Chapter 6: Music

As far as artworks go, music seems to take a strange position. Other artforms such as painting and sculpture have a definite material component that music lacks. A good concert of performance is gone the moment the instruments go silent. On the other hand there is only one Mona Lisa, but every concert by The Editors is different, even if the playlist remains the same throughtout their tour...

Philosophical background

Already Schopenhauer notices that music does not represent anything: it does not need a reality to confirm itself, but it is that reality in itself. However, it looks like music does contains a message, that it has a meaning – a meaning that it conveys by using its own specific language. What does music tells us? It is about the thing itself. Music, according to Shopenhauer, links us immediately to the metaphysics, which is, as we have seen, the Will.

Referring to Schopenhauer, Nietzsche is also talking about music in terms of the thing in itself. To him, music is the ultimate form of the Dionysian consciousness: the chaotic, emotional, extactic feeling we get when we get emerged in a musical piece stands in stark contrast with the intellectual, structured feelings we get when we experience real beauty (GT16). Other artforms, according to Nietzsche, should indeed follow the example of the music and aim for a synthesis of the two forms of consciousness – the apollonian and the dyonissian (GT21, 24).

Even in the twentieth century, Susanne Langer could still write that music does not represent anything. Music, she states, is pure form – and that not as additional feature but in essence.

Technological influences

The technological changes with regards to music we have experienced over the last two or three decades have changed our perception and appreciation of that artform. Music has become omnipresent and immediately available, so that we have music when we go out for our groceries (muzak) or when we drive our car from A to B.

Much of the music we consume really comes to life for us only when we go to a concert. Because of the omnipresence of music, many artists are dependent on these venues to create some kind of revenue for their efforts. In that way, the technological changes have recreated the situation that existed when the grammaphone was just invented: the medium being used primarily to make the music known in the first place, and to inspire the public to actually go to a concert-hall.

We can exprience music in a way that brings back memories or brings us into a specific mode. Especially film-music has this effect. The whole idea of Leitmotif has come to full fruition – not only to make characters recognizable, but also to make whole movies stand in a certain tradition. One only has to think about the music that accompanies James Bond movies to see how this works. But the link between film and music goes further than that - who can listen to Misirlou by Dick Dale without thinking about that famous film by a famous director...? You are brought back to this film, even if you hear a completely different version of the same song.

In this session, we will talk about the role music plays in our everyday life, and how different philosophers have reacted differently to this artform. We'll try to come to grips with the question where sound ends and music begins.

Literature

• McLuhan, M., 1964, Understanding Media. A classical work, of which we will read chapter 28: The Phonograph: the Toy that Shrank the National Chest (pp. 300-309).

Info

This chapter proves to be more difficult to find than the one on clocks. The RuG library has a physical copy of the book. However, that might be too difficult or already lend out, I've provided photographs of my own copy (Pdf, 4.1MB).

• Nitsche, Michael, 2008, Video Game Spaces. Image, Play, and Structure in 3D Worlds. A very readable book which we recommend to anyone who is into philosophy of games. Of this book, we will read only a few pages, namely §8.2: Music (pp.133-138).

Info

This book is easily findable through the RuG catalogue.

• Young, Julian, 1992, Nietzsche's Philosophy of Art.. A very good introduction on the subject, with a thorough expose on Schopenhauer's attitude towards music, which is the part we will read for this session (§§1.14-1.17, pp.20-24).

Info

Luckily, The RuG provides an indexed e-book of this interesting work. You can easily find the whole work through the library catalogue.