Text, Metaphor And A Study On Interpretation Of Musical Works

This dissertation is mainly intended to answer the following questions:Is it feasible to interpret musical works centering on text? If so, then what kind of strategy should be adopted? The focus of the paper is to discuss the text-centered way to interpret musical works, the theory of which originated from the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s text hermeneutics. Compared with the composer-centered and audience-centered ways in the past, the text-centered way should also play an important role in translating musical works. Once the music score and the acoustics are ascertained, musical works become text. Without the specific context, distanciation between text and composer, external environment, concrete references and original audience comes into being with some autonomy, for text mainly exists as meaning of musical works. Although the composer-centered and audience-centered ways of interpretation also involve the aspect of comprehending text, text is mostly used as the basis and materials for a better understanding of the composer and audience rather than the text itself. Therefore, the text-centered way not only is worth a try but also brings us new possibilities. Specifically, the text-centered way of interpretation requires us to commit ourselves to the text, interpret works according to the text, and enrich and mold ourselves by means of a thorough understanding of the text. Since text has already existed, it can help increase reliability of interpretation and adopt some specific methods and strategies. In light of this, the dissertation tries to interpret musical works according to the text-centered way and with the help of aesthetic and metaphorical thinking.There is no doubt that the interpretation of musical works is to discover the meaning behind the musical works. So meaning is a question which can not be bypassed. The focus of this dissertation is not to identify whether musical works have meaning or not, but to interpret them on the condition that all musical works are meaningful. It is pointed out that meaning of musical works includes sense and reference. And meaning of text is divided into three parts: phenomenology, philosophy of language and semantics, which relate to and rely on each other, while metaphor is a key to highlighting meaning and also plays an indispensable part through the whole process. Interpretation should start from text first, and try to find the structural meaning via aesthetic and metaphorical thinking, and then use it as the basis for thoroughly understanding the reference to the ontological level via recontextualization after metaphorical thinking and decontextualization, which makes musical works associated with the world.The introduction of the thesis is mainly about the research scope, purpose, significance, status and problems. The first part of the thesis mainly discusses three important relevant theoretical problems, including text, aesthetics and metaphor. It lays a theoretical foundation for the study of interpreting music works. The second part discusses Schubert’s instrumental musical work Unfinished Symphony in b Minor as well as the opportunity and strategy of interpreting instrumental works. The third part studies Schubert’s vocal music work Winterreise, as well as the opportunity and strategy of interpreting vocal works. The last chapter discuses the identity of interpretation, consisting of the identity of works’ meaning, the identity of different interpretation, the subjectivity of interpretation, the limitation of interpretation and so on.