The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression

Intergrating eighteenth-century sources with recent aesthetic theories, Peter Kivy sets forth a view of musical expression that shows how emotive descriptions of music may be intelligible, methodologically sound, and hence a thoroughly respectable part of musical analysis and criticism. In doing so, he resolves the dilemma that has confronted both the untrained listener and the musical scholar or musician, namely: when musical description conforms to the scholar's demand for scientific analysis and objectivity, it is too technical for the untrained listener to understand: yet if it is rendered humanistically intelligible to layperson, the expert dismisses it as nonsense. In order to resolve the dilemma, the author contends, emotive description must be made respectable in the eyes of the learned so that it can stand alongside technical description as a valid analytic tool. Rather than decry emotive description as meaningless and subjective rambling on the part of the composer or of the critic. Professor Kivy suggests that emotive depictions of each other and the world around us. If the criteria of musical expressiveness can be identified with those of human expression, he concludes, then these criteria provide a rational foundation for the emotive criticism of music.