An Unnatural Attitude

"“In these pages Benjamin Steege recovers, at the very margins of the musical sciences, and against all the odds, a Heideggerian moment, the reverberations of which he traces from the 1920s until they all but fade from hearing three decades later. In the depth and breadth of its synthesis, An Unnatural Attitude provides a model for what it means to write imaginatively about music and conceptual thought.” * Brian Hyer, University of Wisconsin–Madison * “Between the hard-edged Platonism of musical form and the reduction of musical experience to mere psychological effect, an intricate and reflective style of musical thought emerged in Weimar Germany that was influenced by Edmund Husserl’s novel method of phenomenology. Steege’s deep dive into these forgotten figures—supported by forays into political history, textured close readings, and complete translations of primary texts—is a philosophical feast. It illuminates a complicated strain of European music theory embroiled in evolving debates about musical ontology, cultural difference, and social change.” * Michael Gallope, author of 'Deep Refrains: Music, Philosophy, and the Ineffable' * ""Enriched by convincing music-analytical examples, careful handling of philosophical terms of art, and an ethical sensitivity not unlike that of its historical interlocutors, Steege's book—and the writers whose work it examines—is sure to draw attention from music historians and historians of philosophy alike, who will question the relative unfamiliarity of its subject matter and set out to reach out across this gap to explore the models of historical listening it offers."" * New Books Network * ""Steege's work is an important contribution to music aesthetics."" * Choice * ""Several scholars of the Weimar Republic–period developed a phenomenological style that sought to renew contact with music as a worldly circumstance. Proponents argued for the description of music as something accessible in an attitude of outward orientation toward the world. The first of Steege's four chapters compares musico-theoretical texts and pedagogies by Gustav Güldenstein, Paul Bekker, Arthur Wolfgang Cohn, Herbert Eimert, Hans Mersmann, and Gustav Geiger, who express disappointment with the authority and achievements of psychoacoustics. In chapter 2, José Ortega y Gasset and Günther Stern-Anders argue that Debussy's music enjoins a fundamental reorientation from ""inward"" to ""outward concentration."" In chapter 3, Heinrich Besseler prefers community music performances to concerts. Stern-Anders and Eimert continued to express phenomenological interests even after WW II, and chapter 4 presents Stern-Anders's analysis of Eimert's 1962 setting of his Epitaph für Aikichi Kuboyama. Appendixes include English translations of essays by Mersmann, Helmuth Plessner, Bekker, Eimert, and Stern-Anders. Steege's work is an important contribution to music aesthetics."" * Choice * ""An Unnatural Attitude is a serious intellectual history that brings to light the musical thought of actors unfamiliar to the vast majority of music scholars. Ambitiously, Steege writes of both local and global concerns. At times, he suggests that the intentional manner with which one engages with music can shape the history of feeling; at others, he explicates music’s role in forging various types of community and in responding to human-led catastrophes. Densely written and always precise, An Unnatural Attitude is likely to establish itself as a central treatment of its topic: musicologists clearly need to think more deeply about the ideological, philosophical and political implications of that strange practice we call listening."" * Twentieth-Century Music *"