stamitz's sinfonia concertante as hegelian whole

The problem with reading philosophy, for me anyway, is that I begin to see Hegel/Kant/Baudrillard/Foucault/Russell in everything. Every painting becomes an exercise in Kantian aesthetics, an object imbued with the power to both transcend and foster transcendence. The world is merely a simulation saturated with proliferations of imagery and virtual stimuli. Stamitz Sinfonia Concertante is an illustration of Hegel's paradoxically bifurcated and unified I. Perhaps I just need to use something relatively simple (Stamitz) to understand something complex (Hegel).

In any event, here we go. Whether or not this will make it into the big paper remains to be seen. I have but twenty short minutes, and most of my time will be consumed by a discussion on the disciplined eighteenth century body and the means by which the twenty first century performer can resist this condition/tradition. Indeed, there may be precious little time for Hegel.

I've spent some time with the score, away from both my viola and my part and superficially, I can say that there is not much to the Sinfonia Concertante. It is largely pleasing, facile, balanced: representative of the quintessential early classical style. As such, it would be common practice to apply a so-called "dialectic" listening model.

However.

The Hegelian dialectic is commonly understood as that old "thesis; antithesis; synthesis." This, in fact, as your friend and mine Slavoj Zizek tells us, was applied later. In fact, Hegel was more concerned with the a cyclical process of understanding. Among other things, the Truth exists in the space between and interaction of being and actuality: a communion of the "negative" and the "positive." The cycle of being begating actuality, begating being, begating actuality was integral to Hegel's phenomenology. The dialectic is not so simply described as two disparate ideas finding common ground (I fell into this trap some months ago) but rather the truth that emerges from the fluctuations of being and actuality, and the combinations, the layering of ostensibly oppositional concepts.

If we could talk about Hegelian dialectic in simplistic terms, it would be easy to apply to classical form:
First theme = thesis
Second theme = antithesis
Recapitulation/Coda = Synthesis

we could just as easily apply  Aristotelian logic:
First theme = major premise
Second theme = minor premise
Recapitulation/Coda = Conclusion

But. It is not so easy. To apply these arbitrary systems is at best, a reductionist oversimplification rooted in archaic a priori epistemologies, and at worst, just plain wrong. I would argue that Hegel's dialectic applies more to the experience of music--the affect in the listener, the interactions of performers and their respective musical motives, and so on. At the heart of musical understanding is phenomenological inquiry. More than visual arts, music lends itself to experiential quantification.

In the case of the Sinfonia Concertante, I would argue that the dialectic operates on a few levels. The first--and yes, most obvious--is represented by the interaction of the solo voices: one voice poses, the other retorts, the two coalesce subsequently supported by an orchestral consensus. Simple. If I were to apply a Hegelian model, I might suggest that it is the communion of audience and performer, rather than the musical text itself that constitutes the meaning of the Sinfonia Concertante. This cyclical relationship of perception and musical production thus results in Hegel's negative: the space between essence (perception) and actuality (production).

control! discipline! biopower!

As you may know, I am preparing for what I have termed "baby's first conference appearance." My paper involves strategies for reclamation and rebellion in the performance of eighteenth century music. The question is this: how do we reconcile historically reprehensible music? When you consider the uses and functions of eighteenth century music (control! discipline! biopower!) how can you possibly perform it? How can you allow your body, like so many other bodies before you, to operate as a vessel for these coded messages of subservience and discipline? I am working on the answer. As yet, there is nothing particularly eloquent, but my hunch is that rebellion occurs in performance, in utilizing one's own "story" to reformulate this ostensibly questionable music for contemporary performance. By positing our own identities before the traditions espoused in eighteenth century music, we assume a position of both distance and indeed, power.

Once upon a time I read a book entitled Telling Stories: the Use of Personal Narrative in the Social Sciences. The authors, advocating a decidedly post-modern epistemology, suggest that one must look first to context, accepting a plurality of (personal) truths. Furthermore, you must consider the "truth" of the story in conjunction with the context from which it arises. If one is to look at Stamitz, for example, one can consider his music as his "story," and furthermore, acknowledge its intrinsic truth in that it appropriately represents his historical moment (control! discipline! biopower!). However, this becomes complicated in repeated, historically distant performance. One can liken it to the transformation of oral histories: with each generation, each narrative vessel, the story changes. Based upon the uniqueness of both the recipient and the performer, the content metamorphoses, changing shape to reflect its performance context.

I would contend that this metamorphosis is where resistance, rebellion and reclamation occurs. If we acknowledge the inevitability of this transformation I believe it is possible to perform this music, remain faithful to intent and musical character while creating space for critique. But then the question becomes, how do we do this? I have yet to formulate an answer, but I do have some hunches. For now let me entice you with the following hints: expectation! desire! temporality!

Get. Ready.