# Sonata form and enlightenment values



## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Hello all,

I have encountered an interesting interpretation about the connection between the sonata form and enlightenment values from the philosophical view point that music, through metaphor, could reflect the beliefs of a society at a given time and give us a glimpse into the deep ideologies that drive different historical periods. In other words, I am interested in how the unique, sophisticated structure of sonata form can be thought of as mirroring:

-- the belief in the idea of progress: music with a very clear direction -- beginning, middle and end;
-- rationality as a cure for all human misery;
-- the human race emerging from religious darkness to the light of enlightenment: main themes presented at the exposition, scrambled during the development and reinforced during the recapitulation; and
-- the composer's control of the composition and notes as a symbol for the control of man at destiny.


All this is very far from contemporary thinking about music, I know. but I wanted to ask if anyone knew of any thinkers that embraced this perspective.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

dove said:


> -- the belief in the idea of progress: music with a very clear direction -- beginning, middle and end;
> -- rationality as a cure for all human misery;
> -- the human race emerging from religious darkness to the light of enlightenment:


ambitions & struggle for power too. Classicism was all about violence, politics & diplomacy.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I'd like to think that's the case. But it seems like when I ask academics things like that, they look at me quizzically. (I like to think of Bach's fugues as reflecting the Judeo-Christian view of progress toward an inevitable end as opposed to the cyclical beliefs of Eastern religions and Beethoven's use of sonata form as reflecting Hegel's views of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but others above my pay grade haven't tagged along with me.) Maybe someone else has been luckier in getting a consensus on that than I have.

I do seem to get agreement that classical music reflects the classical ideals of form, symmetry, and balance.


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## Honkermann (Jan 17, 2020)

Very good interpretations. They raise the further question: now that Enlightenment ideals (reason, individuality, democracy) seem to be waning, due to the crumbling of the political and cultural structures that support them...what does this imply for the future of music?


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

One of my favorite topics in art is that of "form is meaning". Yet, it seems that often the _form_ of a work is the least apparent concept for interpretation. At least in drama, I would argue, the _form_ that a play's action takes has as much to do with the play's meaning as do the words spoken or the actions displayed. In a simplistic sense, the Sophocles _Oedipus _is written in the form of a riddle and its meaning has to do with paradoxes and such; both the Medieval _Everyman_ and _Second Shepherds' Play_ are written in two parts, with double plots so to speak, mirroring the Medieval sense of two ongoing worlds coexisting, this one and that other (spiritual) one; Beckett's _Waiting for Godot_ is circular in its actions, a form which reflects the repetitious aspect of life. Etc., etc.

Sonata form seems to me to be as important to what we think of as "classical" musical art as monophony was to Gregorian chant where all voices join in as one to represent the singleness of the flock. By altering the format of sonata form a composer can make commentaries that his or her sounding notes alone cannot make -- the form can "break down" to show dissolution, or it can introduce theme modulations against the grain to show development and change or exploration or journey. I have long found the progression of the sonata form of Brahms's three piano sonatas to be more telling about the _meaning_ of the music than the notes themselves. The form of the First, for example, is quite strict it seems -- reflecting Brahms's mindset at the time of his early meetings of Robert and, especially, Clara Schumann? But by the Third it seems the structure is beginning to break down and reshape itself into an almost unrecognizable form, mirroring a shattered mind set, one not so stable or satisfied?

I believe we might learn much by examining the sonata form of various works, from the Classical through the Romantic and Modern ages into our own Contemporary era. If form truly is meaning in literature and painting, perhaps there is much meaning hiding within the forms of music, too.


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## Enthusiast (Mar 5, 2016)

Manxfeeder said:


> I'd like to think that's the case. But it seems like when I ask academics things like that, they look at me quizzically.


Perhaps academics need everything to be defined and unambiguous which leads to their being resistant to big ideas that are not backed up with very extensive and rigorous material and even to the creative in general. At least it sometimes seems like that to me for the field I work in. The quizzical look - something they doubtless learn from their peers and perfect with glee - is also a defense against new ideas that could interrupt their thought processes.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Something came up quite recently in another discussion on another forum. I said that modernity started around 1500, because for me, the start of the renaissance comes with the rejection of the idea that the universe is _meaningfully _ordered, the characteristic of the renaissance is the idea that the universe is ultimately contingent correlations, modelable in maths. There was then a big kerfuffle because Du Fay is supposed to be a renaissance composer, and the reasons given were all stylistic -- things like an awareness of a vertical harmonic progression as opposed to thinking of the music as linear musical parts.

I pointed out that I'm not very musical, but I am a philosopher.

It seems to me that musical people think in terms of style more than idea.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

I believe sonata form was a pivotal device for Classical Period composers to put such essential Enlightenment values as purity, balance, and logic into practice. In this way, I see much of Mozart's music as embodying a sublime order of diversity within a unifying scheme. Bach did this as well, but within a different aesthetic. One could make an argument that the Enlightenment's focus on the liberation of man through reason translated somewhat indirectly to music since the sonata form is a "restriction" on the composition of music (I don't believe this, but I could see how someone could think it). Beethoven would go on to make incredible use of the sonata form for personal expression (though I still hear a sort of "reason" and "logic" in movements like the Eroica 1st movement), and Bruckner pretty much blew it up to its highest potential. After hearing a movement like the finale of the 8th, I find it tough to see how sonata form still had somewhere to go. But, this begs the question, does this mean that such sprawling, innovative, nearly unrecognizable uses of sonata form like the finale of Mahler 6 possesses Enlightenment qualities?


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

"Sonata form" allows for a wide range of structural and expressive possibilities, but considering its basic scheme an expression of "Enlightenment values" makes sense to me. I'd speculate that the basic, tripartite sonata structure was embraced in the 18th century because the employment of themes - usually two contrasting themes - subjected to various treatments and finally brought back "home," with their return reinforced by their embedding in a hierarchical tonal scheme beginning and ending in the tonic area, can represent an image of volitional action: the themes are felt to be "protagonists" in a "narrative" analogous to a novel or a play, with characters moving through various adventures and conflicts to a resolution. This "personification" of themes as agents engaged in actions and relationships must have seemed a fine expression of the changing sensibility of the culture as it moved away from the rigid social hierarchies of the absolute state toward individualism and democracy. The basic concept of a musical movement as a "story" was dramatically exploited by Haydn, Mozart and, especially, Beethoven, and proved so necessary to the Romantics that it didn't lose its appeal all the way through the 19th century and into the 20th.


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Honkermann said:


> Very good interpretations. They raise the further question: now that Enlightenment ideals (reason, individuality, democracy) seem to be waning, due to the crumbling of the political and cultural structures that support them...what does this imply for the future of music?


I would say that modern pop music with its repetitive, cyclical, mostly computerized nature teaches us a lot about modern society...


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Honkermann said:


> Very good interpretations. They raise the further question: now that Enlightenment ideals (reason, individuality, democracy) seem to be waning, due to the crumbling of the political and cultural structures that support them...what does this imply for the future of music?


I would say that modern pop music with its repetitive, cyclical, mostly computerized nature teaches us a lot about modern society...


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dove said:


> I would say that modern pop music with its repetitive, cyclical, mostly computerized nature teaches us a lot about modern society...


I'd say it tells us that modern society produces whatever makes the fastest buck.


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Enthusiast said:


> Perhaps academics need everything to be defined and unambiguous which leads to their being resistant to big ideas that are not backed up with very extensive and rigorous material and even to the creative in general. At least it sometimes seems like that to me for the field I work in. The quizzical look - something they doubtless learn from their peers and perfect with glee - is also a defense against new ideas that could interrupt their thought processes.


As an academic i think you are quite spot on. Modern academia kills the humanities. Kills the creative spirit with the demand for a"courtroom" style arguments.


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## Zhdanov (Feb 16, 2016)

dove said:


> pop music with its repetitive, cyclical, mostly computerized nature teaches us a lot about modern society...


however, it would still take a Mozart to portray the world today.

only, maybe this time his music would sound more like Prokofiev's.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

How are enlightenment values different from renaissance values?


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

dove said:


> I would say that modern pop music with its repetitive, cyclical, mostly computerized nature teaches us a lot about modern society...


There's a huge amount of repetitive music pre C15. And indeed there's a lot of repetitive music in the C19, think of all those strophic songs by Schubert and Carl Loewe.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Enthusiast said:


> Perhaps academics need everything to be defined and unambiguous which leads to their being resistant to big ideas that are not backed up with very extensive and rigorous material and even to the creative in general. At least it sometimes seems like that to me for the field I work in. The quizzical look - something they doubtless learn from their peers and perfect with glee - is also a defense against new ideas that could interrupt their thought processes.


 I am committed to an academic approach. I think the quizzical look just is a polite way of telling the speaker that what they're saying needs to be supported and refined and explored more to be convincing.

Logic leads to truth.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> How are enlightenment values different from renaissance values?


Sounds like a big topic, but I'm pressed for time, so I'll just throw this out: democracy.


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> I am committed to an academic approach. I think the quizzical look just is a polite way of telling the speaker that what they're saying needs to be supported and refined and explored more to be convincing.
> 
> Logic leads to truth.


Exactly the reason we no longer have great philosophers. Even Plato would not have passed today's academia. He would write "for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them" and they would have asked him to give citation for that. Modern academia kills the humanities with to much emphasis on logic and correctness and to little emphasis about the spirit.


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Mandryka said:


> There's a huge amount of repetitive music pre C15. And indeed there's a lot of repetitive music in the C19, think of all those strophic songs by Schubert and Carl Loewe.


True. Most folk music is also cyclical.


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## dove (Sep 25, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> Sounds like a big topic, but I'm pressed for time, so I'll just throw this out: democracy.


I would add science. The belief in experimental science as a tool for the redemption of the human race.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

dove said:


> I would add science. The belief in experimental science as a tool for the redemption of the human race.


I think that's a mark of the renaissance.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dove said:


> Exactly the reason we no longer have great philosophers. Even Plato would not have passed today's academia. He would write "for when modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the State always change with them" and they would have asked him to give citation for that. Modern academia kills the humanities with to much emphasis on logic and correctness and to little emphasis about the spirit.


I wouldn't ask Plato for a citation. I'd just ask where the heck he got a cockamamie idea like that.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

dove said:


> Modern academia kills the humanities with to much emphasis on logic and correctness and to little emphasis about the spirit.


Spoken like a neo-platonist. I bet you like Heraclitus and Heidegger too!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> I wouldn't ask Plato for a citation. I'd just ask where the heck he got a cockamamie idea like that.


Plato is in good company. "Let me write a nation's songs, and I care not who writes its laws." --Confucius


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> Plato is in good company. "Let me write a nation's songs, and I care not who writes its laws." --Confucius


Were Plato and Confucius poker buddies, then?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> Something came up quite recently in another discussion on another forum. I said that modernity started around 1500, because for me, the start of the renaissance comes with* the rejection of the idea that the universe is meaningfully ordered, the characteristic of the renaissance is the idea that the universe is ultimately contingent correlations, modelable in maths.* There was then a big kerfuffle because Du Fay is supposed to be a renaissance composer, and the reasons given were all stylistic -- things like an awareness of a vertical harmonic progression as opposed to thinking of the music as linear musical parts.
> 
> I pointed out that I'm not very musical, but I am a philosopher.
> 
> It seems to me that musical people think in terms of style more than idea.


Which renaissance thinkers suggested the universe is not meaningfully ordered?


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Ideas inspiring artists and thinkers of the renaissance are things like Neo-Platonism, Christianity and a spiked interest in more esoteric systems of thought like qabalah, none of these are compatible with "a rejection of the idea that the universe is meaningfully ordered."


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> Sounds like a big topic, but I'm pressed for time, so I'll just throw this out: democracy.


Ahh yes, democracy! When one system of enslavement becomes obsolete, time to bring out another (old one) from the playbook. The age of enlightenment could be termed "shifting population's thinking patterns from right brain imbalance to left brain imbalance."

Cue some pedant coming out with a link to a scientific paper showing us how 'left brain' and 'right brain' thinking is not how the brain literally works. Well whatever the left brain right brain still is pretty accurate in describing modes of thought.

Blinded by science.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> Ahh yes, democracy! When one system of enslavement becomes obsolete, time to bring out another (old one) from the playbook. The age of enlightenment could be termed "shifting population's thinking patterns from right brain imbalance to left brain imbalance."
> 
> Cue some pedant coming out with a link to a scientific paper showing us how 'left brain' and 'right brain' thinking is not how the brain literally works. Well whatever the left brain right brain still is pretty accurate in describing modes of thought.
> 
> Blinded by science.


???

Are you saying that democracy is a system of enslavement?

Yes, the age of enlightenment COULD be termed "shifting population's thinking patterns from right brain imbalance to left brain imbalance," if that's what you want to call it. That seems to me an odd way to think about an era in which rigid social structures were breaking up, the ideologies that supported them were refuted, received religious doctrines could be criticized and rejected without reprisal, and science and industry blossomed. The basic ideas of free thought, individual rights and religious tolerance don't seem "left-brained" to me. Democracy is the least prescriptive and orderly form of society.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tdc said:


> Which renaissance thinkers suggested the universe is not meaningfully ordered?


My thought was that the difference between modern and premodern thought is constituted by the rejection of the idea of meaningful order; IMO the renaissance is modern.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tdc said:


> Ideas inspiring artists and thinkers of the renaissance are things like Neo-Platonism, Christianity and a spiked interest in more esoteric systems of thought like qabalah, none of these are compatible with "a rejection of the idea that the universe is meaningfully ordered."


 I'd appreciate some example of neo platonic and qabalistic influence.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Woodduck said:


> ???
> 
> Are you saying that democracy is a system of enslavement?
> 
> Yes, the age of enlightenment COULD be termed "shifting population's thinking patterns from right brain imbalance to left brain imbalance," if that's what you want to call it. That seems to me an odd way to think about an era in which rigid social structures were breaking up, the ideologies that supported them were refuted, received religious doctrines could be criticized and rejected without reprisal, and science and industry blossomed. The basic ideas of free thought, individual rights and religious tolerance don't seem "left-brained" to me. Democracy is the least prescriptive and orderly form of society.


I don't want to derail the thread so much but I would just like to leave a few questions that you might want to consider. Would you say you have the freedom to live your life the way you want to right now? Does anyone? If someone forced you to work and took 100% of your earnings would that be an example of slavery? What if they only took 50%? Still slavery? How about 10%? Is there any number other than zero you can answer that question with where it becomes not slavery? In my opinion the answer is no.

Government means to govern the mind. Government is mind control and it is slavery.

I don't mean to come across as harsh, or disrespectful but if you can look at the country you live in today and honestly say you cannot imagine a system that could be any better than this, than I believe your capacity to imagine is damaged and I think that is an indicator of left-brain imbalance.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

Mandryka said:


> My thought was that the difference between modern and premodern thought is constituted by the rejection of the idea of meaningful order; IMO the renaissance is modern.


Really? You can't back this up with one person's views in the renaissance, any document or work of art or anything? I don't know how someone could look at a work by Da Vinci or Michelangelo, or listen to the music of this period and come to the conclusion that it represents a rejection of meaningful order.



Mandryka said:


> I'd appreciate some example of neo platonic and qabalistic influence.


Yet you do not provide any examples? Look up renaissance in the encyclopedia and it discusses the influence of Neo-Platonism. If you study the history of qabalah and secret societies you will note that there was a spike of interest in the renaissance as some in that period postulated the qabalah proved Jesus Christ was the son of God.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

tdc said:


> Really? You can't back this up with one person's views in the renaissance, any document or work of art or anything?


Sure, that's easy. Everything that Galileo did for example.



tdc said:


> I don't know how someone could look at a work by Da Vinci or Michelangelo, or listen to the music of this period and come to the conclusion that it represents a rejection of meaningful order.


By meaningful order I mean the idea that the world expresses or embodies the will of God, who filled the world with pattern when he made it. The sort of idea which underlies this refutation by Francesco Sizzi (an astronomer) of Galileo's discovery of the moons of Jupiter



> *"There are seven windows given to animals in the domicile of the head: two nostrils, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth...From this and many other similarities in Nature, too tedious to enumerate, we gather that the number of planets must necessarily be seven."*





tdc said:


> I don't know how someone could look at a work by Da Vinci or Michelangelo, or listen to the music of this period and come to the conclusion that it represents a rejection of meaningful order.
> .


I am increasingly of the opinion that music is not about idea at all, it's about style. And the great trends in this history of ideas have little importance for the history of music. I have thought less about plastic arts so I won't comment.



tdc said:


> Look up renaissance in the encyclopedia and it discusses the influence of Neo-Platonism. If you study the history of qabalah and secret societies you will note that there was a spike of interest in the renaissance as some in that period postulated the qabalah proved Jesus Christ was the son of God.


I'm sure you're right, but that wasn't what you said. You said that these sorts of ideas were



tdc said:


> inspiring artists


I'd like an example of that, please.


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## robin4 (Jun 9, 2019)

tdc said:


> I don't want to derail the thread so much but I would just like to leave a few questions that you might want to consider. Would you say you have the freedom to live your life the way you want to right now? Does anyone? If someone forced you to work and took 100% of your earnings would that be an example of slavery? What if they only took 50%? Still slavery? How about 10%? Is there any number other than zero you can answer that question with where it becomes not slavery? In my opinion the answer is no.
> 
> Government means to govern the mind.* Government is mind control and it is slavery.*
> 
> I don't mean to come across as harsh, or disrespectful but if you can look at the country you live in today and honestly say you cannot imagine a system that could be any better than this, than I believe your capacity to imagine is damaged and I think that is an indicator of left-brain imbalance.


The purpose of our Federal Government, as found in the Preamble of the Constitution, is to "establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity."


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## mmsbls (Mar 6, 2011)

The thread does refer to enlightment values so perhaps some political ideas may be appropriate, but please keep purely political and purely religious comments out of the thread. I have removed some purely religious posts.


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> I am increasingly of the opinion that music is not about idea at all, it's about style. And the great trends in this history of ideas have little importance for the history of music.


Mandryka, for a contrary opinion you might want to read Claude Palisca's brilliant _Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_.

Here's a brief excerpt from chapter one, 'Musical Change and Intellectual History': "Musical change and intellectual history currents in musical practice flow-from time to time-with the tide of intellectual history, but the ways in which people think about music, as distinct from the musical practice of composing and performing, correspond more closely with general intellectual trends. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries present a special opportunity to study the relationship between music and ideas because it was a time when the general ferment of ideas and thinking about music often ran parallel, strongly affecting as well the practical composition and performance of music. Aspects of this period's culture familiar to historians touched music deeply: humanism, religious reform, secularization, the emergence of vernacular literature, documentary historiography, the rise and decline of neo-Platonism, Aristotelian poetics, the scientific movement, the revival of rhetoric, openness to emotional experience-the list goes on. These intellectual movements and cultural trends will appear over and over again in the following chapters as we trace the many examples of their penetration in musical thought."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

RICK RIEKERT said:


> Mandryka, for a contrary opinion you might want to read Claude Palisca's brilliant _Music and Ideas in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries_.
> 
> Here's a brief excerpt from chapter one, 'Musical Change and Intellectual History': "Musical change and intellectual history currents in musical practice flow-from time to time-with the tide of intellectual history, but the ways in which people think about music, as distinct from the musical practice of composing and performing, correspond more closely with general intellectual trends. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries present a special opportunity to study the relationship between music and ideas because it was a time when the general ferment of ideas and thinking about music often ran parallel, strongly affecting as well the practical composition and performance of music. Aspects of this period's culture familiar to historians touched music deeply: humanism, religious reform, secularization, the emergence of vernacular literature, documentary historiography, the rise and decline of neo-Platonism, Aristotelian poetics, the scientific movement, the revival of rhetoric, openness to emotional experience-the list goes on. These intellectual movements and cultural trends will appear over and over again in the following chapters as we trace the many examples of their penetration in musical thought."


Sounds interesting, but before I order, tell me this. Does it presume much music theory? My background is not in music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

tdc said:


> I don't want to derail the thread so much but I would just like to leave a few questions that you might want to consider. Would you say you have the freedom to live your life the way you want to right now? Does anyone? If someone forced you to work and took 100% of your earnings would that be an example of slavery? What if they only took 50%? Still slavery? How about 10%? Is there any number other than zero you can answer that question with where it becomes not slavery? In my opinion the answer is no.
> 
> Government means to govern the mind. Government is mind control and it is slavery.
> 
> I don't mean to come across as harsh, or disrespectful but if you can look at the country you live in today and honestly say you cannot imagine a system that could be any better than this, than I believe your capacity to imagine is damaged and I think that is an indicator of left-brain imbalance.


I don't know what you're getting at with these questions - oblique to the point of being cryptic - so I won't try to take them apart. I don't see how you've responded to my post, even though you quote it. So I guess we'll just drop it...?


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## RICK RIEKERT (Oct 9, 2017)

Mandryka said:


> Sounds interesting, but before I order, tell me this. Does it presume much music theory? My background is not in music.


I can't say it better than David Cohen has: "Engagingly written for non-specialists (and even non-musicians), yet invaluable for the expert, this remarkable book is both the final summation of a lifetime's distinguished scholarship by the acknowledged master in the field and a stimulating, thorough and authoritative introduction to nearly every aspect of a lively and complex cultural and intellectual milieu of great historical significance: the musical world of the Renaissance and early Baroque, when the rediscovery of classical antiquity helped transmute the medieval into the modern. A profoundly generous legacy by a master scholar and teacher."


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Ordered.

;cmjsalkcnhsz,kmc bszm,k bc


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

mmsbls said:


> The thread does refer to enlightment values so perhaps some political ideas may be appropriate, but please keep purely political and purely religious comments out of the thread. I have removed some purely religious posts.


Very sensible of you.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

dove said:


> -- rationality as a cure for all human misery
> -- the human race emerging from religious darkness to the light of enlightenment
> -- the composer's control of the composition and notes as a symbol for the control of man at destiny.





Highwayman said:


> I think it might be somehow connected to the whole "Age of Reason/Sensibility" thing.


I'm curious why people always associate these ideas in music with the late 18th century composers, and never the early 18th century composers (ie. the likes of Telemann, Handel)
https://www.npr.org/sections/decept.../148769794/why-i-hate-the-goldberg-variations
"The Goldbergs are like a friend you have who always does everything right. This friend always answers his emails, keeps a clean house, has a kind word for everyone, behaves properly at concerts, writes thank you cards, grooms himself assiduously, knows how to tie a tie, never eats Burger King at 2 AM, and never ever writes silly blog posts saying he hates pieces he really loves. He's an example to the world. He's smiling at you over drinks, listening as always with benevolent patience, and you realize through your gritted hateful envious teeth that he is certainly not your enemy, and what would it hurt to admit, you wouldn't want to face life without him?"


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

All of these things are slow processes. I don't think there was anyone before the 17th century who thought the universe was not purposefully ordered, Hobbes probably being the first prominent one and he was an outlier. Almost all major figures of the 15th-17th century were either Christian or Platonist or both (most certainly the scientists like Galileo, Kepler, Newton etc. were), so I think it is simply wrong to claim that Renaissance thinkers got rid of objective order and purpose, quite on the contrary. It seems to me rather that the gradual fading of the later "discarded image" bred the search for (secret) hyper-systematic order of kabbala, alchemy, rosicrucianism etc. all of which are far more a thing of the renaissance and early modernity than of the 13th or 14th century. Kepler was an astrologer and Newton an alchemist, and what's more important they didn't seem to find this at odds with their work we would accept as modern-style physics and astromony.

Even in the late 18th century most philosophers (like Kant) still had some ersatz purpose and (imposed) order but it was recognizable as ersatz (it gets more complicated and partly reversed in Hegel and the other idealists). And overall even the 18th century intellectuals were quite religious, apart from Hume and a few French crackpots (who were actually mostly third rate philosophers like d'Holbach or LaMettrie, compared with Leibniz or Kant). Of course, Newton's theory brought a stricter and better corroborated order into the physical part of the universe and it took a while before this was taken as an argument against purpose or "higher order". (And there is no good argument there, because the whole point of mathematization was *abstraction* from purposes, so it is hardly surprising, one cannot get out of a theory the very aspect that had been explicitly abstracted from.)

Frankly, I think the connections of such rather broad trends in history of ideas to rather specific forms or techniques in music are tenuous at best. I have seen elaborate parallels drawn between Bach and Leibniz and while a lot of it might be plausible, shouldn't it also work with Leibniz and Handel or Rameau? Or Bach and Locke? One will always find some parallels or analogues, but how significant are they? 
Is baroque music corresponding to the "age of reason" because there are "rational" fugues? Or is it the age of exaggerated ("baroque") fancies and emotions, expressed in wild arias or "fantazies" so rather the opposite? Is late 18th century classicism to be contrasted with baroque stiltedness as immediately emotionally appealing? Or as more rationally ordered? Is this more rational or less? These questions are not totally absurd but I doubt they are very helpful or "enlightening" 

Sonata form became more dramatic and contrastful as it grew. And, like baroque concerto or fugue it has its very own balance of unity and tension/diversity. But the often quite moderate thematic and harmonic contrasts are usually far from the slogans of "two principles" or "masculine - feminine" that some people came up a the time of Beethoven or later. And how could sonata form remain so widespread in the romantic age that should have been the dialectically opposed swing away from "reason"?


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## cheregi (Jul 16, 2020)

Nothing to contribute to this insightful discussion but in response to OP I'd like to recommend especially Susan McClary who has written extensively on sonata-form in this specific vein (as well as compellingly about renaissance and baroque), as well as the whole rest of 'New Musicology', I just finished a book by Elisabeth Le Guin on Luigi Boccherini which drew on similar insights, Lawrence Kramer is another name to look into especially regarding sexuality in music...


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Kreisler jr said:


> *Frankly, I think the connections of such rather broad trends in history of ideas to rather specific forms or techniques in music are tenuous at best.* I have seen elaborate parallels drawn between Bach and Leibniz and while a lot of it might be plausible, shouldn't it also work with Leibniz and Handel or Rameau? Or Bach and Locke? One will always find some parallels or analogues, but how significant are they?
> Is baroque music corresponding to the "age of reason" because there are "rational" fugues? Or is it the age of exaggerated ("baroque") fancies and emotions, expressed in wild arias or "fantazies" so rather the opposite? Is late 18th century classicism to be contrasted with baroque stiltedness as immediately emotionally appealing? Or as more rationally ordered? Is this more rational or less? These questions are not totally absurd but I doubt they are very helpful or "enlightening"
> 
> Sonata form became more dramatic and contrastful as it grew. And, like baroque concerto or fugue it has its very own balance of unity and tension/diversity. But the often quite moderate thematic and harmonic contrasts are usually far from the slogans of "two principles" or "masculine - feminine" that some people came up a the time of Beethoven or later. *And how could sonata form remain so widespread in the romantic age that should have been the dialectically opposed swing away from "reason"?*


I agree with your assessment and example. As Mandryka put it many months ago:



Mandryka said:


> It seems to me that musical people think in terms of style more than idea.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

Mandryka said:


> It seems to me that musical people think in terms of style more than idea.


Where do you draw the line between style and idea? Is it just about the deontological baggage of the latter?


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Woodduck said:


> ???
> 
> Are you saying that democracy is a system of enslavement?
> 
> Yes, the age of enlightenment COULD be termed "shifting population's thinking patterns from right brain imbalance to left brain imbalance," if that's what you want to call it. That seems to me an odd way to think about an era in which rigid social structures were breaking up, the ideologies that supported them were refuted, received religious doctrines could be criticized and rejected without reprisal, and science and industry blossomed. The basic ideas of free thought, individual rights and religious tolerance don't seem "left-brained" to me. Democracy is the least prescriptive and orderly form of society.


"Which is better - to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away or by three thousand tyrants one mile away?" (attributed to Mather Byles)


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

dove said:


> Hello all,
> 
> I have encountered an interesting interpretation about the connection between the sonata form and enlightenment values from the philosophical view point that music, through metaphor, could reflect the beliefs of a society at a given time.


Just typing in 'sonata and the Enlightenment' into a search engine throws up a number of sites offering this idea.

https://www.naxos.com/feature/18th_Century_Music.asp

What I can't offer is a name of a particular writer on the idea.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> Where do you draw the line between style and idea? Is it just about the deontological baggage of the latter?


My point was that sonata form has had a run of nearly three centuries, a flexible framework serving composers with contrasting philosophies, aesthetic aims, and world views. Connecting it to period specific systems of extramusical thought as in the OP is a dubious enterprise unlikely to be as enlightening as understanding the evolution of style.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

Kreisler jr said:


> And how could sonata form remain so widespread in the romantic age that should have been the dialectically opposed swing away from "reason"?


In the 18th century it was more like "tonic-dominant oriented form", which includes similar variants in vocal music genres that don't really deal with clear "two themes" as the normal "sonata form" would.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

EdwardBast said:


> My point was that sonata form has had a run of nearly three centuries, a flexible framework serving composers with contrasting philosophies, aesthetic aims, and world views. Connecting it to period specific systems of extramusical thought as in the OP is a dubious enterprise unlikely to be as enlightening as understanding the evolution of style.


I agree 100%. My question is addressed at Mandryka specifically.


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