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1 results

  • 8 - Must We Sing What We Mean?:

  • from Part II - Aesthetics and the Modern
  • Edited by Greg Chase, College of the Holy Cross, Massachusetts, Juliet Floyd, Boston University, Sandra Laugier
  • Book:
    Cavell's <i>Must We Mean What We Say?</i> at 50
    Published online:
    03 March 2022
    Print publication:
    10 March 2022, pp 135-148

  • Summary

    This essay focuses on “Music Decomposed” and, to a lesser extent, “A Matter of Meaning It” (they are companion pieces), contextualizing these texts, and exploring some important parallels between musical composition and philosophical authorship. Colapietro shows how, in subtle and surprising ways, some of the main themes of Cavell’s philosophical investigations are articulated in “Music Decomposed” (themes such as voice, timing, extemporaneity, contingency, deep listening, rule-following, and an uncompromising affirmation of the radical nature of human responsibility made in the teeth of one or another fashionable celebration of impersonal mechanism). Tradition and technique are necessary for creativity, even if creativity reconfigures tradition and transcends technique.