The Doctrine of One: Personal Encounters with Film, Art and Music

· Open Book Publishers
Ebook
146
Pages
Tools
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About this ebook

This volume is a bold and original meditation on how we interpret art, music, and culture—and what it means to listen, see, and feel differently from others. Drawing on Czech history and aesthetics, the book moves from filmmaker Hugo Haas’s coded tributes to his murdered brother, to the haunting ex libris designs of Josef Váchal, to the deeply personal resonances of Schubert’s chamber music, Dvořák’s cello concerto, and Gideon Klein’s tragic Terezín Trio. Across these vivid case studies, the author asks whether meaning in art can ever be shared—or whether it always belongs to the individual observer.

Rejecting academic rigidity Michael Beckerman celebrates the ‘splitters’—those who honor specificity, subjectivity, and the singular force of a personal response. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book offers both a philosophical inquiry and a passionate defense of individuality in an age of conformity. It will captivate readers of musicology, cultural studies, and philosophy alike—anyone who has ever wondered what it truly means to interpret a work of art.


This volume is a bold and original meditation on how we interpret art, music, and culture—and what it means to listen, see, and feel differently from others. Drawing on Czech history and aesthetics, the book moves from filmmaker Hugo Haas’s coded tributes to his murdered brother, to the haunting ...

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About the author

Michael Beckerman is an American musicologist specializing in Czech and Eastern European music. He has served as Carroll and Milton Petrie Chair and Collegiate Professor of Music at New York University and as Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic. He is Dean of the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Among his most recent books he co-edited (with Paul Boghossian) 'Classical Music Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges', published by OBP in 2021.


Michael Beckerman is an American musicologist specializing in Czech and Eastern European music. He has served as Carroll and Milton Petrie Chair and Collegiate Professor of Music at New York University and as Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence at the New York Philharmonic. He is Dean of the U...

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