MUSIC
Making Light
Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism r aymond knapp
POLITICAL THEORY
Rancière’s Sentiments davide panagia
In Rancière’s Sentiments Davide Panagia explores Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics of politics as it informs his radical democratic
RAYMOND KNAPP
MAKING LIGHT Haydn, Musical Camp, and the Long Shadow of German Idealism
In Making Light Raymond Knapp
theory of participation. Attending to diverse practices of everyday
traces the musical legacy of German
living and doing—of form, style, and scenography—in Rancière’s
Idealism as it led to the declining
writings, Panagia characterizes Rancière as a sentimental thinker
prestige of composers such as Haydn
for whom the aesthetic is indistinguishable from the political. Rather
while influencing the development
than providing prescriptions for political judgment and action,
of American popular music in the
Rancière focuses on how sensibilities and perceptions constitute
nineteenth century. Knapp identi‑
dynamic relations between persons and the worlds they create.
fies in Haydn and in early popular
Panagia traces this approach by examining Rancière’s modernist
American musical cultures such as
sensibilities, his theory of radical mediation, the influence of Gustave
minstrelsy and operetta a strain of
Flaubert on Rancière’s literary voice, and how Rancière juxtaposes
high camp—a mode of engagement
seemingly incompatible objects and phenomena to create moments
that relishes both the superficial and
of sensorial disorientation. The power of Rancière’s work, Panagia
serious aspects of an aesthetic experience—that runs antithetical
demonstrates, lies in its ability to leave readers with a disjunctive
to German Idealism’s musical paradigms. By considering the disser‑
sensibility of the world and what political thinking is and can be.
vice done to Haydn by German Idealism alongside the emergence of
Davide Panagia is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University
musical camp in American popular music, Knapp outlines a common
of California, Los Angeles, and the author of The Political Life of Sensation and
ground: a humanistically based aesthetic of shared pleasure that
The Poetics of Political Thinking, both also published by Duke University Press,
points to ways in which camp-receptive modes might rejuvenate the original appeal of Haydn’s music that have mostly eluded audiences. In so doing, Knapp remaps the historiographical modes and systems of critical evaluation that dominate musicology while troubling the
as well as Ten Theses for an Aesthetics of Politics.
“Against the politics of belonging that infuses so much democratic theory today, Davide Panagia offers a characteristically bold reading of Rancière that makes us feel the force of a very different path to emancipatory
divide between serious and popular music.
democratic politics. Grounded in an aesthetics and politics of impropriety,
Raymond Knapp is Professor of Musicology and Academic Associate Dean
Rancière’s Sentiments shows the transformative potential of the unau-
at the Herb Alpert School of Music at the University of California, Los Angeles,
thorized sensibilities, words, and acts of those who ‘have no part’ in the
the author of The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity,
scenes of democratic politics conventionally conceived. An exciting piece
and the coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of the American Musical.
of work.”— SHARON R. KR AUSE , author of Freedom Beyond Sovereignty: Reconstructing Liberal Individualism
“Making Light is a truly provocative book that offers an astounding assessment of Haydn’s legacy in American musical culture. In a sweeping tour de force, Raymond Knapp draws tantalizing parallels between the composer’s enigmatic eccentricity and the critical aspirations of high camp. Rich in analytical and historical detail, this timely study argues that Haydn’s humane humor prefigured the rebellious impulses that punctured the prevailing aesthetic pretensions of musical idealism by advocating an Aristotelian sense of human flourishing.”— BERTHOLD HOECKNER , author of Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century German Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment
M U S I C O L O G Y/ M U S I C A L T H E AT E R
P O L I T I C A L T H E O R Y/A E S T H E T I C S / M E D I A T H E O R Y
February 384 pages, 22 illustrations
February 160 pages, 6 illustrations
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑6950‑9, $28.95/£23.99
paper, 978‑0‑8223‑7022‑2, $22.95/£18.99
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑6935‑6, $104.95/£87.00
cloth, 978‑0‑8223‑7013‑0, $84.95/£70.00
Available as an e‑book
Available as an e‑book
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