Meditation and outcry: Tragic aesthetics as musical testimony in the symphonies of Henryk Górecki and Wang Xilin.
This article interprets music as a narration text and believes it to be a powerful witness to collective trauma and cultural memory. The cross-cultural comparison of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 and Wang Xilin's Symphony No. 4 probes how each composer has constructed a peculiar aesthetic of trage...
| Publicado en: | Critical Survey Vol. 38; no. 1; pp. 118 - 142 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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Berghahn Books
Spring2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=193407395&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 193407395 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00111570 4SI jtl: Critical Survey issn: 00111570 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Spring2026 vid: 38 iid: 1 pid: 1130 pub: Berghahn Books artinfo: ui: 193407395 10.3167/cs.2026.380108 ppf: 118 ppct: 24 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 1.1MB tig: atl: Meditation and outcry: Tragic aesthetics as musical testimony in the symphonies of Henryk Górecki and Wang Xilin. aug: au: Zhang, Zhihai affil: Researcher, Academy of Music in Kraków, Poland su: Meditation Symphony Emotional trauma Composers Violence sug: subj: Meditation Symphony Emotional trauma Composers Violence keyword: cultural memory expressive realism Henryk Górecki musical narrative sacred minimalism testimony tragic aesthetics Wang Xilin ab: This article interprets music as a narration text and believes it to be a powerful witness to collective trauma and cultural memory. The cross-cultural comparison of Henryk Górecki's Symphony No. 3 and Wang Xilin's Symphony No. 4 probes how each composer has constructed a peculiar aesthetic of tragedy. According to this article, these works represent two paradigmatic forms of testimony to historical suffering: Górecki's 'meditation', an inward narrative of spiritual transcendence; and Wang's 'outcry', an external protest against historical violence. By examining the sound structures of the works, analysing their emotional strategies, and investigating their differing uses of national musical languages, we can see how these aesthetics are created. The composers' differing attitudes towards tone clusters are at the heart of a significant finding. This is their different aesthetic. In Górecki's work, the diatonic cluster achieves a 'meditative stasis'. For Wang, the chromatic cluster brings forth an agonistic cathartic cry. In the end, this article enriches our understanding of tragic music of the twentieth century by demonstrating how musical narratives testify to history on account of their cultural specificity and common humanity. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Critical Survey is the property of Berghahn Books and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Critical Survey holder: Berghahn Books dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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