The Aesthetics and Ethics of Unwritten Music

Abstract

Abstract Chapter 1 unfolds the aesthetic and ethical aspects of unwritten music, including the century-old practice of classifying non-notated sounds as unwelcome. Sounds recordings are differentiated from scores. The use of “breath suppression” software is interrogated. The book’s methodology expands upon Schoenberg’s notion that music theorists attend to everything that sounds simultaneously. Three recordings—Casals playing Bach, Walker playing Chopin, and Kashkashian playing Bach—offer glimpses at the book’s analytical terrain. Analogies are drawn between unwritten music and Barthian notion of the photographic punctum, the psychological concept of facial micro-expressions, the US Census, craquelure, and painting outdoors. A study of the reception of unwritten music uncovers insidious inequalities across music studies and the recording industry along lines of gender and race. Unwritten music is connected to listener empathy.