Musica practica according to roland barthes

Abstract

The contribution deals with Roland Barthes' musical aesthetics, with his dichotomous view of music - the manual or muscular ("the music one listens to") on the one hand, and the liquid or effusive ("the music one plays") on the other. Barthes grasped these as two different arts, each with its own history, its own sociology, its own aesthetics, and its own erotic. The first one, driven by desire, represents an amateurish music-making, the second one, played by professional musicians by heart, represents a professional musical praxis. Amateur music is characterized by intimate contact of the musician's body and his/her art. The aim of the paper is to explore both musics in the context of actual musical thought and post-Cagean ways of music making and listening.