Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Hardaway, Noah Alden

Titel

Music in Metaphor: Cross-Domain Mapping the Neuhaus School

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertation & Theses

Erscheinungsjahr

2024

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In this document, I use semiotic and anthropological tools to study the use of metaphor by legendary Moscow Conservatory professor Heinrich Neuhaus (1888–1964) and his disciples, unearthing the constituent perceptual elements of his captivating teaching. Neuhaus was one of the most celebrated piano pedagogues of the twentieth century, mentoring epochal figures like Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, yet his most distinctive teaching practices were little known outside of Russia until recently. Thankfully, documentation of his teaching style abounds in Russian-language sources, including memoirs by his students, audiovisual recordings of lessons and lectures, and transcripts of speeches and seminars. Commentators are unanimous: chief among Neuhaus’s gifts was his ability to illuminate music and inspire students by employing vivid metaphors and interdisciplinary allusions. His memorized recitation of poetry by Pushkin, Blok, and Mickiewicz commingles with references to Mendeleev’s periodic table, Romantic landscapes, Austro-German carnival rides, and the flight of insects. However, despite significant developments in the Neuhaus literature in the last fifteen years, there is no systematic study of how he employed metaphors. To explain their potency, I assess Neuhaus’s poetic, scientific, and autobiographical metaphors for works by Beethoven, Debussy, Chopin, and Scriabin using music theorist Lawrence Zbikowski’s analytical framework of conceptual integration networks” (CINs). Drawing on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s earlier research on preconceptual image schemata, CINs are diagrams that enable graphical cross-domain mappings between musical attributes and spoken metaphors, illustrating multiple layers of correspondence between domains and allowing precise assessment of contingent meaning. In addition, selected CIN analyses also address Neuhaus’s embodied delivery: his evocative physical gestures and performance-like teaching environment were catalysts for sudden, involuntary, and unmistakable improvements in student performances. These intense psychological and physiological impacts have close analogues in findings by ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget on music and trance, whose accounts of possession cults and ritual spaces have parallels in Neuhaus’s studio teaching. Based on these findings, I tabulate four criteria which underpin Neuhausian metaphors: (1) cultural, observational, or autobiographical origins; (2) multilayered correspondence between domains; (3) charismatic delivery; and (4) homologous topography between musical and verbal inputs. Finally, I use these criteria to demonstrate a flexible model of how pedagogues can create Neuhausian metaphors of their own: I create CINs analogizing the final sections from Robert Schumann’s Humoreske, Op. 20 to passages from German Romantic novels (E. T. A. Hoffmann’s The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr and Jean Paul’s Life of Quintus Fixlein) and draw comparisons with Schumann’s Kinderszenen. This study has significant pedagogical implications, suggesting that skillful use of Neuhausian cross-modal mapping can generate euphoric student outcomes.