"We All Have Become Listeners Today": Viktor Zuckerkandl and Music Theory for a General Audience

Tue, November 10, 2020 12:45 PM at Zoom (if you wish to attend, please email Michael Callahan at mrc@msu.edu)

Dr. Daphne Tan, Assistant Professor of Music Theory at the University of Toronto, presents a guest lecture at Michigan State University. The event is free and open to the public. It will take place via videoconference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. If you would like to attend, please contact Michael Callahan, Music Theory Area Chairperson, at mrc@msu.edu.

Abstract

The ideas of Viktor Zuckerkandl (1896–1965) have long captured the attention of music theorists, particularly those writing on energetics, music phenomenology, and rhythm and meter. Yet with few exceptions, Zuckerkandl’s essays, books, and lectures contain music-theoretical approaches tailored for a general audience. In the first half of our time together, I will present the paper whose abstract appears below. In the time remaining, I will explore a bigger question: What can music-theoretical activity in non-specialist realms reveal about the discipline? In this context, I will discuss some of Zuckerkandl’s educational materials for a mid-century listening public.

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This paper examines two lectures delivered by theorist-philosopher Viktor Zuckerkandl at the Eranos conferences. Established in 1933 under the influence of Carl Jung, Eranos has long been a site of esoteric thinking: scholars of religion and mythology, natural scientists, psychologists, philosophers, and members of the general public gather annually to discuss themes related to mysticism, the occult, and the irrational. I examine Zuckerkandl’s adaptation of Schenkerian theory for this multidisciplinary audience. 

In “Die Tongestalt” (1960), Zuckerkandl seeks an understanding of music-as-Gestaltung (creation, design), illustrating how time unfolds at multiple hierarchical levels in Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Drawing on unpublished correspondence between Zuckerkandl and Eranos founder Olga Fröbe-Kapetyn, I show that Zuckerkandl viewed the Tongestalt as the source of human self-awareness (Selbsterkenntnis) and Heinrich Schenker’s theory as the key to unlocking it. The presence of Schenker is surprising given Zuckerkandl’s audience. It also points to an alternative reception of Schenker’s ideas that has received scant attention, one in which problematic aspects are sanitized through a wash of metaphysics. 

In the second lecture, “The Truth of the Dream and the Dream of Truth” (1963), Zuckerkandl suggests that musicians have ready access to a “third space” that resides between physical and mental worlds. Demonstrating with analyses of the WTC again, and with reference to Jung, Zuckerkandl attempts to bring his audience into this realm. I show how this is motivated by Zuckerkandl’s overarching belief in a generally accessible “musical thinking” that exists in a separate realm from “mere logical thinking.” 

Bio

Dr. Daphne TanDaphne Tan’s research concerns historical and current intersections of music theory, philosophy, and psychology. Her work on the history of theory has focused on the writings of Ernst Kurth, illuminating his engagement with listening and embodiment against the backdrop of contemporaneous developments in experimental psychology, harmonic theory, and university culture; this work can be read in Theoria, the Journal of Music Theory, and Music Theory Spectrum. She is also completing a translation and commentary of Kurth’s final monograph, Musikpsychologie, for Routledge. Her newest project examines the interplay of music theory and Western esotericism in the writings and pedagogical activities of Viktor Zuckerkandl (1896–1965). This research has received support from the University of Toronto Connaught Fund and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). Professor Tan also approaches music and music listening from the perspective of cognitive science. Her research on topics related to emotion, diatonic modes, musical form, and expressive performance appears in Music Perception, Psychology of Music, the Journal of Interdisciplinary Music Studies, and Musicae Scientiae. She holds a PhD in music theory from the Eastman School of Music and MA and BMus degrees in music theory and clarinet performance from McGill University. Prior to joining the University of Toronto in 2017, she was an Assistant Professor of Music Theory and an affiliate member of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University (2013–2017).