Abstract:
In an ongoing process with an article called “Emphatic Articulation”, I try to develop this concept in order to characterize and clarify a certain quality in the performance practice of the Austrian conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929–2016). As articulation is related to language, and because the music-language-relationship (Klangrede) was of crucial importance to Harnoncourt, a discussion of this relationship is central to the argument. I will argue that the rhythmical aspect of language plays an important role here, perhaps more important that the question of semantic meaning. However, the tension between the two constitutes what we call the aesthetic experience. The example will be Schubert’s unfinished symphony played by the Berlin Philharmonic.