The Music Aesthetic Idea Of Susanne K. Langer In Feeling And Form

This thesis is a probe into the music aesthetic idea of Susanne K. Langer in her Feeling and Form. On the basis of former research, this article tried to return to the text per se to grasp her writing methodology and reasoning process and the key conception, then giving further explanations on the aesthetic proposition of the writer.Besides the foreword and conclusion part, this thesis includes five chapters. The first chapter gives a brief introduction of Langer's life and works, emphasizing on the text structure, research methodology and writing features of Feeling and Form. The second chapter mainly describes Langer's idea on the nature of music from four aspects: the music symbol, the primary illusion of music, the hearing in music and the principle of assimilation. By analyzing a series of key conception such as"symbol","feeling","form","illusion", this article explored the deep meaning of the aesthetic proposition"music is a symbolic expression of feeling", fully comprehending Langer's idea on music time, hearing in music and factors of other kind of art existing in music. The third chapter discussed the reason why Langer worked on the theory of"creation", as well as the meaning of"creation". What's more, through the conception such as"commending form"and"matrix", the first and last phase in music creation is clearly explained and related contents on music performing are introduced in detail. The four chapter mainly expounded Langer's idea on music appreciation, introducing the discussion of"intuition". The last chapter is an overall evaluation of the music aesthetic idea of Susanne K. Langer in Feeling and Form. By comparison, this article points out that Langer's music aesthetic is centralized in this book. Considering the academic background of that time, it is very important that Langer emphasize on conception analysis in her research methodology and discussed a lot of key problem on the nature of music, such as the relation between music and feeling, the music time, and"hearing"in music, and so like. Furthermore, the research in China also proved that Langer's music aesthetic idea showed influence over the music aesthetic researcher and text complier. Last but not least, this thesis discussed the enlightenment of Langer's music aesthetics idea in three directions including music performance, music appreciation and music education; as well as the insufficiency in her idea.