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    LoyalLoyalJusticeJustice
    Made withinDC&Austin
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    Hanslick's argument for expressive neutrality fails becau... — Carmelics
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    Hanslick's argument for expressive neutrality fails because it relies on a tendentious example.

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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

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    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Hanslick selects Gluck's aria precisely because its melodic contour lacks the metric urgency and harmonic tension that encode suffering in Romantic convention.
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    • 2.A methodologically sound argument for expressive neutrality requires testing the strongest counterexamples, not the most accommodating ones.
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    • 3.Choosing a stylistically neutral example to establish a universal claim commits the fallacy of incomplete evidence, which Goodman's theory of exemplification would identify as a failure of valid symbolic reference.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Peter Kivy's contention that musical expressiveness is grounded in resemblance to expressive human gesture and vocal contour entails that some music possesses intrinsic expressive character independently of listener projection.
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    • 2.If music can possess contour-based expressive properties intrinsically, then Hanslick's neutrality thesis requires defeating Kivy-style counterexamples, not merely demonstrating one malleable aria.
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    • 3.The deliberate exclusion of paradigm cases of contour-based anguish—such as the Adagio of Beethoven's Op. 132—renders Hanslick's inductive generalization invalid on its own empirical terms.
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    Reasons Against

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    Reason against
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    • 1.Hanslick's argument depends on Gluck's aria being representative of music's expressive character.
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    • 2.Music with a more clearly anguished character than Gluck's aria is easy to find.
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    • 3.Music with a clearly anguished character would resist pairing with a happy text, undermining the claim of expressive neutrality.
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    Related

    A methodologically sound argument for expressive neutrality requires testing the...Choosing a stylistically neutral example to establish a universal claim commits ...Hanslick selects Gluck's aria precisely because its melodic contour lacks the me...Hanslick's argument depends on Gluck's aria being representative of music's expr...
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    If music can possess contour-based expressive properties intrinsically, then Han...Music with a clearly anguished character would resist pairing with a happy text,...Music with a more clearly anguished character than Gluck's aria is easy to find.Peter Kivy's contention that musical expressiveness is grounded in resemblance t...The deliberate exclusion of paradigm cases of contour-based anguish—such as the ...

    Similar

    Music with a clearly anguished character would resist pairing with a h...75%Understanding that is merely passive cannot capture truly expressive m...74%Music is expressively neutral — instrumental music does not inherently...72%Music's expressive value is located in the melodic element rather than...71%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: hist-westphilmusic-since-1800
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    Hanslick observes that, when instrumental music is unaccompanied by a text, music lovers are unable to indicate the feeling it expresses with any considerable degree of intersubjective agreement. He famously adapts an example from Boyé, noting that Gluck’s famous aria “Che farò senza Euridice”, expressive of dejection and despair, could express equally well joy if paired with a happy text (Hanslick 1854: chapter 2). The argument is supposed to prove that music is expressively neutral, but it onl
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit