Narrative as a term in narratology and music theory

• Main Authors: Smiljana Narančić Kovač, Iva Kovač
• Format: Article
• Language: Croatian
• Published: Institut za hrvatski jezik i jezikoslovlje 2018-01-01
• Series: Rasprave: Časopis Instituta za Hrvatski Jezik i Jezikoslovlje
• Subjects: narrative; music theory; storyworld; discourse; terminology
• Online Access: http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/318300

The paper compares the term narrative as it is used by narratologists, and as it is used by music scholars, to establish whether these two disciplines use the term in the same way, or as two homonyms. Narratological studies in medium-specific models of narratives apply the term to different kinds of discourses, i.e. different media. Music theoreticians and musicologists consider its application in music scholarship with a theory of the musical narrative in view. This analysis shows that in the general theory of the narrative the concept includes both story and discourse, based on the referentiality of the discourse, which necessarily evokes a storyworld. Narratologists generally find music to be incapable of producing a narrative in this sense. Musicologists and theoreticians of music generally acknowledge the limitations of the referentiality of musical discourse, yet they often discover specific, usually abstract, narrative meanings there. Therefore, despite common starting points and principles, the two disciplines use the term narrative to denote two different concepts, which results in two homonymous terms.