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Modern Music and the Problem of Image
The Journal of Aesthetics and Science of Art
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This paper inquires into the problem of image in modern Music. The first two chapters show the theoretical background of this subject. The first chapter exposes the modern thought, which includes the consciousniss of the technology and the aesthetic of ‘difference’. Thereby the concept of ‘mimesis’ was derived from Th. W. Adorno and W. Benjamin. The next chapter discusses the problem of perceptional structure by listening to the modern music. The emanzipation of dissonance and the new expression indicators like sound-colour were caused this problem. This phenomenon implicates the boundary of the western traditional notation system in expression. The next chapter deals with the confrontation between sound and image of modern music. The elements indicating the confrontation are the ‘sound-colour melody’ of A. Schoenberg’s atonal music and the irregular rhythmic repitition of I. Stravinsky's dance music. The character of the ‘undeveloped crack’ by Stravinsky is significant, which can be compared with the technic of montage for the film production. The machine image of this technic crystallized into the spacial music concept of E. Varése. After 1950s it was possible, for the sound-colour to synthesize and to modulate by using electronic technics, therefore confrontation between sound and image increased. All these styles contribute to the ‘dissociation of time’. On the one hand, the traditional time structure transports to the spacial dimension by the serial spacial composition of K. H. Stockhausen, on the other hand it appears a destructive aspect by the aleatoric music of J. Cage. Specially in the sound-surface style of the 1960s from composers other then western-europe, the confrontation between sound and image is highlighted. The new media art film compresses the problem of image as the aesthetic dilemma of the modern music. The last chapter considers this matter under the aspect of the cinematic representation and the cultural syncretism. The technic of the electronic reproduction was the foundation for the new expression indicator like silence, noise, and the sound other then traditional western europe. Specially the syncronising technic between sound and image, from which the sound picture film was born, plays an important role. The audio-visual massmedia functionalizes as the cultural communication media, reflected by the sound-surface style of the 1960s. The concept of ‘mimesis’ could be regarded as an important keyword for the research into the problem of image and cultural syncretism.
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