# Music & Philosophy



## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

I love music and I love philosophy. Naturally when the two converge I love it even more.

Now, I dont wish to start a discussion on the aesthetics of music. Libraries of books have been written on this topic by some of the worlds greatest minds, so that is a particular beast im not hoping to unleash just yet. Instead, the purpose for this thread is just to hear from you all what your opinions are on the reverse matter; that of philosophy being addressed within art or music in particular.

To take an example from my own experience:
Relatively recently I began an affair with the works of Richard Wagner. One of the great things that appeals to me about his dramas is their philosophical nature. I know a certain member has derided Wagner for his megalomania, but this has become to me a quality I look for in artists. Specifically, I recently watched Parsifal in the theater, and aside from the purely artistic and emotional interaction with the work (which must come first), there was a further intellectual level at which I could grasp the drama as a whole, but also specific phrases in the libretto as metaphoric or symbolic of a philosophic message. These two aspects working in conjuction produced an incomparable experience for me.

_What is your opinion of art and music that attempts to transmit philosophy? Should music and philosophy interact at all or should music be a purely intuitive experience?

_
No matter your opinion certain artists and artistic movements are inseparable from philosophy. To use my previous example; Wagner's late operas would be irrecognisable without Schopenhauers influence; but there are also other's such as the symbolists and in the 20th century a lot of composers used their music for politics e.g. Nono, Zimmermann etc...

_Can you provide any more examples of composers conveying a philosophy through their work?

Even when a composer is known to have placed philosophy into his work, do you pay attention to this at all or do you ignore it? I.e. when watching Der Ring, do you consider at all the political and philosophical struggle between love and power?_


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Music is more emotional than rational.
And in influence reading 1 book of for example Aristotle (in 1 month) is more influential than listening to classic music for 10 years.

It's better not to mix things together. Suffice to say, Mathematical Classic music created in 20th century is anything except emotional which is supposed to be its true purpose.


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## Carpenoctem (May 15, 2012)

Music gives you emotional satisfaction and philosophy enriches your mind and knowledge.

I think you should keep them apart, for example reading Albert Camus' Stranger will benefit you more than listening to any kind of music.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

See, now the both of you have made a fairly wild and unsupported claim that music is 'supposed to be emotional'.

But I can accept your other points as valid if Ive understood you correctly.
E.g.:


> reading Albert Camus' Stranger will benefit you more than listening to any kind of music.





> reading 1 book of for example Aristotle (in 1 month) is more influential than listening to classic music for 10 years.


What you are saying is that music is in any case an inferior medium for the transmission of philosophy, and that one would be better off going directly to the literary texts.

It is interesting to note that one of you gave as your example a book by Aristotle (which are usually 'essay' style) and the other provided the example of Camus's l'Étranger, which is a novel. The latter, being a novel, or a work of art, transmits its message through metaphor, allusions, symbols and the like which is precisely what Wagner does in Parsifal - so what is the difference?

Absolute music may be another matter, yet it could still be described as working in an allusory manner.

Perhaps the strength of a work such as Parsifal, is the combination of understanding the intellectual philosophical material while being guided through it emotionally via the music.


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## Krisena (Jul 21, 2012)

I think music can work as wrapping paper for philosophy. A few years ago, I read Also Sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, and I was smitten by Nietzsche's poetic language and it made me buy into whatever statement he presented. It was some time later, with some time to think that I actually managed to look critically at his philosophy. I think it's this way with music also, philisophy wrapped in beautiful music is easier to digest, for the better or the worse.

That said, my university has an optional course on Wagner and the philosophy in his operas for those interested from the Philosophy studies, so it's definetily not nothing.

Personally, I think putting philosophy in your music, as a composer, is really a case of hit or miss. If the audience can sympathize with it, it will be a great experience, but if not, the music will meet a lot more resistance in the listener.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Thanks for your post Krisena - very interesting to hear about that university course.

I think I agree with your opinion which is something Ive come to believe too, partly through personal experience. Art, through its devices which work intuitively (particularly music) can somehow smuggle a philosophy past your critical faculty.

I meant to mention this in my OP but if anyone is interested, this is a great book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wagner-Philosophy-Bryan-Magee/dp/0140295194


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## Carpenoctem (May 15, 2012)

emiellucifuge said:


> What you are saying is that music is in any case an inferior medium for the transmission of philosophy, and that one would be better off going directly to the literary texts.


Perhaps I've not explained what I meant clearly.

I don't think that music is inferior to philosophy. The thing is, reading Aristotle ,Plato, Camus, Spinoza, Voltaire, Sartre will give you a better understanding of world and life than listening to entire collection of music from Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven etc.

They are different, but even the greatest minds said that music will bring fire to your spirit.

That being said, I don't agree with Beethoven that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

It's hard to compare philosophy, music, sociology, even though they are all connected.


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## aleazk (Sep 30, 2011)

I'm very attracted to certain pieces of Ligeti because I feel their philosophical content.

http://www.ubu.com/film/ligeti_follin.html

What he says about his Requiem at 20:45. I feel precisely this when I listen to this piece!.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

Carpenoctem said:


> Perhaps I've not explained what I meant clearly.
> 
> I don't think that music is inferior to philosophy. The thing is, reading Aristotle ,Plato, Camus, Spinoza, Voltaire, Sartre will give you a better understanding of world and life than listening to entire collection of music from Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven etc.
> 
> ...


Im afraid we've piled one misunderstanding on to another.

I didnt take your post to mean this at all. I said; "Music is an inferior medium for the transmission of philosophy" - that is to say that written prose can more effectively convey a philosophy than music, not that music is inferior to philosophy.

I agree with you that music and philosophy etc.. are incomparable,, what im really interested in is the areas of overlap.


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## Guest (Aug 14, 2012)

The presumption seems to be that the printed word is better than the musical sound at transmitting a philosophical idea. That in turn seems to be based on the premise that philosophical ideas are only really transmissible via a single sense - the visual - and not the aural. Given that the aural, as has been noted many times elsewhere, can be formally, even mathematically arranged, and also informally or chaotically arranged - both to different effect, I think it is quite possible to explore some philosophical ideas through music - especially the emotional, but also the intellectual content.


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## Norse (May 10, 2010)

The problem with expressing detailed concepts like philosophy in music is of course music's lack of clear semantic power and specifity (Which I guess is both its weakness and its strength) vs verbal language. I still think it's a pretty closely knit relationship. For instance, you could say romantic music to a large degree sounds like it does because of the Romantic Movement, which was in part a 'philosophy'. An artist with a philosophy probably makes art somewhat informed by that philosophy, that's not too controversial, I think. But I'm not sure if that's the kind of thing you're talking about.

Expressing philosophical ideas through music is a bit like standard program music, I guess. It works best if the listener has been told something about what it is supposed to represent, which again begs the question of what the music is actually capable of conveying on its own. The opera/Wagner example is to me something completely different because operas have words and stage action.

I won't pretend to know a lot about John Cage's music, but I think his Zen Buddhism and interest in Indian philosophy affected what and how he chose to write (or not write). Maybe some those works could be looked at as some sort of 'aural representations' of those thoughts. Not sure if that makes sense, I'm really tired.


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Philosophy can be more influential than music, because it gives us our perception, right or wrong, of the world around us - in which we live. The way we see objects and events around us and how we react to them are controlled by our philosophy - to the extent we live it, rather than understand it.

Music however, is probably the most powerful of the arts in influencing the emotions - because it does not rely on concepts and imagination to influence emotion. It can also be appreciated on an intellectual level. However, the connection between this and the outside world is tenuous, because, like mathematics, it is an abstract intellectualism which has little to do with reality. Maths is relevant for reality when assumptions are made and models applied (physics) - the closest this comes to in music is a programme, but even this is generally emotional. The intellectual aspect of music might possibly be the purest activity of the brain in art or science - I think anyway.

A philosophy has no influence on our lives unless we choose to live it. Philosophy teaches us abstract topics, but what we feel day in day out are our emotions and this is certainly within the realm of music. I think every composer to some extent implants their own ideas and philosophy into their music and make you feel it (subject to interpretation) according to their competence. I don't mean conceptual truths, but emotional states: because each philosophy has an emotional state attached to it, whether it be cynicism, hedonism, Buddhism, Christianity or anything else, and their subdivisions. And music impresses this into you.

This being said, lasting changes only occur with a change of world-view. For me, this was reading _Crime and Punishment_. However, who is to say that the emotional state induced by the music I listened to didn't make me more receptive to the ideas contained which so influenced me?


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

Music has the ability to exploit emotion to persuade its audience to listen to its philosophy, perhaps more than speeches or essays which also depend on reasoning.

Scriabin's 3rd Symphony is my example.
Look, even lovely wikipedia missed over the importance of this symphony: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._3_%28Scriabin%29

But here's the real point of it, which I'm paraphrasing from this:
http://www.classicalarchives.com/work/115729.html#tvf=tracks&tv=about

There is an Introduction, and then 3 parts:

*Struggles*: Scriabin depicts the inward struggle of man as his heart goes between 2 ideas: Man "enslaved" by an outside God, or Man takes role of God. The most turbulent movement.

*Pleasures*: Scriabin takes a moment to show Man embracing (sensual) pleasure, and how happy and peaceful he is. The most sublime movement.
*
Divine Poem*: The highlight of the symphony, Scriabin shows Man defying Higher Power and discovering the ultimate joy of becoming God themselves. The most heroic movement.

From my experience, I can say that this symphony is SUPREMELY gorgeous, possibly Scriabin's greatest work. And that's what makes it so seductive. Its _extreme _emotions are so stirring that it's almost hypnotic: you rise in your seat saying, "Yeah! He's right! Man is God! So I'm God too!" and with wonderful ecstasy characteristic of Scriabin, this ideal becomes reality as one reaches and grasps the ultimate Joy. It is nothing less than brain-washing propaganda. Almost makes you wanna go burn down churches and make statues of yourself!! Who wouldn't?? 

Prepare to be brain-washed:





:tiphat:

I think that's all I need to say about it.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

If you think of Christian doctrine as a philosophy, then all the sacred music is meant to express it. We can see this especially in some requiem masses, where the composer's attitude to death is obvious. (Fauré and Duruflé are probably the most famous examples of that.) Other religious music, such as Jewish music, could count in the same way.

Of course blatantly secularist music such as Delius' _A Mass of Life_ or Strauss' _Also Sprach Zarathustra_ must count.

Same could go for nationalism. A good example could be the 1812 Overture. Even though Tchaikovsky seems to have been somewhat insincere, it is a great expression of Russian nationalism. I personally would insist that nationalism has some philosophical content - i.e. that there is such a thing as "a nation," and that it should be politically significant, etc.

In the old days the opposite of nationalism was communism, and Weill is a good example of someone who tried to express its values in his music.

Romanticism is a kind of moral philosophy, making claims about what is important in life, and what is not. That has probably found expression in music. Beethoven's "Pastoral" symphony could be an example.

Anyway, a long time ago I came to the opinion that the most effective way to argue for one's beliefs is to tell a persuasive story about them. Of course if the story becomes a film, then the music will be a crucial part of that persuasion. The simplest sort of examples would be the pop-philosophy that "(romantic) love is all (or at least the main thing) you need." Many movies exist to make that point, and they usually employ suitable music: shallow, melodramatic, sugary stuff. Or, I recently read an essay online about "crime jazz," which argued that some musicians (such as Mancini) portray crime through jazz as a blustery, brazen, wild and uncontrollable thing, while others (such as Miles Davis) portray it as sneaky and subtle. Behind the music is a philosophy of the nature of the criminal.

This might seem to stretch the meaning of "philosophy," but that is a thing I'd do. Especially, I would consider absolutely all claims about morality, ethics, or values (i.e. how we should live, what will make us happy) as philosophy. All marketing implies philosophical claims: whiter teeth will lead through greater social esteem to confidence and to happiness. Like most of the claims implied above, I doubt that the music can directly support such claims, but with skillful application it can certainly help them seem persuasive.


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## belfastboy (Aug 3, 2012)

Music - Philosophy, Life - philosophy.... you can't break up the two. How we live out life, how we treat others, how we think, is a direct ruling from a philosophical text book, weather we like it or not. Philosophy *is *we just add music to it.


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## belfastboy (Aug 3, 2012)

belfastboy said:


> Music - Philosophy, Life - philosophy.... you can't break up the two. How we live out life, how we treat others, how we think, is a direct ruling from a philosophical text book, weather we like it or not. Philosophy *is *we just add music to it.


Philosophy is like a cancer - it just takes you over and totally rules. It's so subjective. One turns to Renee Descartes or even Martin Buber, I and thou.....fantastic book. "A vain hope for safety is the horse, without it's power it can not save".....thought I'd just hurl that in cos it came into my head...anyway, ........


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## belfastboy (Aug 3, 2012)

belfastboy said:


> Philosophy is like a cancer - it just takes you over and totally rules. It's so subjective. One turns to Renee Descartes or even Martin Buber, I and thou.....fantastic book. "A vain hope for safety is the horse, without it's power it can not save".....thought I'd just hurl that in cos it came into my head...anyway, ........


To reiterate....in the words of another philosophical genius.....Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide
No escape from reality. Open your eyes, Look up to the skies and see!


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

belfastboy said:


> Philosophy is like a cancer - it just takes you over and totally rules. It's so subjective. One turns to Renee Descartes or even Martin Buber, I and thou.....fantastic book. "A vain hope for safety is the horse, without it's power it can not save".....thought I'd just hurl that in cos it came into my head...anyway, ........


Well, lots of branches of philosophy are intolerable! Specially Nietzsche and those in 20th century. I actually like both Hegel and Schopenhauer and want to expand my thought over the contradiction between these two philosophers and also utilizing newer and older worthy thoughts.

At my first post I meant non-vocal music. You can put everything in a vocal one! And those feelings in non-vocal ones can actually provoke you to do something, but not make you wiser.


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## Guest (Aug 15, 2012)

Of course, the famous philosophers may have been the first, or just the most famous, to explore and explain certain approaches to the meaning of life. They've not copyrighted the ideas. You don't even have to have heard of Descartes, never mind read any of his works, to have run a few philosophical thoughts through your own mind, such as "I post on TC, therefore I am."

Applying this to music, you don't need to know the composer, or any of the explicit ideas that may have been expressed in relation to a piece of music, to begin your own interpretation of what ideas the music might convey. What's difficult is to come to a piece of music without any prior associations. For example, I first heard Shostakovich's 7th Symphony in a movie called _Billion Dollar Brain_. The military theme of the first movement was pretty explicit, and used as a backdrop to the deployment of troops in a snowy landscape. Once the association is made, it's difficult to picture anything else.

However, once you slot Shostakovich in some kind of timeline with, say, Baroque at the beginning, and, say, Boulez near the end, you can hear how the evolution of classical music reflects the preoccupations and the orthodoxies of the times in which they were composing. So, the orderly forms of religious and courtly music in 17th and 18th centuries complement the established views about man and god, but also, the rise of man as an intelligent being, with the freedom to begin to explore his capabilities to order and control God's universe.

Couple formality and its later subversion or corruption ("a symphony with only ONE movement!") with the awareness that some musical figures (sorry - haven't got the technical language to explain this properly) - such as rising or falling pitch, change of key, choice of minor/major, pace, dynamics - have a direct effect on the emotions, it's surely easy to hear the personification of heaven, or the presence of god in Handel's Messiah, and doubt and depression in (name your favourite miserabilist composition).

I didn't need to know of '_sturm und drang_' to hear the inner torments in Beethoven's 5th and 9th, but whether I can go from there to elaborate a complete philosophical idea is another matter.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

This is a bit outside the topic, but I'm reminded of the fact that I made the mental connection of Brahms Fourth Symphony with ancient Greek tragedy (not philosophy, per se, but very philosophical in content) long before I found out that Brahms himself was immersed in Sophocles at the time he wrote it.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

It's an interesting precept: that the human expression of music is rooted in his philosophy.

1. A composer is aware of his own philosophical stance, and uses this, to inform his musical creation.
2. A composer has no such interest, and composes his own music - unreflecting, and uninformed by the philosophical discipline.

One of the classical schoolboy errors which we as adults are still prone to make....is to convey an intimation, that we believe that philosophy is about a 'position'; or about a 'stance' as I have done above. For any of us who studied philosophy this century, philosophy is mostly, above all, about 'method'. Or at least, in the last decades of scholastic philosophy, methodology (of knowing; of learning; of discovering; of thinking) has replaced 'philosophy' per se.

Elliot Carter's take on Alfred Whitehead's 'Philosophy of Organism' springs to mind. Although now, I personally can't stand the man's work, I have spent years mesmerised by it, trying to weave some sense into his organic realism. Rejecting dualism (i.e. spirit vs body mentalities), Carter derives some classical influences (like Plato's concept of 'Forms') from music, and 'grows' these organically into a kind of syntropic musical form, which prefigures complexity, and above all, unity, rather than the ABA or ABBA forms of classical musical writing.

Maybe my bias is distinctly continental philosophy, rather than anglo-saxon positivism, or American objectivism à l'Ayn Rand. So it all seems kind of pointless to me, although I can sense the music is still very well written, I just don't appreciate it.

Thinking of the Nazi influenced composers - like Wagner, as well as other lesser knowns like the Austrian Franz Schmidt, famed in Austria, and shunned by the rest of the world, we see an opposite: unlike Elliott Carter's distillation of philosophy, and his informed stance; Franz Schmidt's pro-Nazi's naivety is a function of his uninformed stance. It is not that there is any fascism or anti-semitism wrought in his music: no self-aggrandissement or narcissistic music sung to the mother race: just beautifully plaintive albeit rather decadent music of its time, caught up by the composer's lack of marbles when it came to sussing out his political position (and therefore philosophical) in a damaged world.

In between the two extremes, Vincent D'Indy and his cronies who hated the libertarian values of the anti-Dreyfus, and anything to do with challenging the absolute values of the state (and its tradition), possessed his own philosophy, incompatible with tolerance and the religious values of the new humanism. His thinking however, does not detract from the rather pleasant music which he writes. It does leave a modern listener rather uncomfortable however, knowing that an anti-semite and a rather blinkered composer, could hold such perturbing values, and it is hard not to reject the baby with the bathwater.



> ... certain artists and artistic movements are inseparable from philosophy. To use my previous example; Wagner's late operas would be irrecognisable without Schopenhauers influence; but there are also other's such as the symbolists and in the 20th century a lot of composers used their music for politics e.g. Nono, Zimmermann etc...


Pretty much - it follows. If the music itself, is wrought as an expression of the composer's values and belief system, rather than say, a religious composer like Bach penning cantatas celebrating his faith, versus an atheist composer penning the same, to pay his way in court life. In someways, I've always wondered whether Wagner was more impressed by Nietzschean aphorism, rather than Schopenhauerian exoticism which embraced more ambiguity and eastern influences, than perhaps, Wagner's own music.



> Can you provide any more examples of composers conveying a philosophy through their work?


The late Henryk Gorecki's works, unfortunately bracketed within the pejorative term 'Holy minimalism' derived from his intensely devout catholicism. Catholicism itself is not a tradition - it has heterogeneity from the Byzantine and the Roman Empires respectively. His, is from the Latin tradition which celebrated life: 'Totus Tuus'; 'Beatus Vir'; 'Miserere' are all meditations on traditional catholic themes, written in his own musical language. What is striking however:



> If you think of Christian doctrine as a philosophy, then all the sacred music is meant to express it. We can see this especially in some requiem masses, where the composer's attitude to death is obvious. (Fauré and Duruflé are probably the most famous examples of that.) Other religious music, such as Jewish music, could count in the same way.


is that his catholic faith goes beyond christian philosophy. Is it even correct to speak of 'christian philosophy', any more than it is, to speak of 'christian mathematics'?

The question moves us into the sphere of the ridiculous numbering of angels dancing on the head of a pin. In this respect - Bach; Lassus; Allegri ... a lineage of composers continuing a religious tradition of composing music, in the light of their faith, right through to Dutilleux & Messiaen, composing in according with their being, informed by faith - not philosophy - perhaps has nothing with with being 'philosophically informed', so much, as reflecting the light, which their interior faith brings to them.

This position contrasts to Elliott Carter's derivations from Whitehead's philosophy. Other examples from around the world, include the music inspired by Sufi mysticism (is mysticism a form of philosophy in itself?); eastern Taoism (partly the xiao and temple music), some of whose themes, Bring Sheng, has taken up and had recorded for western audiences; or Japanese 'minimalism', following the traditions of Shinto Buddhism (and here, Buddhism is a philosophical method, not merely a 'religion').


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## belfastboy (Aug 3, 2012)

Head_case said:


> It's an interesting precept: that the human expression of music is rooted in his philosophy.
> 
> 1. A composer is aware of his own philosophical stance, and uses this, to inform his musical creation.
> 2. A composer has no such interest, and composes his own music - unreflecting, and uninformed by the philosophical discipline.
> ...


Is a catholic a christian or just a catholic?


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## Ralfy (Jul 19, 2010)

You can look at it in terms of themes shared across historical periods and art movements. Examples include storm and stress, love-death, the danse macabre, melancholy, night, war, and so on. You can also look at the way art is structured in light of dominant intellectual movements during the same period, etc. There are many examples to consider.

Ultimately, you do both and more: you see music as emotional but also as part of history, philosophical and art movements, etc. You listen to a work as if it is timeless, and then you connect it to its historical and even geographical place in the world.

Finally, you do the same thing with other works of art, including literature, film, and so on.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

> Is a catholic a christian or just a catholic?


'catholic' is an adjective: it requires a qualfier. Which when it does not, reflects a problem in the speaker's mindset. It's fundamental meaning implies a holistic character: that is - it opposes the fundamentalism or the focus on one trait or feature, over and above others.

The use of language isn't trivial either: we see too many examples of institutional blindness in journalism who report on 'the arthritic'....'the bronchitic...' ....'the schizophrenic'. Not 'the patient who suffers from bronchitis, or the arthritic patient'. Once we reduce a patient to being 'a schizophrenic', the process of permitting demonisation of a section of society starts the rot setting in society.

Such a distorted use of language is becoming commonplace: no wonder people wonder where the humanity is.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Head_case said:


> Is it even correct to speak of 'christian philosophy', any more than it is, to speak of 'christian mathematics'?


Well, Christianity is at least a philosophical position (ordinarily it is more than that - a social commitment, for example). I don't know of any Christian doctrines relating in very important ways to mathematics. Certainly Christianity uses mathematics (to build its calendars, for instance, and to count the persons in the Trinity), but I don't know of any Christian mathematical claims.

We could well begin our exploration of Christian philosophy in music with the Mass. The Kyrie implies that we are in need of God's mercy, which implies philosophical ideas about God, humanity, and our relationship. The Gloria tells us that Jesus takes away the sins of the world, implying more of those ideas; the Agnus Dei ties together the Kyrie and Gloria. The Credo is a straightforward list of philosophical claims.

We could go on if we explored other liturgical music.


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2012)

Head_case said:


> One of the classical schoolboy errors which we as adults are still prone to make....is to convey an intimation, that we believe that philosophy is about a 'position'; or about a 'stance' as I have done above. For any of us who studied philosophy this century, philosophy is mostly, above all, about 'method'. Or at least, in the last decades of scholastic philosophy, methodology (of knowing; of learning; of discovering; of thinking) has replaced 'philosophy' per se.


I must say I take exception to the idea that anyone is making 'schoolboy errors' in their contribution to this thread. Within the terms of the OP, it seems quite reasonable to consider whether any individual composer, or music generally can express philosophical ideas or responses to them in sound form. I'm sure emiellucifuge can clarify if I'm wrong, but I've extracted what seems to be the nub of the discussion.



emiellucifuge said:


> the purpose for this thread is just to hear from you all what your opinions are on the reverse matter; that of philosophy being addressed within art or music in particular.
> 
> [...]
> 
> ...


I don't think this is a discussion about what philosophy is, nor does it require a definition that might satisfy an expert philosopher. It assumes a common-or-garden definition, surely, such as you might find in wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy



> *Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, andlanguage.*


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

science said:


> Well, Christianity is at least a philosophical position (ordinarily it is more than that - a social commitment, for example).


Christianity affirms through the 'Credo': 'I believe'......

This is not a philosophical position. You can take up a philosophical position towards Christianity: as Aquinas and the Post-Aristoteleans did. Or as Guttierez and 'Liberation Theology' had done, using socio-political inequality. Other philosophical positions towards christianity - like 'christian existentialism' have already been posited.

The problem is ...none of these constitute Christianity. 'Credo': I believe. Not 'I know' (Epistemology); not: 'I think' (Metaphysics); not speculative philosophy; nor analytical philosophy. This is the Mysterium Fideii: The Mystery of Faith. Christianity is intrinsically religious in character, on its Credo ....I believe .... in the Mystery of Faith ...the incarnation of Christ...that Christ was created ...begotten, and not made...of one being with the Father....of one Being with the Father...God from God ...Light from Light....True God from true God.

None of this is 'philosophy'. Philosophy stops dead and informs us no more, at the juncture of religion, where philosophy itself becomes a useless tool for knowing, what goes beyond knowledge [the unknowable, which Nietzsche speaks of].

Philosophy on the other hand - and I'm referring to scholastic philosophy, will see the above Credo, as dogma: a set of values which are choosen either freely (authentic faith) or falsely (culturally assumed, as cradle christians, or social-political jockeying for power within a christian culture).

Philosophy is more concerned about 'how' you might get to know what is true or not.

It is possible for Christian Philosophy as a discipline to exist - however then, it needs to defend itself from becoming as ridiculous as Christian Mathematics; Christian Science, literal Creationism and a plethora of pseudo-knowledge claims out there.



> I don't know of any Christian doctrines relating in very important ways to mathematics. Certainly Christianity uses mathematics (to build its calendars, for instance, and to count the persons in the Trinity), but I don't know of any Christian mathematical claims.


Yes ... the point about Christian Mathematics emphasises how ridiculous it is, to pigeonbox things. Ultimately, if 'Credo' informs being....then being...becomes shaped by credo....the two are indivisible; organic; and a part of one another.



> We could well begin our exploration of Christian philosophy in music with the Mass. The Kyrie implies that we are in need of God's mercy, which implies philosophical ideas about God, humanity, and our relationship. The Gloria tells us that Jesus takes away the sins of the world, implying more of those ideas; the Agnus Dei ties together the Kyrie and Gloria. The Credo is a straightforward list of philosophical claims.


The Mass, is intended precisely ... for the Masses of people...workers, all classes, educated and uneducated. The Masses....were historically illiterate. They are not interested in philosophizing. In this respect, Christianity is more serious than armchair philosophy, which is interesting as a cogitation, but ultimately, is little more by itself.

None of the Kyrie; Salve Regina or funereal masses are philosophical in my view: these are celebratory: they are written in praise and celebration - not for cogitating over whether God is really there or is not there; or whether the Trinity can be counted on one hand. This view, is a distortion of Christianity's claims, and counter's the very nature of the Mass, which is the celebration to God: not to man's own thinking prowess.


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## Head_case (Feb 5, 2010)

> > Quote Originally Posted by Head_case
> > One of the classical schoolboy errors which we as adults are still prone to make....is to convey an intimation, that we believe that philosophy is about a 'position'; or about a 'stance' as I have done above. For any of us who studied philosophy this century, philosophy is mostly, above all, about 'method'. Or at least, in the last decades of scholastic philosophy, methodology (of knowing; of learning; of discovering; of thinking) has replaced 'philosophy' per se.
> 
> 
> I must say I take exception to the idea that anyone is making 'schoolboy errors' in their contribution to this thread. Within the terms of the OP, it seems quite reasonable to consider whether any individual composer, or music generally can express philosophical ideas or responses to them in sound form. I'm sure emiellucifuge can clarify if I'm wrong, but I've extracted what seems to be the nub of the discussion.


Not sure you've read any of this. I've only referenced myself in making a schoolboy error in the above. You can take offence for me making a schoolboy error, but that seems to be rather a modern thing!

The error is to fail to recognise this: philosophy has become a method ...a method for discovering the world....a method for exploring and assimilating sense-data in the world, such that one's method, arrives at new discoveries, which are particular to that method.

The example I gave, was Elliott Carter's 'Philosophy of Organism', which absorbed the philosophical methods of Whitehead, to create his own 'organic' concrescence of musical notation. This 'method', becomes his own language.

Even the wiki definition you've supplied, confirms that it is the study of things....not the dogmatic statement that 'I know' or that truth has been arrived at.

Philosophy is not, about adopting a position (like idealism,Spinozean pantheism or existentialism) and trying to create music which might sound like it would fit. This is why 'method' has become so critically important for philosophy.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Head_case said:


> Christianity affirms through the 'Credo': 'I believe'......
> 
> This is not a philosophical position. You can take up a philosophical position towards Christianity: as Aquinas and the Post-Aristoteleans did. Or as Guttierez and 'Liberation Theology' had done, using socio-political inequality. Other philosophical positions towards christianity - like 'christian existentialism' have already been posited.
> 
> ...


I am not going to start using the word "philosophy" (or for that matter words like "believe") the way you think I should, but further discussion about this would probably derail the thread.


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## Guest (Aug 17, 2012)

Head_case said:


> Not sure you've read any of this. I've only referenced myself in making a schoolboy error in the above. You can take offence for me making a schoolboy error, but that seems to be rather a modern thing!
> 
> The error is to fail to recognise this: philosophy has become a method ...a method for discovering the world....a method for exploring and assimilating sense-data in the world, such that one's method, arrives at new discoveries, which are particular to that method.
> 
> ...


Read any of what? Your post? Yes, I did, more than once, to try to make sure I followed it. Needless to say, I didn't, as there was much that seemed unconnected with the principle idea of music as a vehicle for expressing philosophy. Name checking famous philosophers, or famous philosophies without any additional explanation loses me. But I'm only an enthusiast, not an expert!

As for the idea that anyone is dogmatically stating that the truth has been 'arrived at'...that's not in my post.


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## brianwalker (Dec 9, 2011)

*Wagner, Totality, and Armature (Lynchpin) Theory. *

I follow the theory that the text of Wagner's works are an *armature* for the music, a plinth for the statue, the lynchpin of the music (imagine the most the gorgeous dress made of overlapping pieces of cloth without a lynchpin; without the lynchpin the dress falls apart, but the lynchpin is not the essence of the dress), but essentially unessential and not the heart of the work but still necessary just as an armature and a lynchpin are. _*As philosophy qua philosophy*_ I believe it worthless.* As armature, as lynchpin,* excellent, superb, and absolutely necessary for the proper understanding of the essence of his work. Wagner alloys music and text to make what would be weak separately into something very strong. Reduce stainless steel to its raw molecular components and what you have will have is something rusty and brittle. This is why any attempts to analyze Wagner's work in terms of the music alone or as a poem along will do absolute injustice to the works and fail to capture the essence of the works. The pseudo-philosophy that music and words are somehow on fundamentally different fields acts as an invulnerable granite wall that blinds the listener from the magnificence of Wagner's works and allows for theories that pervert Wagner's modulations as a precursor to Schoenberg's mutilations of music.

There is no need to compartmentalize the music and the text and bifurcate them, as if they were polar molecules, as if they were oil and water. Wagner's music dramas are *a totality* where the whole is more than the sum of its parts, *not an aggregate. * Synthesis is all about totality, not aggregation, and Wagner's late music dramas are the superlative examples of the synthesis of sound and words in history.

*The truth of the matter is that opera - genuine opera; opera as dramma per musica - is NOT about the music,* nor is it about the singers (and we here exclude bel canto opera as that genre of opera is, by and large, not genuine opera at all but merely an elaborate showcase for singers). In the minds of opera composers, opera producers, and sophisticated operagoers, opera is first and foremost about the drama - or more correctly, about the music-drama; about dramma per musica; drama where the drama is made sensible or articulated through music supported by the armature of the text which armature provides those narrative and concrete details that music alone is incapable of providing, the whole or gestalt made visible by its acting out onstage. Wagner may have made all of that explicit both in his theoretical writings and in his stageworks the mature examples of which are a veritable apotheosis of opera as dramma per musica, but it is not his invention. Dramma per musica has been the ideal and the goal of opera from opera's very beginnings as a distinct artform in the late-16th, early-17th century the first fully developed example of which is usually attributed to Monteverdi and his L'Orfeo of 1607. That that ideal became corrupted early on and seemingly forever by 17th-century Italian theater owners and producers who, in their commercial greed, wantonly pandered to the sensibilities and appetites of the opera-going groundlings who couldn't have cared less about opera as dramma per musica and which opera-going groundlings, then as now, are always in the vast majority, doesn't alter the ideal one whit. And that's why "want[ing] all the music" is rarely the first consideration. Sometimes, when the dramma per musica has gone off-track by becoming bloated or obscured for reasons having little to do with the realization of the dramma per musica per se (we omit here those cases where the creator's own dramatic sense is defective or wanting as that's another discussion entirely), judicious cuts become necessary to free the work to be realized as its creator envisioned it in its ideal form absent all commercial or other compromise. Needless to say, the aesthetic judgment and operatic knowledge of the cutter is here paramount when the creator of the opera is no longer available for consultation or to do the work himself. Too often cuts are made for reasons commercial or practical which are compromises just as pernicious as the compromises which resulted in the dramma per musica going off-track by becoming bloated or obscured in the first place, and in such cases artistic disaster is almost certain to result, not to speak of a betrayal of the creator of the opera and of his creation.

http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2011/07/a-rationale-for-making-cuts-in-opera.html

Informed native German speakers tell me that, *as stand-alone text, the libretti for Wagner's music-dramas (which Wagner in fact referred to as "poems") are fairly dreadful both poetically and dramatically.* But given how Wagner worked, that's *precisely* what one would expect them to be as stand-alone texts.* They're merely the armature about which the drama is constructed -- an armature designed to provide the concrete narrative and factual detail which music alone is incapable of expressing, and which armature never competes poetically or dramatically with the music which is the principal carrier and transmitter of the music-drama's poetic and dramatic core.* Wagner, who originally thought his "poems" to be first-rate as poetry and dramatic text in themselves, discovered that for himself after completing the first music for the _Ring_: the music for _Das Rheingold_, his first music-drama. Wrote Wagner in a letter to his confidant August Röckel, "I have now come to realize just how much there is, owing to the whole nature of my poetic aim, that becomes clear only through the music. I now simply cannot bear to look at the text [of _Das Rheingold_] by itself anymore."

While it's true that the texts of the music-dramas were written complete prior to Wagner writing the music, it's NOT correct to say that Wagner wrote the music to match that finished text, which is the usual process, more or less, when composer and librettist are two separate individuals. As Wagner was writing his texts ("poems"), he, line by line, heard always in his inner ear the shape and sense of the music that would belong to those lines even though he'd not written so much as even a single measure of the actual music. It's no surprise, then, and not for nothing, that the text and music of Wagner's music-dramas are, more than the text and music of any other opera of my experience,* so fundamentally and organically intertwined, and therefore cannot be separated and be expected [each on its own] to still make their unified original sense.* As to Wagner as dramatist -- or, rather, as music-dramatist -- he is absolutely nonpareil with the single exception of Mozart who, it's a deeply-felt conceit of mine, would have outstripped Wagner as music-dramatist had he lived long enough to write the music he longed to write but refrained from writing in order to ensure his earning his daily bread and cheese. And far from Wagner's music-dramas being "long winded, inflated and loud ," as Mr. AI would have it, Wagner was perhaps the most economical composer of _drammas per musica_ who ever lived, the length of his works dictated by the depth and complexity of their musico-dramaturgy, and "loud" only when loud was dictated by the musico-dramatic context of the drama itself.

http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2010/07/wagners-poems.html


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## RadiGen (Oct 18, 2012)

Just as i'm only beginning to listen to Classical music, my interest in Philosophy has only also recently surfaced
I have my opinion though on the intersections of Music (Classical) and Philosophy (This is a very difficult subject, but I would nevertheless want to express my opinion on this, note though that this is purely an opinion)
Academic Philosophy attempts to ground ideologies Analytically (mostly through texts, or done verbally), and educate a person through a systematic flow of information, thereby establishing a quite firm conclusion grounded mostly grounded on premises
Music though, if it attempts any of the arguments done by "Academic" Philosophy does it intuitively, bypassing all the syllogisms and premises of Philosophy, but succeeds in conveying a General message to the person, I can't give examples of Composers conveying Philosophy, but I think movements (Baroque, Classical, Romanticism, Impressionism, Minimalism,etc.) are themselves, Philosophical manifestations, and I think they are the best examples of Music conveying Philosophy


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## Arsakes (Feb 20, 2012)

Don't let materialist philosophy spoils your mind. Read philosophy works prior to Karl Marx before entering materialist/empiricist dominance period. Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Cicero, Confucius, Avecina, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and somewhat Schopenhauer are good to form your understanding.


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