“Between the Key of Hope and the Atonal Slash of Nothingness”
Musical Meaning in Richard Powers’ “Orfeo”
Abstract
This article investigates the phenomenon of musical meaning in Richard Powers’ Orfeo (2014) through the lens of intermediality and philosophy of music. I am interested in the protagonist’s recurring motto – “music doesn’t mean things. It is things” (69, passim) – as a conceptual cue to investigate both his conflicted musical identity, and the ways in which it reflects on the novel’s broader context as well as on its implied message that music is capable of signifying something other than itself.
Copyright (c) 2024 Stefano Franceschini
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
RSAJournal applies a CC BY-NC-ND license to all its contributions. This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:
- BY: credit must be given to the creator.
- NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
- ND: No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights for their submissions to the journal.
- Authors grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share unedited work for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.