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Music as Communitas : Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, and the Musical Work

2010; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01411890903475981

1547-7304

Ludim Rebeca Pedroza,

Diverse Music Education Insights

Franz Liszt and Clara Schumann were important participants in the construction of social, aesthetic, and pedagogical frameworks that contributed to the solidification of the musical work as a conceptual entity. Close inspection of their performative lives and personal views reveals a complex interplay of elements commonly seen as antithetical (for example, emotional experience and conceptual construction). This interplay can be viewed through the lens of anthropologist Victor Turner's theory of communitas, which, in its different modalities, refers to experience, regulation, and idealization. Liszt idealized music as a social system that facilitated the experience of transcendence-via-ecstasy, while Schumann's private, emotional relationship with music drove her to idealize the musical work itself as an autonomous entity. Each artist advanced different aspects of a utopian aesthetic that sought to protect musical experience as a liberating elsewhere. The anthropological perspective, which does not endorse the artists' aesthetics, aids in examining the appeal that historically specific concepts and practices might still exert on present performers.