# Music and ethics



## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

Lately I came across this view on music by Ernest Ansermet:

"Ansermet not only explains the emotional effect of listening to music through the genesis of music from the composer's sentiments, but also notes that the same listener's feelings confer meaning to a tonal sequence. However, these sentiments (e.g. joy) exist only in certain concrete modalities, like those expressed musically by Beethoven, Rossini or Mozart. These ways of feeling are, in turn, individual ethical modalities of the composers. In short, music is an aesthetic expression of ethics, and the experience of music is the activity in which human beings enjoy the imaginary realization of their ethical norms."

Maybe it's a very Romantic view that music is the aesthetic expression of ethics, but for some reason it rings true to me. Talking about Romantic music, I sometimes feel it embodies a 'servitude to oneself', which overestimates the self, and thus has some ethical implications. 

What is your critical notion of the relationship between classical music and ethics, is there any? and is it in the music? Do you agree with Ansermet?

Thanks, good day


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## Weston (Jul 11, 2008)

Joris said:


> " . . . these sentiments (e.g. joy) exist only in certain concrete modalities, like those expressed musically by Beethoven, Rossini or Mozart. "


I'm not exactly sure what is being said here, but it sounds like a rash premise. I'll err on the side of caution and disagree. There is nothing concrete about the expression of emotions in musical works, many of which effect me in unintended ways.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Arturo Toscanini, regarding the first movement of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony:

"To some it is Napoleon; to some it is a philosophical struggle. To me it is simply allegro con brio."

This from one of the greatest Beethoven interpreters of all time.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Ansermet's words are, because of the false assumptions and attributes he ascribes to music, gobblygook.


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Ansermet was an *ARCH* conservative times infinity - it's unsurprising he appeals to the authority of the "greats" (Rossini, really?) to further his views on what people should feel comfortable/justified enjoying - absolutely agree with Ukko: too long a bow has been drawn


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

dgee said:


> Ansermet was an *ARCH* conservative times infinity - it's unsurprising he appeals to the authority of the "greats" (Rossini, really?) to further his views on what people should feel comfortable/justified enjoying - absolutely agree with Ukko: too long a bow has been drawn


I wouldn't quite go that far, but he certainly was conservative in his outlook. He said that the absolute limit of intelligibility (for a single dissonance) is reached in the chord that ends one of the movements of Stravinsky's Mass.

Any time one sets up a definite limit, one is doomed to see it broken and shattered.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

I second the Old Dude's "gobblygook" assertion!

/ptr


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

But is there no single connection between aesthetics and ethics? I agree that Ansermet doesn't make a very strong point.
Thanks


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Joris said:


> But is there no single connection between aesthetics and ethics? I agree that Ansermet doesn't make a very strong point.
> Thanks


Truth is beauty, beauty truth. That's why romantic music is immoral -- it offers a consolation, uplift, in a world with no reason to feel comfortable. It's opium for the people.


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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

Thanks, that's sort of Adorno's view right?
Is it philosophically tenable? Because you could also say it's all about indeterminate concepts instead of "truth".


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Joris said:


> Thanks, that's sort of Adorno's view right?
> Is it philosophically tenable? Because you could also say it's all about indeterminate concepts instead of "truth".


Truth isn't "indeterminate." Aristotle gave a very clear definition of it -- To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true (Metaphysics IV.7.1011b25, Ross.) I don't think ethics is either.

That's not to say that predicating "true" or "good" may not be very difficult, there are hard cases. But it doesn't follow that they're indeterminate, just hard to determine.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

I cannot make head or tails of Ansermet's assertions. It reads like something by that postmodernist essay generator:

http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Music and ethics are only very loosely related, probably only in tertiary or more distant ways. Music can be 'applied' unethically, but that is several removes from _*Music*_, the concept that shares a philosophical plane with _*Ethics*_.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Joris said:


> Lately I came across this view on music by Ernest Ansermet:
> 
> "Ansermet not only explains the emotional effect of listening to music through the genesis of music from the composer's sentiments, but also notes that the same listener's feelings confer meaning to a tonal sequence. However, these sentiments (e.g. joy) exist only in certain concrete modalities, like those expressed musically by Beethoven, Rossini or Mozart. These ways of feeling are, in turn, individual ethical modalities of the composers. In short, music is an aesthetic expression of ethics, and the experience of music is the activity in which human beings enjoy the imaginary realization of their ethical norms."
> 
> ...


This is like saying the results of one or more people's Rorschach blot listening tests say something concrete about music, composers, the 'harmonies or modes they chose" and _Ethics,_ of all things.

*It is more than difficult to type when I am laughing so hard.*


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Joris said:


> But is there no single connection between aesthetics and ethics? I agree that Ansermet doesn't make a very strong point.
> Thanks


_If the subject is absolute music, i.e. no text involved, no literal meaning named or even implied in the title, _then I more than doubt it, i.e. I think there is not a single connection. To make one, I think a synthetic construct, an assumption, must be made as very premise, and whatever the premise, imo, it will be unfounded and not provable.


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Mandryka said:


> Truth is beauty, beauty truth. That's why romantic music is immoral -- it offers a consolation, uplift, in a world with no reason to feel comfortable. It's opium for the people.


:lol:...:lol:...:lol:...

each and every phrase of the above has yet to be and cannot be proven.

_Music is bent air._ How much one can assign concrete traits to it, claim it holds tenets expressed, etc. or to hold it accountable for much of anything is, to my way of thinking, about nil.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

PetrB said:


> :lol:...:lol:...:lol:...
> 
> each and every phrase of the above has yet to be and cannot be proven.
> 
> _Music is bent air._ How much one can assign concrete traits to it, claim it holds tenets expressed, etc. or to hold it accountable for much of anything is, to my way of thinking, about nil.


True, the moving molecules are without volition, but that is equivalent to assigning intent to the fart rather than the farter. The OP (and Ansermet) are looking unfocusedly at Applied Music; craft rather than art; psychology rather than philosophy.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Truth is beauty, beauty truth. That's why romantic music is immoral -- it offers a consolation, uplift, in a world with no reason to feel comfortable. It's opium for the people.


It's immoral to give some comfort to those in pain? Not if it isn't overdone. Of course, with modern recording technology, people can nowadays self-medicate.

Now where DID I put that Enya CD...


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## PetrB (Feb 28, 2012)

Ukko said:


> True, the moving molecules are without volition, but that is equivalent to assigning intent to the fart rather than the farter. The OP (and Ansermet) are looking unfocusedly at Applied Music; craft rather than art; psychology rather than philosophy.


You can not even enter into any argument what the intent, "ethical accountability" or any of the rest of the intellectual abstractions, including that concept which is fine in practice but risable in the naming, "musical truth(s)" when 'just notes' and bent air are involved, can you really?

I really don't know what is meant by "Applied music" other than flat-out uses like music therapy, or your government or theirs banning all other music and allowing only concert and air play of military marches of the local flavor.

I am ducking out now. I just start to see one seriously grand-scale hot mess of bilious tinted (and _tainted_) personal nonsense when folks try and _impose upon_ and assign 'meaning' to music without text and then think it at all viable as a subject for psychology, philosophy, ethics, debate


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

PetrB said:


> I am ducking out now. I just start to see one seriously grand-scale hot mess of bilious tinted (and _tainted_) personal nonsense when folks try and _impose upon_ and assign 'meaning' to music without text and then think it at all viable as a subject for psychology, philosophy, ethics, debate


The spin-doctors may be pleased at your departure. Stalin and Hitler no longer care.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

PetrB said:


> I am ducking out now. I just start to see one seriously grand-scale hot mess of bilious tinted (and _tainted_) personal nonsense when folks try and _impose upon_ and assign 'meaning' to music without text and then think it at all viable as a subject for psychology, philosophy, ethics, debate


An enormous number of studies in theory and musicology of the last 30 years, many by some of the best and most imaginative minds among musical scholars specializing in music of every era beg to differ with this opinion. Leo Treitler, Anthony Newcomb, Edward T. Cone, Leonard Meyer, Robert Hatten, Fred Maus, Ludwig Misch, at least a handful of Beethoven specialists, along with some of the best minds in current musical aesthetics including Gerald Levinson and Jenefer Robinson (see the essays in the latter's book, Music and Meaning, for an extensive bibliography), to name just a few, have made insightful arguments about the indecomposable interaction of musical structure and meaning. Add to this a bumper crop of studies emerging from proponents of the so-called New-Musicology movement. An acquaintance with these ideas is, IMO, a prerequisite for making the kind of pronouncement you have made above.

As for the specific issue of music and ethics: this was contested with the Eroica as the battleground in recent memory. Philip G Downs argued that an ethical impulse is essential to a full understanding of Beethoven's music from the middle period on. Carl Dahlhaus wrote a comprehensive rebuttal. (Philip G. Downs, "Beethoven's 'New Way' and the Eroica," in The Creative World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang, (New York: Norton, 1970), Carl Dahlhaus, "The 'New Path'," in Ludwig van Beethoven, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)). I am not endorsing the ideas of either writer.

I think it more or less obvious that taking seriously, at least in a hypothetical sense, the premise of a direct interaction of ethics and music is required to navigate the world of 20th century Russian-Soviet music criticism and the works composed in the shadow of the doctrine of Socialist Realism.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

^ ^ Well sonofagun, PetrB is right; the jump-shift to applied music was immediate. Well, PetrB denies knowing what applied music is, but he is right anyway.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Ukko said:


> ^ ^ Well sonofagun, PetrB is right; the jump-shift to applied music was immediate. Well, PetrB denies knowing what applied music is, but he is right anyway.


Just trying to point out the trivialization in this thread of several topics that are on the cutting edge of recent theory, musicology and aesthetics. This is especially disappointing since a great deal of this material is accessible, to some extent, to musical amateurs.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

EdwardBast said:


> ...As for the specific issue of music and ethics: this was contested with the Eroica as the battleground in recent memory. Philip G Downs argued that an ethical impulse is essential to a full understanding of Beethoven's music from the middle period on.


Without doing the required reading, this seems to me quite obvious. Though I don't think it began with Beethoven's middle period -- Bach, Haydn, and others certainly carried their own ethical baggage, which we may not recognize because we so totally take it for granted.


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## hreichgott (Dec 31, 2012)

It's annoying when writers use phrases like "in short" and "in turn" to cover places where the argument doesn't follow.

Sure, music reflects emotional states in a concrete and sensory way. But how we get to ethics in this argument I truly do not know.


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## sparkster (Apr 19, 2014)

But perhaps Toscanini didn't really mean that-maybe he was simply tired of the discussion. As his performances are amongst the greatest interpretations of Beethoven, especially the Eroica, I feel he "understands" the musical, and extra-musical connotations that Beethoven meant to convey. This highly programmatic piece is simply misunderstood in our twentieth (now twenty-first) century's obsession with abstract form, as it was in the nineteenth century milieu of romanticism that Toscanini was born into.


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Just trying to point out the trivialization in this thread of several topics that are on the cutting edge of recent theory, musicology and aesthetics. This is especially disappointing since a great deal of this material is accessible, to some extent, to musical amateurs.


I'm reading the intro to Robinson's "Music and Meaning" on Google Books right now. Not a subject I'd previously given much thought to - thanks for the tip, it's fascinating stuff.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I don't know about ethics but maybe there is a strong positive relationship between listener's intelligence and classical music listening.

Here is a curious chart on listening and intelligence. Beethoven listeners top the list. Some explanation at the top of this page. Oddly there are no other classical composers listed.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Florestan said:


> I don't know about ethics but maybe there is a strong positive relationship between listener's intelligence and classical music listening.
> 
> Here is a curious chart on listening and intelligence. Beethoven listeners top the list. Some explanation at the top of this page. Oddly there are no other classical composers listed.


This is about as solid as a cup of jello.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Vesuvius said:


> This is about as solid as a cup of jello.


Nonetheless, being a fanzoid of Ludwig, I choose to accept it as gospel!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

PetrB said:


> I am ducking out now. I just start to see one seriously grand-scale hot mess of bilious tinted (and _tainted_) personal nonsense when folks try and _impose upon_ and assign 'meaning' to music without text and then think it at all viable as a subject for psychology, philosophy, ethics, debate


Having begun my immersion in, and study of, classical music in the 1960s, I've been forming and sharing perceptions for decades about the meanings communicated by the music I know and love. I have been struck constantly by the expressive, suggestive, evocative power of music, by the extraordinary amount of agreement between listeners of very different background and personality as to what particular musical works are saying, and by how fascinating and rewarding it is to relate the expressive aspect of music precisely to such fields as psychology, philosophy, ethics, religion, and mythology, fields which take "meaning" as their very subject matter. And I can't help noticing that a lot of composers seem to have been quite convinced of the value and validity of such relationships as well.

The degree to which music can carry meaning, how specific that meaning can be and by what means it can be conveyed, are all matters worthy of limitless study and discussion. There's probably nothing in life of ultimate value to which words can do final justice, and the risk of making hot messes of tainted personal nonsense is constant. Me, I'm happy to risk the embarrassment.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

KenOC said:


> Without doing the required reading, this seems to me quite obvious. Though I don't think it began with Beethoven's middle period -- Bach, Haydn, and others certainly carried their own ethical baggage, which we may not recognize because we so totally take it for granted.


What I was primarily objecting to was the first part of PetrB's proposition, oft repeated, about ascribing meaning to music without text. There are many musicians and philosophers nowadays who believe that one cannot easily separate the formal coherence or structure of music from aspects of its expression and meaning - that the two are in many cases thoroughly interdependent. Formalist analysis, by and large, only explains tonal-harmonic aspects of musical structure. If one wishes to explain how and why themes are deployed, developed and transformed as they are within movements and from one movement to another in music from Beethoven on, aspects of meaning and expression have to be considered. Why does the opening of the finale of Tchaikovsky's Fifth sound like it comes out of the blue? Because, except for a brief reminder at the end of the third movement, the last time we heard its main motive was as stormy, harrowing, outbursts in the slow movement. The triumphal march opening the finale makes no sense because it is unmotivated - there is no explanation in the music for how we got from violence, stress and despair to triumph. There is no formal explanation for why it is musically wrong. It is wrong because it doesn't resemble a coherent story in expressive terms.

Anyway, most of the writers I cited above (#21), have been proponents of, or have dabbled in, the field of music theory and musicology that is commonly called musical narrative theory. Even if one accepts their way of looking at music, however, it is still far from obvious that one can make the leap to ethical arguments.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

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## Joris (Jan 13, 2013)

PetrB said:


> To make one, I think a synthetic construct, an assumption, must be made as very premise, and whatever the premise, imo, it will be unfounded and not provable.


Dear PetrB, can you perhaps explain what you mean by synthetic construct? Thanks


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

I think music and ethics are definitely related. The music of the classical period would represent an ethics of optimism, grounded in rationality. The romantic period represents an ethics of individualism. Rock, for example, would embody an ethics of rebellion, independence, freedom, with an instrumentation of the instincts. Blues could embody an ethics of optimistic perseverance, etc.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> I think music and ethics are definitely related. The music of the classical period would represent an ethics of optimism, grounded in rationality. The romantic period represents an ethics of individualism. Rock, for example, would embody an ethics of rebellion, independence, freedom, with an instrumentation of the instincts. Blues could embody an ethics of optimistic perseverance, etc.


That's nice, _HBC_ - but Ethics ain't in it. You are inventing a meaning for the word.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Ukko said:


> That's nice, _HBC_ - but Ethics ain't in it. You are inventing a meaning for the word.


Perhaps "ethos" more closely captures what HBC seems to mean?

In any case, the frequent returns in this thread to questions of music and meaning and whether and how music without text can have meaning, perhaps indicates a need for a blog entry or thread on that subject. If I get a chance soon, I will sketch the current schools of thought on these issues, since I have some expertise in that area.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

EdwardBast said:


> Perhaps "ethos" more closely captures what HBC seems to mean?
> 
> In any case, the frequent returns in this thread to questions of music and meaning and whether and how music without text can have meaning, perhaps indicates a need for a blog entry or thread on that subject. If I get a chance soon, I will sketch the current schools of thought on these issues, since I have some expertise in that area.


Please do, perhaps in quasi-outline format. If it's in a blog I won't see it (blogs are in general tolerable but the anonymous comments in them are not), but even so it might, ah, sharpen focus.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> An enormous number of studies in theory and musicology of the last 30 years, many by some of the best and most imaginative minds among musical scholars specializing in music of every era beg to differ with this opinion. Leo Treitler, Anthony Newcomb, Edward T. Cone, Leonard Meyer, Robert Hatten, Fred Maus, Ludwig Misch, at least a handful of Beethoven specialists, along with some of the best minds in current musical aesthetics including Gerald Levinson and Jenefer Robinson (see the essays in the latter's book, Music and Meaning, for an extensive bibliography), to name just a few, have made insightful arguments about the indecomposable interaction of musical structure and meaning. Add to this a bumper crop of studies emerging from proponents of the so-called New-Musicology movement. An acquaintance with these ideas is, IMO, a prerequisite for making the kind of pronouncement you have made above.
> 
> As for the specific issue of music and ethics: this was contested with the Eroica as the battleground in recent memory. Philip G Downs argued that an ethical impulse is essential to a full understanding of Beethoven's music from the middle period on. Carl Dahlhaus wrote a comprehensive rebuttal. (Philip G. Downs, "Beethoven's 'New Way' and the Eroica," in The Creative World of Beethoven, ed. Paul Henry Lang, (New York: Norton, 1970), Carl Dahlhaus, "The 'New Path'," in Ludwig van Beethoven, trans. Mary Whittall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991)). I am not endorsing the ideas of either writer.
> 
> I think it more or less obvious that taking seriously, at least in a hypothetical sense, the premise of a direct interaction of ethics and music is required to navigate the world of 20th century Russian-Soviet music criticism and the works composed in the shadow of the doctrine of Socialist Realism.


Have any of these people written particularly about baroque or renaissance music? I ask because this is something I'm particularly interested in.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Ukko said:


> That's nice, _HBC_ - but Ethics ain't in it. You are inventing a meaning for the word.


How is ethics not in there? Every musical form, imo, takes a certain ethical base as a presupposition, which it instrumentalizes in order to achieve the desired effect with listeners. For example, a rock band may (subconsciously) know that their target audience are, perhaps, adolescents and men between 12-50, somewhat inconfident or lacking in personal motivation - therefore, their music employs persistent rhythmic drives intended to 'pump up' their listeners into a state of activity and readiness. Thus, the underlying ethics that a rock band may represent can be a 'never give up, always keep on going' or a 'have the courage to be yourself' attitude towards life.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> How is ethics not in there? Every musical form, imo, takes a certain ethical base as a presupposition, which it instrumentalizes in order to achieve the desired effect with listeners. For example, a rock band may (subconsciously) know that their target audience are, perhaps, adolescents and men between 12-50, somewhat inconfident or lacking in personal motivation - therefore, their music employs persistent rhythmic drives intended to 'pump up' their listeners into a state of activity and readiness. Thus, the underlying ethics that a rock band may represent can be a 'never give up, always keep on going' or a 'have the courage to be yourself' attitude towards life.


If you are describing anything there, it is ethos, not ethics. Definitely not ethics.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

When I think of ethics I either think of an analysis of a certain cluster of concepts (right, virtue, best etc), or I think of policies about what to do (how to behave in war, towards animals, euthanasia, abortion etc)


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

Ukko said:


> If you are describing anything there, it is ethos, not ethics. Definitely not ethics.


What is, according to you, the difference between ethos and ethics?


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

Perhaps it would be more direct to discuss music and moral values. There we can see very clear distinctions between classical and rock, and even within classical, within opera, etc.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

Mandryka said:


> Have any of these people written particularly about baroque or renaissance music? I ask because this is something I'm particularly interested in.


Unfortunately, those writing in this general area (so-called musical narrative theory) seem to concentrate overwhelmingly on music from 1800 on. Among the likely reasons is that music in this period was written under expressive aesthetic theories, and in its most dramatic veins, tended to encompass strong thematic and expressive oppositions - the kind that seem to cry out for quasi-narrative interpretations. Baroque music, by contrast, was conceived by theorists of that era as akin to rhetoric. The composer's role was understood as like that of an orator whose job was to move the audience to feel one overriding, unifying affect in each movement. This is why the movements of most baroque concertos and most other forms tend to spin out a single theme, albeit with contrasts of mode and texture.

This is not an area I know a whole lot about, but there are treatises on baroque music that parse it by analogy to rhetorical figures and devices. Johann Mathesson's Der Volkommene Capellmeister has some of this. Johann David Heinichen wrote a "practical demonstration" showing how the standard format of a fugue was structurally like that of a well-planned speech, analyzing a specific musical example by reference to classical rhetorical texts (Aristides Quintilianus, Aristotle?). I remember seeing a baroque treatise that cataloged musical rhetorical figures by analogy to such figures of speech in rhetoric treatises, but I can't remember who wrote it. Sorry - I doubt any of this is going to be very satisfying for you . . .


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> What is, according to you, the difference between ethos and ethics?


Ethos: "the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period" (Webster's Unabridged). This seems to be exactly what you were getting at, HBC. To be sure, the ethos of a group is undoubtedly connected in complex ways to systems of ethics ("rules of conduct recognized with respect to particular classes of actions"), but the terms ethics tends to refer to specific codes of conduct more than the the spirit of a people or group.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Ethos: "the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period" (Webster's Unabridged). This seems to be exactly what you were getting at, HBC. To be sure, the ethos of a group is undoubtedly connected in complex ways to systems of ethics ("rules of conduct recognized with respect to particular classes of actions"), but the terms ethics tends to refer to specific codes of conduct more than the the spirit of a people or group.


Well, I wasn't referring to a specific group - I mentioned certain ethical 'messages' which can be deduced from a musical form such as rock - 'never give up, always keep on going'/'have the courage to be yourself'. How are these not rules 'of conduct recognized with respect to particular classes of actions'?


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Well, I wasn't referring to a specific group - I mentioned certain ethical 'messages' which can be deduced from a musical form such as rock - 'never give up, always keep on going'/'have the courage to be yourself'. How are these not rules 'of conduct recognized with respect to particular classes of actions'?


Those are 'rules of conduct' toward yourself. The realm of ethics is outward, not inward; rules for interaction with others.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Well, I wasn't referring to a specific group - I mentioned certain ethical 'messages' which can be deduced from a musical form such as rock - 'never give up, always keep on going'/'have the courage to be yourself'. How are these not rules 'of conduct recognized with respect to particular classes of actions'?


Yes, I think Ukko is right about ethics being rules governing interaction, behavior toward others. Both these rules, and the codes you describe, are subcategories of moral precepts. The distinction is fine, granted, and I would say what you are describing is certainly within the topic of the thread - or it should be, once we get the semantic niceties out of the way. My quibble would be that in rock, these precepts emerge mostly through lyrics, don't they? - not specifically from the purely musical part. But your examples of other eras might be valid.


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## HaydnBearstheClock (Jul 6, 2013)

EdwardBast said:


> Yes, I think Ukko is right about ethics being rules governing interaction, behavior toward others. Both these rules, and the codes you describe, are subcategories of moral precepts. The distinction is fine, granted, and I would say what you are describing is certainly within the topic of the thread - or it should be, once we get the semantic niceties out of the way. My quibble would be that in rock, these precepts emerge mostly through lyrics, don't they? - not specifically from the purely musical part. But your examples of other eras might be valid.


Well, I don't know. To me the connection seems pretty clear anyway.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

HaydnBearstheClock said:


> Well, I don't know. To me the connection seems pretty clear anyway.


Of course there is a connection. There is a connection between Haydn and Mozart; doesn't mean that Haydn _is_ Mozart.


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