20世紀芸術音楽と「作者の死」 : 解釈と創作におけるその諸相

"The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author" - this famous phrase in 1968 by Roland Barthes has been quoted by many writings as declaration of a paradigm shift in the semantics of art works: a change of the creator of meanings from the author to the recipients. However, this phrase does not scheme simply for the overthrow of the author. It also implies the presence of the text which has some power, or grains in Barthes' term, to make the readers to grasp this and that meanings. This paper aims at describing various and complicated phases of the author's death in twentieth-century art music along with the scenario presented by Barthes. Firstly, the death of the author opens a broad horizon of listening music. It gives us a perspective by which we can see well the vast realm of possible interpretations. Even in this realm, however, we listen to a music work as if we feel ourselves to hear voices of a composer. That is, it would be almost impossible for us, at least, in the context of twentieth-century Western musical culture, to suppose any situation listening to a piece of music without any consideration or imagination about the composer. This means that we metaphorically construct images of composer in cognition of sounds. From the standpoint of metaphoric blending in cognition, we can neutralize not only the intention of the author but also the structure of the musical work. They are no longer absolute norms for the listener, but images reproduced by the listener after the death of the author. Although it is certain that the death of the author is directly related to the horizon of interpretation, it seems to be linked with the change of the horizon of creation in the twentieth century. The post-war avant-garde composers presented various attempts to break out the traditional concept of the musical work. One of the most important strategies is to introduce indeterminacy and chance. Apparently this is the death of the author in composing, but what happens in music applied such a strategy is never the resignation of the authorship, but rather the reinforcement of the myth of originality. At the same time, however, we can find that some compositions, even under that myth, intend not the metaphors of the composer's creative ego. Anton Webern's music, for example, suggests that the alternative realm of expression is possible: the nature and environment. This shift of focus in composing metaphor is reflected to the musical texts, whose sonority and sensuality invite the listener to say the death of the author in interpreting music.