Musical Listening in the German Enlightenment : Attention, Wonder and Astonishment (Paperback)

Contents: Introduction; Attentive Listening: The problem of attention; The theory and significance of attention: Descartes to Meier; Pleasure, emotion and the 'flow' experience; Adaptation of mimesis; Adaptation of rhetoric; Wonder and astonishment. Interlude: Rousseau's Transports of Attention: Simultaneous and successive unities; Applications. Sulzer and the Aesthetic Force of Music: Civilizing the savage; The aesthetic force of music. Forkel on Expert and Amateur Listening Practices: Kenner and Liebhaber: two modes of hearing; Musical decline and Forkel's remedy; Concert programming: pleasure, amusement and instrumental music; A metaphysical history of musical hearing; A new approach to attention. Elements of a Rhetoric of Attention: Arousing the attention: the rules of periodicity; Sustaining the attention: a musical dispositio; Forkel on music-rhetorical figures; The rhetoric in practice: Georg Benda and C.P.E. Bach. Bibliography; Index.