The Worldliness Of Sound

Orientalism is the key word in the current study of Edward Said's literary thoughts,but it's not the only key word in his books.Music,which occupies a very important position in his literary criticisms,has been overlooked by Chinese researchers for a long time.This phenomenon confirms the irreducibility of music in Said's works.The main purpose of this thesis is to rethink Said's literary and political ideas through his music criticisms which could be valued as ‘the other' in his thoughts.Moreover,Said's discussion on ‘worldliness' offers us a new explanation to related topics like the combination meaning of aesthetics and politics,and therefore,this thesis will explain the concept of ‘the worldliness of sound' as the main problematic idea when talking about the aesthetics of music and the politics of sound.To be specific,via taking ‘the worldliness of sound' as a problematic and methodological concept,this thesis focuses on two major issues: how does music become worldly,and how is the world shaped by music? In the introduction,I defined the two critical concepts of ‘Sound' and ‘Worldliness'.According to Said,the sound is always associated with emotions and even with the present world.Thus,‘sound' is not a pure audio that independent from humans,it has a close relationship with human's sense of hearing and full of personal experience.The ‘Worldliness' is more than a precise scientific concept,it's charged with sincere affections.This idea emphasizes the anti-metaphysical nature and always request us to go back to the history scene and pay attention to the situationalities and origins of historical events.The second chapter combs the historical experience of Said's exile and his worldly aesthetic taste.On this basis,through the comparison with the concepts of interpretation,hermeneutics,and criticism,this thesis defines the core concept of‘elaboration' as the beginning of the Said's music criticism and explains its worldly features that from ‘infinite possibilities' to ‘unlimited openness'.Through Said's‘elaboration',an effort to describe the music and even approximate to music,musiccan be talked about.The third chapter explores the two breakthrough paths to music,which are originated from Said's ‘Starting with extremes' in the context of the closed professionalization of contemporary music,the general condition of ‘regression of hearing' and as a consequence that performance becomes an extreme situation.One is based on a Toscanini's case,sticking to the stage and taking absolute control attitude to exert the performer's subjectivity to the extreme;and the other is based on Gould's case,on the basis of sticking to the subjectivity,fleeing from the stage and directly participating in the production of music in the cultural industry,then making the performance at stage go towards to the world.When the music gradually became worldly,and the world was also constantly shaped by music,we would face the second main question about ‘the worldliness of sound' via the case of the Aida and Orientalism in section 3,which is,how is the world shaped by music?The main topic in the fourth chapter is the influence of enjoying music and readings on politics and the present world,how did these kinds of private aesthetic experience participate in politics and even remold it? Said put forward his own opinion on this issue,he reversed the idea on ‘style' which is as a form of totality with the tension between ‘I' and ‘we' and then created a new idea named ‘the music of his music' that uniquely belongs to every single man.Encountering with one's later years and the death,‘the music of his music' was created in a new situation of the‘Lateness'.Through the ideas of ‘the music of his music' and ‘lateness',this thesis gradually reaches the final part of ‘worldliness of the sound' — the humanity and humanism in the present world —which are also the new growing points of Said's theory about the ‘Late Style'.