Music and the Ineffable

Vladimir Jankélévitch, Carolyn Abbate

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780691090474
• eBook ISBN: 9780691268385
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

The classic work on the philosophy of music—now available in English to a new generation of readers

Vladimir Jankélévitch left behind a remarkable œbody of work steeped as much in philosophy as in music. His writings on moral quandaries reflect a lifelong devotion to music and performance, and, as a counterpoint, he wrote on music aesthetics and on modernist composers such as Fauré, Debussy, and Ravel. Music and the Ineffable brings together these two threads, the philosophical and the musical, as an extraordinary quintessence of his thought. Jankélévitch deals with classical issues in the philosophy of music, including metaphysics and ontology. These are a point of departure for a sustained examination and dismantling of the idea of musical hermeneutics in its conventional sense.

Music, Jankélévitch argues, is not a hieroglyph, not a language or sign system; nor does it express emotions, depict landscapes or cultures, or narrate. On the other hand, music cannot be imprisoned within the icy, morbid notion of pure structure or autonomous discourse. Yet if musical works are not a cipher awaiting the decoder, music is nonetheless entwined with human experience, and with the physical, material reality of music in performance. Music is "ineffable," as Jankélévitch puts it, because it cannot be pinned down, and has a capacity to engender limitless resonance in several domains. Jankélévitch's singular work on music was central to such figures as Roland Barthes and Catherine Clément, and the complex textures and rhythms of his lyrical prose sound a unique note, until recently seldom heard outside the francophone world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• The Charme of Jankélévitch Arnold I. Davidson
• Jankélévitch’s Singularity Carolyn Abbate
• Preface Music and the Ineffable
• one The “Ethics” and the “Metaphysics” of Music
• two The Inexpressive “Espressivo”
• three The Charm and The Alibi
• four Music and Silence
• Notes
• Index of Names