Limits and relevance of the concept of hermeneutics in the aesthetic debate on 20th-century music

The essay examines the concept of poetics as an intermediate connective area between aesthetics and hermenutics - the two philosophical disciplines that have most influenced the reflection on music in general, and that of the 20th century in particular. The shift of the heuristic focus from the theoretical and genetic background of musical works that do not easily yield themselves to traditional analysis, to the foreground of its sound reality, that is, its performative, acoustic and ‘plastic’ dimensions, may trigger new insights and interpretations and ultimately provoke a change in the aesthetic perspective on the single work as well as on the whole production of an author. The paper shows how apparently opposing approaches such as David Lewin’s “theoreticcal machinery” - in some of its most creative applications - and Theodor Adorno’s metaphorical hermeneutics – in his famous Mahler essay – can bring to similar results in terms exegetic penetration and poetic representation.