ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a few examples from very different periods and concentrates on pieces that challenge sanctioned configurations of selfhood, but also discuss the conventions, the condensations of deeply held cultural beliefs - against which they rebel and thereby produce their meanings. The contrast between major and minor had served during the eighteenth century to encode opposite poles of the affective spectrum, with major generally aligned with positive emotional realms, minor with negative. Schubert's G-major Quartet points to changes in the dominant fictions circulating within European culture concerning the relationship between individual striving and ultimate ends. Whatever the intentions of the poet, the sonnet offers Cipriano the opportunity to explore and challenge the limits of his inherited musical language. Thus, Schubert rebels against the tidy pairs of binary oppositions and the affirmative narratives of the Enlightenment, Cipriano against the neoplatonic proprieties of scholastic authority, Madonna against a centuries-old etiquette that regulates the behaviour of 'good little girls'.
