7 On Mimesis
- 8 On Pleasure
- 9 On Concepts and Culture
- 10 The Flaws in the Finale
- Conclusion: An Other Modernism?
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Like indeterminacy, mimesis is a word that Abbate and Parker do not use. Instead of “imitation,” they opt for “correspondence.” There is some ambiguity in their usage. Occasionally, “correspondence” functions as a synonym for mimesis, as when they call it “a classical aesthetic category.” Mostly, however, they shade the concept in ways that diverge from Aristotle and much of the following history of poetics, where fiction enacts a basic human impulse to imitate. That tonal and qualitative shift is highlighted in the piece they use to illustrate correspondence, a Mark Morris choreography, from 1987, of Mozart's Fugue in C Minor, K. 426 (1783). Abbate and Parker say that the gestures of Morris's dancers correspond “exactly … to every musical turn” of Mozart's piece. Now, correspondence looks much more structuralist. Morris's purpose is less to animate the mechanisms of Mozart's fugue than just to show that it has them. Abbate and Parker acknowledge that robotic turn, but Morris, they think, still has done something nobler than toss off a caricature or pursue an idle experiment. They see a salutary “resistance” in his eccentricity: “By engendering banality, predictability and ridicule through such precise means, Morris subverted a fundamental assumption that all of us bring to ‘reading’ ballet: that gesture and motion should be generated by and correspond to music” (“Dismembering Mozart,” 187). By this point, “correspondence” has lost almost any connection to a “classical aesthetic category.” Instead of acting as a synonym for mimesis, correspondence sounds a challenge to mimesis.
Grammatically, that devaluation happens by making adverbs shoulder a lot of weight. Summarizing the logic of correspondence theory, Abbate and Parker say its demand is that, “ideally, the musical will correspond precisely to verbal or staged events, and unfold in parallel to text and action” (188). They highlight the first adverb to argue that the unification of music and drama may be speculatively thinkable but practically impossible or, if in fact realizable, then aesthetically unsatisfying. I highlight the second one to emphasize the burden that is being placed on the concept. Levin, too, uses similar modifiers to raise the hurdle that mimesis must overleap.
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- Information
- Coming to Terms with Our Musical PastAn Essay on Mozart and Modernist Aesthetics, pp. 104 - 113Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2018