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Die Schriftenreihe Musiktheorie der Kunstuniversität Graz umfasst sechs Bände (2007-2013) und akzentuiert aktuelle Themen im Grenzgebiet von Musiktheorie, Musikästhetik und neuer Musik. Die meisten Bände auf Veranstaltungen an der Kunstuniversität Graz, die häufig auf Schlüsselfiguren und Theoretiker der neuen Musik fokussiert waren (Lachenmann, Zender, Wellmer, etc.). Kompositorische Ansätze werden dabei in musikgeschichtliche und musiktheoretische Kontexte gestellt, die Vielfältigkeit aktueller künstlerischer wie theoretischer Fragestellungen wird reflektiert. Über das engere Feld der neuen Musik hinaus werden allgemeine gesellschaftliche und kulturelle Probleme ebenso aufgegriffen wie interdisziplinäre und interkulturelle Fragestellungen. Der Bericht zum 2008 in Graz ausgerichteten Kongress der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie (GMTH) in Band 4 Musiktheorie als interdisziplinäres Fach (692 Seiten, 2010) spiegelt die Leitthemen der Reihe in einer besonderen methodischen Breite. Die Bände 4 und 6 sind zweisprachig (deutsch/englisch). Im Verständnis der Herausgeber wird Musiktheorie als monistische Handwerkslehre heute zunehmend abgelöst von einer Fülle an „Theorien der Musik“ (daher der Plural des Reihentitels „musik.theorien“), die in ihrer Pluralität und ihrem Konfliktpotenzial beschrieben werden können, ohne sich jedoch in einem beliebigen Nebeneinander aufzulösen. Vielmehr soll der traditionelle Anspruch der Musiktheorie, durch systemartige Netzwerke neue Erkenntnisse zu gewinnen und neue Zusammenhänge sichtbar zu machen, auf einer übergreifenden Ebene eingelöst werden.

By stating that »only the successful work can be called an art work«, Albrecht Wellmer constructs a very strong hypothesis. Such an integration of the idea of aesthetic success into an ontological discussion of the musical work-concept, however, cannot be successful without taking into account the historical context. Considering not only the demarcation between art and non-art but also the concept of the art work in general, this hypothesis therefore touches upon a pivotal aesthetic, philosophical, and musicological problem that becomes highly virulent once criteria of »failure« are concerned. Examining reflections by Carl Dahlhaus and Theodor W. Adorno, the present essay attempts to analyze how aesthetic success and failure as specific historical configurations can be integrated into a philosophical debate in the conceptual tension field between the musical art work, aesthetic discourse and aesthetic experience.

Based upon a reading of Arnold Schoenberg’s theoretical writings on the musical idea and its presentation, this essay discusses the possibility of a so-called posthermeneutical perspective on the phenomenon of sound in the Second Viennese School. Schoenberg’s sceptical considerations towards the relevance of sound are confronted with various arrangements, transcriptions, and instrumentations of works by Webern, Schoenberg and Berg. It can be demonstrated that sound here should be conceived neither solely as a means of constituting formal structure, meaning, and sense, nor as the constitutive Other of meaning. Against the background of current discussions on the concept of »Posthermeneutik« (cf. Dieter Mersch, Posthermeneutik, 2010), sound may be understood as a phenomenon oscillating between sense and sensuality.

The huge variety of approaches, goals, and interests in artistic circles, society, science, and industry challenges new methods of evaluating the particularities of culturally formed sound. In the realm of musicological sound research, it might be interesting to compare different musical ways of composing sound from the middle of the twentieth century onwards, and even to compare musical works with non-musical creativity focussed on sound. To this end, the present essay suggests an action-based analytical approach. This ongoing project does not mean to trivialize analytical purposes by narrating biographical circumstances of sound creation, but intends a systematic approach in describing qualitatively aesthetic actions, actors, and their frames of reference.

At the beginning of this discussion, Tobias Janz introduces three areas in which musicology and music theory might benefit from a more thorough study of »sound«: (1) in music analysis, instrumental sound should not merely be understood as the manifestation of an abstract pitch-rhythm structure but the interaction of sound and structure should be acknowledged (a piano reduction from one of Haydn’s symphonies compared to one of Haydn’s piano sonatas reveals a substantially different idea about musical structure); (2) the origins of an exclusion and emancipation of the sound paradigm should be traced in music history and aesthetics, and it might be discussed to what extent a depreciation of sound has shaped our understanding of music until the present; (3) from a sociological perspective, an emphasis on sound has often been associated with popular music; since the early twentieth century, both popular and art music cultures have had a long history of treating the emancipation of sound as a predominant musical tool and medium, and thus these two »cultures« should not be regarded as entirely separate »worlds«, but rather as interactive. The other discussants broadly support the notion that sound is still a neglected area in music research by raising a variety of perspectives: our tools for describing sounds verbally and analytically are underdeveloped, and it is not always clear in which man- ner the idea of »composing [with] sounds«, for example in electronic music, should be grasped theoretically (Elena Ungeheuer); analyses of classical formal types and functions should rethink the common notion that sound and timbre are »secondary parameters« while the perception of form clearly depends on a more complex interaction between the diverse levels or parameters of the sounding events (Markus Neuwirth); established models of pitch-based analysis such as pitch-class set theory have to be complemented by aspects of register, timbre etc. which also would make their results more applicable in pedagogical situations (Lukas Haselböck); a deprecation of »Schöne Stellen« (beautiful moments) as structurally unimportant might often prevent music theorists from integrating auditory experience into analytical practice (Ludwig Holtmeier). Further aspects raised in the discussion with the audience include the idea that theory and analysis should focus more on how sounds are invented intuitively and »haptically«, for example by studying the tradition of the pianiste-compositeur and its interaction of improvisation and composition; the problem faced by a history of musical listening derived from written sources; the necessity to integrate comparisons of different performances of the same piece into a sound-based analysis of musical works; and the necessity of interdisciplinary musical research as exemplified by projects that aim to reconstruct such historical listening spaces and situations as, for instance, the Beethoven era.