# Any "Music Philosophers" here?



## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

By "music philosopher," I mean someone who likes to analyze music not only for theory, but for thematic content, for philosophy. In other words, they hear a piece of music, and think not only "What?" or "How?" ... but "Why?"
Why was this piece composed? What was the purpose? What message is the composer trying to express? Is it nothing more than abstract belief in order or beauty (or the opposite), or is it something more, an emotion/idea the composer wishes to express, but cannot do so in words?

I'm one of those people. It absolutely intrigues me to contemplate such ideas while listening to music. Sometimes composers make it obvious their intentions, sometimes not. But I believe everything has purpose, even if it is to have none.


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## HarpsichordConcerto (Jan 1, 2010)

Sounds to me that's what the atonal composers are trying to do with their structured sounds. "Abstract belief"/sounds, but perhaps not philosophy. Maybe I'm wrong.


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Well to sum up my beliefs on the topic rather concisely, one can only judge a piece of music based on how it measured up to the intentions of its composer.


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## Johnny (Mar 7, 2010)

I think music is our own subjective reality in which we immerse ourselves and become intellectually one with the artist. It means everything and nothing.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

> In other words, they hear a piece of music, and think not only "What?" or "How?" ... but "Why?"


That's a fundamental thing about music, to wonder _why_ at first place. Proper question would be rarther if there is anyone who doesn't ask this question.





 - check out what Bernstein talks about here. He has his own concept of musical meaning, but it is totally impossible to know if it's right and exactly what composer meant.

But at the other hand, sometimes I can be almost quite sure in more general subjects. When something sudden and unexpected happens in music (especially if it comes from period in which music was somehow more 'free' than before), like two tunes of diffrent characters fight each other, or some phrase is suddenly stopped by brutal enterance of another musical phrase, then we can guess what it means. Not like "hey, listen to french horns, they say that composer's cat is dead but he doesn't feel sorry, he disliked his cat!" but more like "I sense dark thoughts systematically entering the illusion of bliss, and finally brutally haunting the whole inner world".


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Aramis, is your signature quote for real??? Oh dear! That's the kind of stuff that worries me, when composers say things like that. If a composer honestly wants to serve the devil, that makes me angry. :angry:

If music is honestly going to follow moral standards, I would be opposed to "evil" music. But I wish it wasn't like that.

One thing I also like to observe in music: priorities. Most of the time, it's the battle of 2 beliefs: Beauty, or innovation. If a composer can meld these together, they are often successful. But many composers often choose to focus on just one, and the other one is less important. I'm an idealist/optimist, so I prefer to believe that music is beautiful sound above all.

A composer once said that he believed music should follow two standards:
1. It must be beautiful
2. It must be self-sufficient (fully satisfying)

Of course, that's been attacked immensely.


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## Rasa (Apr 23, 2009)

Hah. I have an analysis professor who does exactly this on any piece he reads. Bach, Beethoven, Hadn to Pärt, human nature will be found behind every note. Usually he sounds crazy, sometimes he make sense and it makes me wonder....


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

Reaction to any piece of classical music is a highly subjective thing. Different people hear the same music differently and react to it in vastly different ways. Whether a work is "beautiful" or not is something that is highly subjective. Stravinsky's Rite of Spring is not a "beautiful" work, but it's an extremely effective one.
Music is not entirely abstract. It does not exist in a vaccuum and you cannot completely divorce it from the extra-musical.
Stravinsky, for example,declared that"music is powerless to express anything", and that composers merely"combine notes."
But do writers just combine words? Of course not. It's the same with composers.
Yet ironically, Stravinsky sometimes contradicted himself in his music, such as in the highly descriptive early ballet scores The Firebird,Petrushka, and the Rite of Spring. 
For example, one passage in Petrushka is supposed to portray a dancing bear at a folk festival, and a tuba solo represents it. By golly, it sounds like a dancing bear !
A symphony,concerto,sonata etc may be abstract in that it does not tell a specific story, yet these works have a definite expressive character.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Some interesting posts here.

Often, when listening to a piece of music, I am very interested in what was going on in the composer's life, what had happened to him/her before, during (maybe even after) they composed the piece.

A good example is Schoenberg's _Violin Concerto_, composed in the late 1930's, after Schoenberg became an exile in the USA. People here are probably aware of some of these facts: the composer, being Jewish, was harassed by the Nazis and left Europe following the rise of anti-Semitism in the early 1930's. He went to live in California, and after the war learned that some of his close relatives had perished in the Holocaust. But getting back to the concerto, outwardly it follows the traditional pattern, a moderately fast - slow - fast structure. Of course the language is "serial" but it is not difficult to pick up on the structure. In the first two movements, the soloist seems to have the upper hand, everything is going quite nicely (by Schoenberg's standards I mean, not by Beethoven's, obviously). The "balance" seems to slip up a bit into the last movement, a wild dance, where the snare drum interrupts the proceedings. After this, and especially in the final cadenza, the soloist is no longer in control, is brutalised, in shock, layed to waste by that drum beat. & of course, the end of the work does not offer any neat "resolution."

What I am saying is that Schoenberg's_ Violin Concerto _mirrors his experiences as an exile, and the events (war) surrounding it's composition. It's a perfect example (I have many others, but won't bore people) of how a composition can be perceived by paying attention to not only the themes, textures/colour or whether there is a sense of "resolution" at the end or not, but also about the events surrounding it's composition. I think it is important to know some of these historical facts when trying to work out the message that the composer may have been trying to get across to listeners, both back then & now...


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## starry (Jun 2, 2009)

It's very rare that we know exactly what a composer was thinking about when they were writing a piece (and that is assuming they knew exactly what their impulse was themselves anyway). So while it is fun speculating and trying to work out the reasons the thing that matters more is perhaps how a listener or performer relates to a piece, if they can.


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## handlebar (Mar 19, 2009)

I also like to read,discuss and theorize musical works and how they were created. Especially the works of my favourite: Mahler. 
The nineteenth century produced some of the world's best music coupled with the philosophies of the great thinkers of the ages. Makes for interesting discussions when the right people are involved.

Jim


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## Ravellian (Aug 17, 2009)

I think a good composer for studying music in this way would be Tchaikovsky. We have all his letters intact, and he wrote about _everything..._ including how he fantasizes about young boys all the time.


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Johnny said:


> I think music is our own subjective reality in which we immerse ourselves and become intellectually one with the artist. It means everything and nothing.


Everything and nothing? Where do you get nothing from?


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## Lemminkainen (Apr 15, 2010)

MJTTOMB said:


> Well to sum up my beliefs on the topic rather concisely, one can only judge a piece of music based on how it measured up to the intentions of its composer.


How are those intentions determined, though? Even if we have (as in Tchaikovsky's case) written evidence by the composer her/himself, how reliable are those? Even more broadly, how many people can even identify or explain their intentions/motivations?


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## MJTTOMB (Dec 16, 2007)

Lemminkainen said:


> How are those intentions determined, though? Even if we have (as in Tchaikovsky's case) written evidence by the composer her/himself, how reliable are those? Even more broadly, how many people can even identify or explain their intentions/motivations?


Understanding the composer's philosophy of music helps tremendously to understand the music itself.


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## kartikeys (Mar 16, 2013)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> By "music philosopher," I mean someone who likes to analyze music not only for theory, but for thematic content, for philosophy. In other words, they hear a piece of music, and think not only "What?" or "How?" ... but "Why?"
> Why was this piece composed? What was the purpose? What message is the composer trying to express? Is it nothing more than abstract belief in order or beauty (or the opposite), or is it something more, an emotion/idea the composer wishes to express, but cannot do so in words?
> 
> I'm one of those people. It absolutely intrigues me to contemplate such ideas while listening to music. Sometimes composers make it obvious their intentions, sometimes not. But I believe everything has purpose, even if it is to have none.


I write a blog at tarakari.blogspot.com
It may fit the description


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

Keep listening! Stay trippy!


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## Lukecash12 (Sep 21, 2009)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> By "music philosopher," I mean someone who likes to analyze music not only for theory, but for thematic content, for philosophy. In other words, they hear a piece of music, and think not only "What?" or "How?" ... but "Why?"
> Why was this piece composed? What was the purpose? What message is the composer trying to express? Is it nothing more than abstract belief in order or beauty (or the opposite), or is it something more, an emotion/idea the composer wishes to express, but cannot do so in words?
> 
> I'm one of those people. It absolutely intrigues me to contemplate such ideas while listening to music. Sometimes composers make it obvious their intentions, sometimes not. But I believe everything has purpose, even if it is to have none.


You've succinctly expressed some of my favorite questions about music. Oftentimes people can describe the ticking sound very well, but one has to ask: *why does the clock tick*?


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

I think about music itself, but I don't presume to know why someone who is not me made a particular piece of music, it goes then from analysis to flimsy guesswork, or becomes stuck in the realm of the platitudinous.


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## millionrainbows (Jun 23, 2012)

Crudblud said:


> I think about music itself, but I don't presume to know why someone who is not me made a particular piece of music, it goes then from analysis to flimsy guesswork, or becomes stuck in the realm of the platitudinous.


I don't "presume" either, but I do look for patterns. I call this the "non-analytical fantasy/imagination" aspect of art. You should try it some time. You don't have to tell anyone, either.


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

millionrainbows said:


> I don't "presume" either, but I do look for patterns. I call this the "non-analytical fantasy/imagination" aspect of art. You should try it some time. You don't have to tell anyone, either.


I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Have I offended you somehow?


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Strangely, the more I contemplate, the less reason I find. Pieces tend to be simply what they are. Not having to represent something else to have any validity. And what's even more strange is that this recognition brought more enjoyment than when I actually thought I found meaning. 

It gets tricky in programatic music, but I think it eventually concludes the same.


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## Klassic (Dec 19, 2015)

Huilunsoittaja said:


> By "music philosopher," I mean someone who likes to analyze music not only for theory, but for thematic content, for philosophy. In other words, they hear a piece of music, and think not only "What?" or "How?" ... but "Why?"
> Why was this piece composed? What was the purpose? What message is the composer trying to express? Is it nothing more than abstract belief in order or beauty (or the opposite), or is it something more, an emotion/idea the composer wishes to express, but cannot do so in words?
> 
> I'm one of those people. It absolutely intrigues me to contemplate such ideas while listening to music. Sometimes composers make it obvious their intentions, sometimes not. But I believe everything has purpose, even if it is to have none.


This is certainly an interesting thread. The idea that music could exist apart from a philosophy is quite absurd: nihil fit ex nihilo. Perhaps the _most_ interesting thing about any piece of music is the philosophy it consciously or unconsciously conveys or adheres to. In this sense past composers are not very interesting.


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## Rhombic (Oct 28, 2013)

I do and this is one of the reasons why I like the Russians -from Glinka to late socialist realism- so much: full of imagery and artistic content.


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## vallaths (Jan 13, 2016)

Classical music seems to me to be static and eternal, capturing moments of genius forever. Unlike, say, a genre like jazz it isn't fluid, changing drastically with every recital. Jazz's beauty comes from the rendition, changing every time, it captures the human "soul" and creativity in a dynamic, realistic state. The beauty comes from the person playing and less from the original composition.

Classical however doesn't seem to work like that, at least not to that extent. While undoubtedly how the player interprets the work and plays it is a massive part it seems that they simply are trying to capture the composers mind, not create something new. Composers of classical music, at least the great ones, tend to be geniuses, some of the greatest minds of the time, and their works are conceived in the highest and purest minds, some of the best of humanity. They seem to capture ideals, transcending the average, to be marveled at, not necessarily empathized with. Not dynamic, representing a realistic state with its complexities and duality, but instead capturing unattainable, pure abstract concepts and emotions. Something like the complex, layered artistry of Bach, where every instrument, every part of the song comes together. He weaves many complementary pieces it into a great tapestry in order to capture an idea like joy, to evoke pure emotions. Classical works create things that can be marveled at, unreachable, like stars in the sky. 

The great composers seem to often create classical music as odes to these pure emotions and ideas, like Chopin's often melancholy nocturnes capturing the sorrow and beauty of the emotions he felt towards being exiled from Poland. The grandeur of Mozart's requiem, a work written as his own epitaph, capturing mortality and its sorrow in relation to his life. Like Vivaldi's Four Seasons capturing the pure ideas behind each of the seasons, the innocence and verdant nature of spring, the brazen and strong nature of summer, the subdued maturity of autumn, the bleak and jarring beauty of winter. These are pure ideas created through layered, intricate structure conceived in the minds of the composers, not to be changed regardless of who plays it when. In my opinion creating these static monuments to pure ideas and emotions seems to be the nature of classical music.


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