Op Soek na 'n Hermeneutiese Venster

Abstract

In a search for meaning below the surface of the music, music-rhetorical figures in Brahms's Minnelied are used as a kind of 'hermeneutic window'. A dualistic approach is followed in the empirical phase of the search, namely the identification of static synchronic rhetorical figures on a micro-level and of a diachronic view of the dynamic transformation of rhetorical figures on a macro-level. The results of this strategy lead to the disclosure of ambiguous musical meaning in the Minnelied. The relationship between congeneric and extrageneric meaning is explored, with technical knowledge viewed as the embodiment of congeneric meaning and connections between music and linguistics drawn upon to determine extrageneric meaning. Because rhetoric and music both aim at effective communication as well as the shaping of content, rhetoric serves well as an aid to the disclosure of musical meaning.


(SA J Musicology: 1999/2000 19/20: 71-83)