Affects of chaos: Rhetorical pathos and the epistemology of musical discourse

Abstract

This paper proposes a systematic reflection on how performances embody not only propositional statements but also projections of affective worlds, trying to avoid objectification of people and feelings in favor of a movable and fluid sense of meaning. This reflection is mostly orientated to the reality of musical discourse, especially contemporary, where lack of consensus seems to abound, but it goes through all the arts that, somehow, consider the same ongoing situation in the action of performance. It starts discussing the concept of pathos in Philosophy, trying to trace its development in history, reaching its Latin form as affects. Both terms address discussions on what is know the meaning of an artistic discourse and how is possible to know that, having support in concepts such as fittingness, empathy and Stimmung, referenced by the thought of philosophers like Gilles Deleuze, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Martin Heidegger and by the ancient and retrieved art of Rhetoric.

Keywords

• contemporary music
• musical rhetoric
• musical performance
• epistemology
• musical gesture