“Between the Key of Hope and the Atonal Slash of Nothingness”
Musical Meaning in Richard Powers’ “Orfeo”
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13135/1592-4467/10159Keywords:
Intermediality, Musical meaning, Musical narrative, Orfeo, Richard PowersAbstract
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.
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