Music to Hear on Here: Group Schopenhauer Sharing Is Caring

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Group Schopenhauer Sharing Is Caring

"To the brook which rolls downwards over the stones, the eddies, waves, and foam-forms exhibited by it are indifferent and inessential; but it follows gravity, and behaves as an inelastic, perfectly mobile, formless, and transparent fluid, this is its essential, this, if known through perception, is the Idea. Those foam-forms exist only for us so long as we know as individuals. The ice on the windowpane is formed into crystals according to the laws of crystallization, which reveal the essence of the natural force here appearing, which exhibits the Idea. But the trees and flowers formed by the ice on the windowpane are inessential, and exist only for us" ("Knowledge of the Idea" 84).

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Course Description

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." Martin Mull (or Elvis Costello)

Thinking about the meaning and value, intellectual, affective and neurological experiences, and aesthetics of music has occupied an important position in modern and contemporary philosophical writings. Central to the philosophy of music is a questioning of what music is insofar as it is an art form and practice, akin to but different from other arts, such as drama, literature, painting, sculpture, to name but a few examples. Claims have been made, in fact, that music’s effect, when performed and listened to, surpasses those of the other arts because of its abstact purity, of its universality, and of its singular capacity to express, represent and incite emotions. This course will explore such issues in 19th-20th century philosophy. We will begin with introductory readings of what composes the field and discipline of the philosophy of music. We will read—among other philosophers, novelists, critics and musicologists—Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Barthes and Adorno’s writings on music. Finally, we will have the occasion to read about and listen to specific musicians, both high and low, and explore the contexts of their work, concentrating on the historical and political dimensions of the practice, performance and art of making music.