Musicology Among the Humanit

ies
293
genheim Foundation, which admitte
dly has always smiled war
jects, has annually preferred compos mly on “creative” pro
ers over musicologists in
tionate ratio of up to ten to one. The a seemingly dispropor
single truly national—actu
center for the humanities, the outstan ally international—
ding, plush National
North Carolina’s Research Triangl Humanities Center in
e Park, has selected musico
208 fellowships it has awarded betw logists for only 4 of the
een 1977 and 1987, in spite
leading scholars both in this cou of applications from
ntry and abroad. Indeed, in
forward-looking interview entitled a recent, insightful,
“Redefining Humanities,” the
University’s Graduate Program in Lite Chairman of Duke
rature and Center for Critical
Jameson, is quoted at some length Theory, Frederick
regarding the several fields of
out any mention of music or the humanities with
musicology at all.’ And yet
literature’s—meaning the humanit he concludes that
ies’—”real field of study is cult
All in all, as one of its newest mem ure”!
bers, musicology has joined the
humanities least comfortably. Yet, sorority of the
of course, its relationships with
Musicology Among the Humanities bers concern all of us, philosophi
some administrative challenges for
cally as well as historically. They
those other mem
even have raised
the officers of the American Musicolo
in consideration of whom, especia gical Society,
lly our honored dedicatee and the
tors to this volume, the present rum other contribu
inations are offered (granted that
WILLIAM S. NEWMAN more a speculative than a research
paper).
these add up to I
The Problem
The controversies that have been
Introduction troubling the humanities during rece
have concerned not simply better nt decades
definitions of scope and goals, but
to keep pace with changing attitud new definitions
es and philosophies. In musicolog
troversies have come to the fore. One y, two such con
MuslcoLOG1 HAS ALWAYS BEEN an odd sister among the humanities. The confusion is between the music historians, who
to focus largely on the phenomeno continue
and even derision caused by the very term have become an old story. When I sought n of Western music, and the music
who have come to see the starting sociologists,
point for all the world’s musics as man
to better my teaching post in 1939, freshly bedecked with a Ph.D. in Musicology, uni other controversy is between the himself. The
versity administrators generally were both puzzled and “turned off” by this new al objectivists, who prefer to limit thei
conclusions to demonstrable facts, r findings and
leged discipline. After all, the American Musicological Society had been created and and the subjectivists, who seek also,
to legitimize the critical reactions or even rather,
admitted to the American Council of Learned Societies only within the previous five of experienced, individual perceivers
more significant—that is, the sub as being the
years. In 1942, when I applied to get into the Historical Division of Army Air Forces jective—aspects of music. In its som
confrontations with these two con ewhat belated
Intelligence, it was necessary to anticipate such puzzlement by playing down the mu troversies, musicology may be reflecti
oft-contested reputation as the “slowes ng music’s
sicological training. “Very impressive” was the anticipated military reaction, “but t developing of the arts.” Furthermo
Randel has implied in “Defining Mu re, as Don
what is it actually that this chap does?” To be sure, when the war ended and I moved sic” (a provocative valedictory that app
ter his New Harvard Dictionary), the eared af
on to the University of North Carolina, “musicology” presented no difficulty at all, case has yet to be proved successful
the newer stands in those two 2 ly for either of
since the department head then and there was the esteemed Glen Haydon, one of this controversies.
To return to the confusion surroundin
country’s pioneers in the field and one of this Society’s early presidents. g musicology among the humanities, first
all it should be clear that the problem of
Yet the confusion surrounding musicology has persisted not only because outsid is at least as much internal as external.
viewpoint, the International Musicolo From my
ers do not understand the word, but also because our insiders themselves have had gical Society’s quinquennial meeting
versity of California in Berkeley in at the Uni
continuing problems with it. During my own administrative term in the American 1977 illustrated that problem internally.
torate of the Society had planned The Direc
Musicological Society (1969—70), one of the most vexing, yet least expected, problems long and carefully to bring the musicolo
ethnomusicological worlds togethe gical and
was the intense, widespread controversy aroused by one committee’s efforts to pro r as never before by combining the interest
Western historians and of the worldw s of the
vide students and educators with a simple statement about the meaning, purposes, ide sociologists, all under the heading “In
ter
and prerequisites of musicological training.
That controversy, much like controversies currently troubling most of the other hu ‘Interview by Dixie B. O’Conner
manistic disciplines, too, has yet to be resolved Over the years it has accounted at in the Leader—News of the Research Trian
section, pp. 4—6. gle, 12 November 1987, front
least in part for a certain reluctance to award grants to musicologists. Thus, the Gug Notes 43 (1986/87): 751—66.
2

292
294 William S. Newman Musicology Among the Humanities
disciplinary Horizons in the Study of Musical Traditions, East and West.” But when 295
Among about a half-dozen such
the meeting occurred and participants from an unprecedented total of some forty-one seminars held during the
main ones were on citizenship, on academic year 1983—84, the
countries at-tended, I got the impression that, apart from some conscientious or duti exchanges between culture
contemporary English criticism. Most and commerce, and on
ful cross-overs and a couple of plenary sessions, the twain seldom did meet. of the Fellows were able
of these seminars. The goal for each to attend two or three
However, my chief concern in these remarks is not with the confusions and rela seminar was exemply_to
and crossbreeding of ideas among foster interchanges
tionships that are internal, but with the external kind that have kept musicology in specialists indifferent fields, as
term “center” for the humanities. implied by the very
that somewhat isolated position of odd sister among the humanities. More speci However, at least in that year,
to•several of us to fall short of that the seminars seemed
fically, my concerns here are, first, with certain reasons for the isolation; second, with goal. They succeeded as far
some sources may go, especially as the interchange of
representative bonds and disparities between literature and music, two fields of the of bibliographic references,
methodology. But they generally failed and of some principles of
humanities that are often linked; and third, with some sample proposals for improv those references and principles. to achieve significant
interchanges beyond
ing interchanges between musicologists and other scholars in the humanities. Mean One reason, again, was that every
while, throughout these remarks about the humanities, it is necessary to keep in mind a generalist embracing several Fellow was a specialist in his
own disciplme, not
the distinction between the study of a field, meaning the -ology in musicology, and the disciplines. There was no participant
like the late aesthetjcian Thomas in
field itself, meaning the music that engages the musicologist, whether independently Munro, editor of the elegant Journal these seminars
Art Criticism, who could cut right of
or in some interdisciplinary activity. across the divers arts with considerableAesthetics and
and authority. Even if there had background
been, he or she might have had a
up with the individual seminar hard time keeping
Causes reports and the current jargon
other reason lay in those internal peculiar to
controversies that each of the branches each. An
The most obvious reason why musicology stands apart from other humanistic disci experiencing in its own way. For
example, the seminar on contempor has been
plines is, of course, the distinct nature of music. Whereas all the other subjects of the cism was dominated almost entirely English criti
by excursions into “deconstructionism
humanities communicate through finite speech or visual symbols, music communi pants from outside the inner circle Partici
were mostly discouraged, if not “

cates through indefinable sound. Granted that music has been called the most popu constant minute, superfine, seeming excluded, by the
negativisms.
lar of the arts and the one universal means of communication, to many scholars in Still another reason that these
seminars fell short of their goals appears
other branches of the humanities it stifi remains a foreign, if not inaccessible, lan in the differences of objectives to have lain
among the different fields. A main
guage. Among themselves, those scholars can interrelate their respective subject mat losopher has been to find wisdom objective of the phi
and truth through logical reasoning,
ters directly—philosophical ideas with the novel, historical movements with architec of the historian has been to whereas that
provide an organized, typically
ture; but with musicologists they can interrelate their subject matter only indirectly explanation of noteworthy events both chronological record and
past and present, and that of the
and conjecturally—their philosophical ideas with the symphony, their historical explore poetry and prose in terms of litterateur to
some ideal of expression and form.
movements with the fugue. interrelationships between these objectives Trying to find
apples to oranges. has amounted to an archetype of
Put differently, those other humanists often overlap in their interests. Thus, much relating
history qualifies as literature; and much sociology, poetry, painting, and philosophy How does music fit into those
can be history. But although musicologists can overlap with other humanists in their stands more apart than any other interrelationships? It is singled out here because it
humanistic field. But its apartness goes
interests, too, the overlapping is usually once removed, so to speak. That is, while the indefinability of its sound as further than
against the specificity of speech and
much musicology is also history, and each type of music may have its own external It gets us into those different visual symbols.

I
objectives of the different humanities
association—its historical niche, or literary link, or visual connotation—music per se believe are misleading implications and into what I
in that word “center.” “Center”
overlaps nothing else. Rather, it combines with other products of the humanities to bonds. Says one writer, “Common implies common
ground among scholars isn’t hard to
produce various types of program music, types that have been endorsed warmly by one of the [National Humanitiesj find, and it’s
Center’s prime accomplishents”
nonpurists and just as warmly rejected by absolutists. ter’s participants come further From the Cen
comments such as: “I’m being forced
To be sure, in spite of their reliance on a common language of finite speech and here who aren’t specialists in my field. to talk to people
. It forces you to rethink what you’re
. .
readily mastered symbols, even those other humanists face problems when they try boil it down to what’s the really doing,
important issue. We believe that there’s some
to communicate among themselves. For in this age of ever greater specialization, each thing about human nature that is . .
.

unique, that you can get at it by history

branch has developed its own increasingly esoteric jargon, not only in vocabulary but phy or literature, and that it is worth or philoso
exploring. .
It doesn’t really matter whether
.
also in the use of special signs and formulas, as by logicians in philosophy. Further you’re studying fourteenthcentury .

more, humanists whose fields themselves are verbalized—as in literature, history, or Florence or nineteenth-century Paris
twentieth-ceny Holland. . .
What you’re getting at are these patterns,
.
or
philosophy—tend to have problems communicating with humanists in the fine arts of shaping ideas, that affect us now.”
3 these
design, the ideas of which are conveyed not by words but byline, space, chiaroscuro,
and color.
One measure of intercommunicability among the various humanities is afforded
Laura Alderson, “Scholarly
3
by the interdisciplinary seminars at North Carolina’s National Humanities Center. Retreat_A New Class of Fellows Gets Acquainted
manities Center,” Leader—News of the at the National Hu
Research Triangle, 24 September 1987, front

I
section, pp. 4—5.
296 William S. Newman
Musicology Among the Humanities
But what do the different humanities really have in common? So far as has been 297
As has often been observed to illustrate
discovered here, that question has only been explored in any depth in comparisons of this conflict, when the
love occurs in Pelléas et Mélisande, the climactic dedaration of
music and literature, and then first and chiefly by literati rather than musicians. But music gives way entirely to
Tristan und Isolde (Act I) the converse the words, while in
since “literature. is still, as all the more conservative definitions suggest, the core
. . occurs. The most obvious comprorpies
been the arioso in opera and the throughcompos
4 a brief review of those comparisons of music and literature have
of the humanities,” constitute compromises, both in the structure in art song. But these do
should help us to understand better the apartness of musicology. As familiar as most directness of the text and in
structure of the music. the broad phrase
of the differences have become to us, they are too often overshadowed by the easy The other basic conflict is caused by
assumption that music and literature relate intimately, if not innately. the need of most texts to unfold
as opposed to that of most music continuously,
to repeat small or large segments
the conventional association of sooner or later. In
Literature versus Music, Summarized words and music found in Classic
interest gives way to the textual interest opera, the musical
in the recitative and the converse
The systematic studies that seek common bonds between music and literature all aria. In the choruses of Handel’s occurs in the
oratorios, the words often give way
seem to have appeared since 1948. One of the first and most comprehensive of them is repeating singly or in fragments of to the music by
text, to the point of losing all verbal
Calvin S. Brown’s Music and Literature—A Comparison of the Arts. Of at least two dozen conflict of pace has found some of meaning. This
its most successful compromises
such studies that have appeared since then, three that have proved helpful here are “motivic play” of Wagner and Puccini, in the frequent
among others. Motivic play allows
The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry 1500—1 700, by John Hollander; textual continuity and musical repetition, for both
one and the lyrical continuity of the although at some cost to the clarity
Lawrence Kramer’s Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After; and a collection other. of the
of essays edited by W. J. and U. M. Rempel, Music and Literature.
5 Poets have experimented with
music’s important structural principle
Brown sets literature and music apart from other arts as being heard rather than repetition and contrast, but chiefly in of sectional
its lighter, stanzaic forms such as
seen (although each may be read) and as occurring in time rather than space (although and ballade, which offer limited the rondeau
opportunity for variety of rhythm, timbre,
6 But he also differentiates between literature and
each may evoke instant images). texture.’° Composers have done range, and
relatively little experimenting with
music (among many further ways) in that musical sounds, though indefinable, relate tures, these structures often being less literary struc
patly classifiable, in any case.” Calvin
internally through melody, harmony, and timbre, whereas literary sounds, though finds literature’s nearest and most Brown
convincing analogy with music to be in
combined to make specific words, relate only externally, with their arbitrarily and indi ism of poetry. He illustrates that the symbol
observation with a detailed examination
vidually acquired meanings.
7 He cautions against the indiscriminate equation of iden Whitman’s best known poems, “When of one of
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”12
tical terms that may have quite different meanings in literature and music—theme, for Hollander’s Untuning of the Sky deals
less with actual common traits than
instance, or motif.
8 terinfluences between music and poetry, with in
1961, 288—93). As he says in his especially word-painting (see Hollander
As Brown continues, the rhythmic patterns of Western poetry and music are simi original Preface:
lar, as far as the poetry goes, but, significantly, the means, controls, variety, and sub The following study concerns certain
tlety are all much greater in musical rhythm. Timbre is essential to both arts. Though beliefs about music rather than music itself;
over, it is less about those beliefs alone more
than
its variety is greater in music, its control is even more essential in literature, because and seventeenth centuries which expressed about the English poetry of the sixteenth
timbre is the means of distinguishing vowels and therefore must change with almost mology, metaphysics, “natural philosophy,”and employed them. The roles of cos
. .
.

every different word. Moreover, music permits simultaneity of sounds (in both ho a few bodies of speculation, are of the psychology, ethics, and politics, to name
mophony and polyphony), whereas literature permits it only as a special effect. greatest importance in the interpretation of
sic’s nature and effects during the Middle mu
Ages and Renaissance.’3
In vocal works, the combination of text and music creates two basic structural con
I have refrained from making any
rncts, conflicts that explain much of the characteristic friction between poets (or prose direct mention of program music as a
bond between literature and music significant
writers) and composers on the relatively few occasions when they have actually because that very concept has come under
vigorous fire, particularly since Hanslick’s such
sought to collaborate in the past.
9 These conflicts have never been fully resolved, only Von Musikalisch_Schonen first appeared
1854. The term itself seems to beg the in
compromised at best. One of them is caused by the distinctly briefer time needed by question by assuming a relationship that
pass muster under the close scrutiny of cannot
words to report an event or idea than of music to arouse the appropriate “emotion.” modern analysts and absolutists. Yet even
the relationship has been “only” if
psychological and subjective, there is no
that from Aristotle up to the eighteenth denying
century,
4. S. P. Woodhouse, “Humanities,” Encyclopaedia Britannica (1971), 11: 826.
A
literary, visual, or kinetic imagery, especially music was ordinarily associated with
literary (or at least verbal) imagery;
Rempel 1985. See especially the Introduction by the editors and Chapter 1, by J. Russel Reaver.
5 and
Brown 1948, 9—10.
6
Brown 1948, 12—13.
7
Brown 1948, vi. An extreme instance is the mistranslation of the title extension in Liszt’s Fantaisie.
8 ‘°Brown 1948, Ch. 9.
après une lecture de Dante as”. ‘
B
1 ut Reaver remarks that “musical form
. after a Lecture by Dante” (cited in Sacheverell Sittwell, Liszt [London,
. existed in short stories long before it
even to sonata patterns in Shakespeare’s did in music,” extending
1931], 71n.). Cf. Rempel 1985, vi—vii. Renaissance dramas (Rempel 1985, 3—4).
See Newman 1981, 254—60.
9 Brown 1948, Ch. 15.
2
‘
Holiander 1961, vii and viii.
13
298 William S. Newman
Musicology Among the Humanities
that from the Classic Era to this day the association has still remained strong and con 299
prove to be in the other fields of the
vincing among many involved with music, both practitioners and appreciators. How nating discussion that could draw humanities would be a point of potentially illumi
ever, more in keeping with present-day concepts has been the theory advanced in in all of the seminar’s
A concept of quality based on participants.
Lawrence Kramer’s Music and Poetry. Kramer argues (if I am not oversimplifying) that relative Standards might
sig’s prolonged, almost desperate, be illustrated by Robert Pir
any true synthesis of music and poetry lies not in whatever external imagery might be relates his search at intervals search for the elusive meaning
throughout Zen and the Art of of that term. He
suggested by the music, but in a dynamic or libidinal sense of rhythmic continuity and (New York, 1974), a book that has
had much influence on Motorcycle Maintenance
expressive “physical gesture” that derives from concurrent structural units when the last decade and a half. Pirsig first college campuses over the
two arts are intelligently combined.’
4 developed absolute criteria
had to discard those as inadequate, for quality, but he soon
if not misleading. Finally,
breakthrough led to another, he after one philosophical
Eight Sample Proposals for Better Interchanges arrived at relative criteria.
nese, Hindu, and Greek theory, Drawn from ancient Chi
these criteria derived not
So much by way of recalling several bonds between literature and music and some studies, but also from his rich, only from his worldwide
albeit mostly disheartehmg,
teacher. Early in this pursuit of the experiences
disparities that can obstruct interchanges between them in spite of the very close rela meaning of quality, he concluded as a graduate
tionships usually credited to them. But those disparities need not rule out all produc tive and subjective considerations that both objec
contribute to quality, yet quality
tive interchanges. There are types of comparisons between literature and music, and Rather, quality is the controller itself is neither.
of each, of how and where
between any other fields of the humanities, that can illuminate those fields by exploit jective converge. Later, he saw the objective and the sub
quality as the controlling force
three great areas of knowledge in
ing their disparities as well as their common bonds. For those seminars at the “Cen and experience_.rejigion art, what to him are the
ter,” for example, several types of such exploitative comparisons might be suggested that religion and science are more and science, arguing
in need of exploration in this
for topics of discussion. I believe such topics could interest, inform, and challenge all he saw quality as “the track that sense than art. Finally,
directs the train.” By “train” he
participants, most obviously those in the time and space arts, without requiring them the world’s accumulated, conscious means the mythos, or
to master each other’s specialties along the way. cluding quality itself, he regards as knowledge. Everything outside of the mythos, in
being the terra incogizita of the
My sample types of topics differ widely.
15 Two consider abstract concepts—of knowledge. insane, or of extra-
beauty measured in absolute terms and of quality in relative terms; one topic tests a My third suggested topic involves
the relatively new approach of
relatively new analytic tool, semiotics; one compares the treatment of some venerable semiology_that is, the interpretation semiotics, or
of signs of any sort. Words and
artistic theme as it has turned up in various fields. Two topics take mathematical be signs; so can maps, graphs, sentences can
the symbols of music notation,
approaches—proportions in the “golden mean” and permutations in pattern- indicators, and much more. The smoke signals, traffic
application of semiotics has gotten
making; and two involve structural processes, one based on the generation of ideas literature, semantics, and logic. But it its chief start in
is making its way into music
and the other on the influence of climaxes. Each type of topic is meant to afford oppor arts as well, although its application and the other fine
in
tunities to compare and peer into several disciplines by considering how its applica tary and uncertain. Mainly, semiotics these fields must still be regarded as rudimen
is helping to develop further, often
tion might differ in approach, emphasis, and relevance from field to field. trating ways to explore, compare, more pene
and interrelate the several fields
A concept of beauty measured in absolute terms is the kind that would supply vidual idioms. To take an illustration through their indi
from recent research of my own,’6 Beethoven’s
standards of beauty for the proverbial rose unseen on a desert island. It makes no very personal notation sometimes
proves to be a clue by itself, even in the
allowance for the reactions of individual perceivers. One of the best-known attempts other editorial indications, as to how absence of
the master wanted his music performed.
ently unlike his contemporaries
to realize that concept is the 1757 essay “The Sublime and the Beautiful,” written by Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert, Beethoven Appar
the eloquent Irishman Edmund Burke at the age of twenty-eight. Burke argued for enced his music as he notated it. For experi
example, when his notation leans forward
certain immutable, diametrically contrasted traits in sublimity and in beauty—awe, gradually compresses, he probably and
was
terror, and vastness in the one as against diminution, delicacy, elegance, smoothness when it straightens up and gradually feeling a crescendo and an accelerando, and
expands, he was feeling a decrescendo
(including graduated rather than abrupt variation), cleanness, and fairness (or clarity) return to the prevailing tempo. To and a
what extent, in what ways, and how
in the other. Typical of his defense of each term was his observation that “the beauty does some sort of notation figure in revealingly
the other subjects of the humanities?
of women is considerably owing to their delicacy.” Apparently he would have sub As a sample of my fourth seminar
topic, the Faust legend might be proposed
scribed to Mozart’s reported dictum, “Whatever else, art must be beautiful.” Obvi theme widely taken up throughout as one
the humanities. The challenge would be
ously, Burke’s standards can be tested readily enough and evaluated in their own it in whatever different forms to pursue
and viewpoints it might reveal itself. The
right in music and the other fine arts, each in its own way. How relevant they might for exploring comparative possibilities
treatments should arouse immediate interest
disciplinary seminar. Such treatments in any inter
come to mind at once in literature and
and in other fields after a bit of music,
searching—using related characters, too
topheles and occasionally Gretchen), (Mephis
and in analogous tales (such as Weber’s Der
Kramer 1984, vii—viii and passim. Kramer associates rhythmic continuity not with metric organiza
4
‘ Frei
tion but with expressive “physical gesture.”
The “topics” proposed here are given not as seminar titles, but simply as subjects to be explored.
5
‘
Newman 1988, Ch. 2.
6
‘
300 William S. Newman Musicology Among the
Humanities
301
schütz). There are also useful books such as Werner P. Friedrich’s Outline of Compara sometimes overlap, and each one
has undergone signifjca
tive Literature from Dante Alighieri to Eugene O’Neill (Chapel Hill, 1954) that can get in the humanities. in my own work applications throughout
on the sonata, both
triguing discussions started. These books pursue not only Faust but numerous other erably. Thus, analysis of the approaches have helped consid
mutually opposed processes
favorite themes, such as Don Juan, Tristan, and Parzival, in all their literary guises from a motive (or fragment) and of motivic play generated
phrase grouping generated
and genres, whether in novels, epics, dramas, poems, short stories, or even polemics complete idea) has brought out from a phrase (or more
essential distinctions in
and letters, and with not a few cross-references to landmarks in music, painting, and styles, and in the structures that tonal, rhythjnjc and textural
result, between the sonatas
another. 20 With regard to of
sculpture. Recently, I had occasion to explore “The Beethoven Mystique in Romantic panoramas of climaxes, for example one era and those of
Art, Literature, and Music” and found the humanistic offspring to be almost inex ation of main and subord.inate the
climaxes have projected broad location and evalu
_to me, often more
21
sonatas
haustible in both its quantity and variety.’
7 meaningful, comprehensive, perspectives of those
My fifth and sixth topics come under the heading of mathematics, at least to the perspectives than Vincent d’Indy’s and readily intelligible
“grand cadences” or Schenkerjan
extent that both arrive at common denominators. One of them is based on the so- project. Ursätze might
called “golden mean,” or “golden section.” Dating back to the ancient Greeks and Although the means will differ from
discipline to discipline, of course,
Babylonians, the golden mean is a law of proportions that, according to its propo of these approaches should be applications
equally evident in the spatial
nents, governs many of the world’s greatest artworks in whatever field. The law is the humanities How well do arts and the other fields of
the locations of the main
traditionally stated as “the division of a length such that the smaller part is to the fields bear out that “law” of the climaxes in these different
golden mean? In Caravaggio’s
8 In more modem terms, those proportions are
greater as the greater is to the whole.” at Emmaus, dated around painting of the Supper
1600, the focus on Christ’s
found in any part of the mathematician’s “Fibonacci sequence,” which starts with 2 + roughly five-eighths from the left head does occur at a point
and the bottom of the whole.
3 = 5, 3 + 5 = 8, and so on. The proportions of an Italian fourteen-line sonnet, with zation of Saint Joan, the burning at But in Shaw’s dramati..
the stake occurs near the middle,
its change of direction in the ninth line, approximate the golden mean. So, even, do complain about too much anticlimax. causing critics to
death occurs so near the end of And in Kipling’s Light That Failed,
the proportions of something as simple as the quatrain “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” the novel that the reader may the mercjfuj
with its peak on the word “everywhere” in its third line. Creations as diverse as a bit of denouement is not needed wonder whether at least
to digest the shock. As for
Beethoven symphonies, Rembrandt portraits, Racine plays, the Washington Capitol, historian and the philosopher are generative
among those who must resort to processes, the
and the Parthenon—all have been shown to adhere to the golden mean in their pro them constantly, however them and assess
differently.
portions, peaking in each instance on some strategic element located about five- * *
eighths from the start, or the bottom, or other base of the whole.
19 So much for suggesting one
kind of topic_—one kind of
The other mathematical topic might be described as pattern-making. Its fullest ex board__that I believe could enable approach across the
ideas more penetratingly and musicologists and other humanists to
position comes from the late Russian-American theorist and composer Joseph Schil more beneficially. It is hardly exchange
linger, in a hefty tome with the overly optimistic, even megalomaniacal, title The seen difficulties of communication surprising that we have
and interchange arise between
Mathematical Basis of the Arts (New York, 1948). Through circular and other permuta neighbors in the humanities. If they even the closest
did not, there would be no
tions, algebraic formulas, rhythmic conjunction and interference, geometric projec field, no claim to validity as an individuality in each
independent field; indeed, each field
tions large and small, and an imaginative assortment of techniques like the Japanese be its own best ambassador. would not then
And it is also to be expected that
art of origami, Schillinger creates an endless variety of simple and complex patterns. remote of those neighbors, music makes the most
communicag as it does in a language
These he converts to horizontal-vertical graphs, which become his common denomi from any other. But between radically different
the nonpurists who may refer
nators of the arts and hence, in turn, can be reconverted into any other art form. In “center” too readily and the purists to “interchange” and
who would disavow the possibility
such a way, for example, Schillinger is able to convert “The Skyline of New York” into interchanges, perhaps some will see of Significant
topics such as those suggested here
one of his own most successful melodies, and other melodies into snowflake patterns. of bringing musicology more as one way
comfortably into the humanities fold.
The use of patterns as a structural means ordinarily shows up readily enough in music
and in the visual arts. But in literature other than poetry, and in history and philoso University of North Carolina, Chapel
phy, when patterns can be found at all they are likely to be obscured by greater sub Hifi
tlety and irregularity, arising chiefly in recurring ideas, situations, and behavior.
The last two examples of seminar topics to propose here concern overall rather than
local approaches to a creative work. One of them explores the work as a generative
process, the other as a panorama of greater and lesser climaxes. The two approaches

Newman 1983a, 354—87. Cf. Alessandro Comini, The Changing Image of Beethoven: A Stndy in Mythmak
7
‘
ing (New York, 1987). For example, see Newman 1953/54,
20
301—9 (with emphasis on the “why”
As in Encyclopaedia Britannica (1971), 10: 542.
8
‘ also Newman 1983b, 113—15. of the generative process);
See Newman 1983b, 146 and nn. 47 and 47a.
9
‘ See, for example, Newman 1952,
21
283—93; Newman 1983b, 147—48;
and Newman l983c: 145—48.
302 William S. Newman

List of Works Cited

Brown, Calvin S. Music and Literature: A Comparison of the Arts. Athens, Ga., 1948.
Hollander, John. The Untuning of the Sky: Ideas of Music in English Poetry, 1500—1700.
Princeton, 1961; repr. with new Preface, New York, 1970.
Kramer, Lawrence. Music and Poetry: The Nineteenth Century and After. Berkeley, 1984.
Newman, William S. “The Climax of Music.” Music Review 13 (1952): 283—93.
“Musical Form as a Generative Process.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
12 (1953/54): 301—9.
Understanding Music. 2nd ed. New York, 1981.
“The Beethoven Mystique in Romantic Art, Literature, and Music.” The Musi
cal Quarterly 49 (1983): 354—87. (1983a)
The Sonata in the Classic Era. 3rd ed. New York, 1983. (1983b) ENVOT
The Sonata since Beethoven. 3rd ed. New York, 1983. (1983c)
Beethoven on Beethoven: Playing His Piano Music His Way. New York, 1988.
Rempel, W. J. and U. M., eds. Music and Literature. Winnipeg, 1985.