Rhetorical Figures and the 20the-century Music: a Survey on Micronarrativity

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Sergio Lanza

Abstract

It is known that the classical rhetoric, in its depth, constitutes an extraordinary survey on the discourse and its structures. Cicero and Quintilianus are viewed in the first place; then Heinrich Lausberg’s research on them, which appears to be more abstract in terms of the psychological consequences of rhetoric, is analyzed.  The goal of the study is to verify how this way of facing the complexity of sense-making strategies could be integrated into both analytical and compositional tools of the 20th-century music. The possibility to compare musical and verbal articulations within a microformal dimension is particularly considered: we may find “micronarrations” there through a phenomenological analysis that considers an emergence of the sense within the structural framework in which the listener plays a fundamental role. It is in the functional link between perception and narration, experience and language, that we can find a way to reinterpret the meaning of ancient rhetorical figures, which first drew attention on such categories as repetition, variation, contrast, order, disorder and symmetry, thus showing their clear affinity with the sense-making processes featured in music. Repetition is one of the most relevant among these categories concerning both verbal language and music.

Keywords: music and rhetoric, rhetorical figures in the 20thcentury music, music analysis, music and arts

Article Details

How to Cite
Lanza, S. (2012). Rhetorical Figures and the 20the-century Music: a Survey on Micronarrativity. Music Scholarship / Problemy Muzykal’noj Nauki, 10(1), 205–214. Retrieved from https://musicscholar.ru/index.php/PMN/article/view/433
Section
International Division