Hildesheimer, l’ascolto e i paradossi del discorso musicale

The article offers a survey of Hildesheimer’s position towards music across the boundary of literary works and essays. Three main issues emerge: the representation of music as a symptom of the end and a prefiguration of death; the critical stance against the ideology of authenticity in music and the historically informed performance practice; and the reflection on musical listening as a subjective experience which is unable to reach objective knowledge about music. Making explicit the premises of Hildesheimer’s position, his essays prove to be both an integration and a consistent continuation of the intermedial references to music in the literary works.