Considerations on the Concept of Musical Genre. Subjective Perception and Analytical Objectivity
Considerations on the Concept of Musical Genre. Subjective Perception and Analytical Objectivity

Summary/Abstract: As a consequence of the technical development and growing importance of musical instruments, Baroque music displays, for the first time in musical thinking, a keen interest in the concept of genre, in its suitability to the various functions of music and in the standardisation of certain architectural typologies. After this age of frantic instrumental composition and continuous search for patterns for ordering the different discursive modes, the constant emergence of new musical genres proved to be the consequence of the development, throughout the centuries, of new types of musical architectures, tailored to the new forms of language, aesthetics, cultural environment etc. Assuming that the musical genre is a kind of “contract” between author and public (audience, musicians, analysts etc.), or a convention (sometimes even a mere pretext), the paper discusses the relationship between genre and form, genre and era (cultural environment), genre and musical language.

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