Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Philosophy of Music
I had to the pleasure of attending a Cello recital last Friday; it was breathtakingly perfect. The recital was daring; the musician tackled all the three b’s (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms) of classical music. She made it all seem effortless and yet I felt every note she played. For the first time of my life I thought of music as a philosophy. We spend an outlandish amount of time trying to understand the thoughts of Plato, the sayings of Aristotle, even the ethics behind Machiavelli’s the prince… But what is it about instrumental music? It is as puzzling as all the rest, and in many ways more mysterious. It is a sound that evokes a different emotion in most. It adds to the mysteries of our character and explains just how different we all are. “The sound of music” I am excitingly baffled because never did I think music could be more than just that. Is it even possible that music could unbalance Socrates Kallipolis because of the emotions it may convey?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Have you read the Birth of Tragedy? Nietzsche says that tragedy (embodied by the spirit of music) represents the inner will of the world. The idea is that when you hear music there's expressed underneath the sounds an inarticulate voice. So I think you are right to say that music is philosophy to a certain extent - it definitely expresses a view or statement about the world in a language we have some kind of intuition for.
ReplyDeleteNo unfortunately I havent read it, but I will most definetely put it on my list. The title is dramatic i love it... Thank you Dr Loht
ReplyDelete