Order Description
Listen to all four movements of Haydn’s Symphony no. 88 in G Major, and read Lowe’s “Enlightening the Listening Subject.” In Lowe’s miniature works of historical fiction, three listening subjects (= listeners whose lives we know a little about) construct musical meaning from their first hearing of Haydn Symphony no. 88.
1. Who are the “listening subjects?”
2. How do these vignettes reveal “interdependence of musical meaning and listener subjectivity?”
3. If the construction of meaning is not in the musical text but in the mind of the listener, what implications might this have for music of the era (the late 18th century) flourishing (or not) in 21st century North America?
4. Using the tools of intertextuality the way that Lowe did, but with the ears and in the context of a 21st-century listener, write your own “subjective listening” account of one of the movements of the Haydn Symphony no. 88.