Antithetical Arts: On the Ancient Quarrel Between Literature and Music

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Preface
PART I: THE FOUNDING OF FORMALISM
1 First the Music, and then the Words
2 Designs a la Grecque
3 Body and Soul
PART II: THE FORTUNES OF FORMALISM
4 Mood and Music
5 Persona Non Grata
6 Action and Agency
7 Shostakovich's Secret?
PART III: THE FATE OF FORMALISM
8 The Failure of Formalism and the Failure of its Foes
9 Attention, Ritual, and the Additive Strategy
10 Musical Morality
11 Empty Pleasure to the Ear
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Antithetical Arts constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out. In Part II, specific attempts to put literary interpretations on various works of the absolute music canon are examined and criticized. Finally, in Part III, the question is raised as to what the human significance of absolute music is, if it does not lie in its representational or narrative content. The answer is that, as yet, philosophy has no answer, and that the question should be considered an important one for philosophers of art to consider, and to try to answer without appeal to representational or narrative content.

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