La recherche musicale et l'épreuve du sensible

While the paths of academic research are studded with numerous signposts, this collection aims to take the byways that are closest to the sensitive experience of music. Born of explorations carried out collectively in mostly informal, interdisciplinary groups, these articles probe the possibility of a situated speech where singularity and commonality intersect. 

This publication brings together thirteen previously unpublished articles from 2003 to 2018. Entries in the musical fact are often crossed, between works over a period that runs from the 17th to the 20th century (Monteverdi, Bach, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Brahms, Schœnberg), performers (from Gustav Walter to Mitsuko Shiraï for singing, from Wanda Landowska to Pierre Hantaï for harpsichord, from Nikolaus Harnoncourt to Claudio Cavina via Nadia Boulanger for musical direction)... and their cultural context.

The author's subjectivity is engaged in the various questions that run through these articles: how do we qualify the dramaturgical stakes nested in the relationships between music and text, or in the relationships arranged on stage between music, images and objects? What place should be given to intuitions in listening narratives? What role do emotions play in the post-war artistic turnaround? How can musical creation and the contemporary activation of past repertoires be translated into new sensitive narratives? 

The brief essay that introduces the collection, in addition to presenting the situations of these various articles, puts into perspective the musical themes they address and the aesthetic, political and methodological filigrees that run between the pages.