Philosophy Of Music Research Articles

The Subject as Vibrant Matter

In the article Hartmut Rosa’s concept ‘resonance’ and Jacques Rancière’s concept ‘le partage du sensible’ are explored through an aesthetic and musical interpretation of teaching. The main aim is to bring understanding into how educational practices, in particular teaching practice, can bring life into subject matter, and construe it as meaningful, significant, and important in times of social acceleration and alienation (Rosa, 2015; Stiegler, 2010). Besides texts from Rosa and Rancière, the article draws on discussions from music philosophy (Bucht, 2009; Lingis, 2004), and educational philosophy (Benner, 2015; Mollenhauer, 2014; Uljens, 1998). The article suggests that Rosa’s concept of ‘resonance’ and Rancière’s concept of ‘le partage du sensible’, read together and against each other, bring insights into discussions about the phenomenological nature of teaching, described as a sort of experiential frequency-modulation that aims for resonant relationships between students and the world. While Rancière’s aesthetics can be used to highlight the abstract logics and politics of educational relations, Rosa’s sociology of resonance provides a valuable complement that grounds teaching practice in lived experience. Resonance implies, according to Rosa, an aspect of constitutive inaccessibility, which requires that both subject and world are sufficiently “closed” or self-consistent so that both sides can speak “in their own voice”, while also remaining open to be affected or reached by each other. Interpreting this resonant state educationally, and from the perspective of Rancière’s aesthetics, turns teaching into a resonance-enabling practice where students, as unique subjects, are allowed to confront the teaching content in its pure materiality; to hear it sing with its own voice, key, and rhythm.

On the Cultivation of Moral Education of High School Students Through Opera Art Education

Based on the theoretical discussion of moral education in music philosophy, this article explores the role of opera art education in cultivating the moral education of high school students. First, it discusses the psychological characteristics and moral education content of high school students have important practical significance; secondly, it summarizes the form and characteristics of opera art, as well as the teaching design in specific practice; then, it analyzes how to form a moral education concept in the opera art teaching process. Finally, based on the teaching situation in my country, this article puts forward the key points that should be paid attention to in the process of opera art education.

Affective Turn, or Return?

The ‘affective turn’ suggests that we pay attention to how affects create subjectivities, build communities, and shape new forms of politics in the making. It invites us to move beyond established humanities and social science paradigms and toward richer forms of contextual analysis by studying how bodies – human and otherwise – ‘act and are acted upon’ (Gregg and Seigworth 2010, 1). The ‘affective turn’ requires sensitive attention to a host of cognate terms and concepts – sentiment, emotion, reverberation, resonance, atmosphere, and far beyond, including the more specific trans-category of ‘affective politics’ as well as affective reinterpretations of the social. Music has long been recognized as a site where affective politics play out. However, existing scholarship often view Baruch Spinoza, Silvan Tomkins, Gilles Deleuze, and Brian Massumi as the founding fathers of affective thinking at the expense of related work in the broader tradition of music philosophy. We address this lacuna by discussing the relationship between music, affect, and politics in the work of Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Qian Sima, Johannes Tinctoris, René Descartes, Johann Gottfried von Herder, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Theodor Adorno, Antoine Hennion, and Tia DeNora, as we aim to broaden, nuance, sharpen, and situate contemporary understandings of affective politics in music studies. In doing so, we discuss whether the affective turn is, perhaps, better understood as a ‘return’ to cross-disciplinary music research that situates the understandings of affective politics, relational agency, and political emotions within a longer history of music philosophy that, taken together, provide a more robust theoretical argument for the social and political force of musical sounds.

An examination of the strategic logic of nonviolent resistance in Fela's Afrobeat

This study explores Fela Anikulapo Kuti, arguably Africa’s most iconic resistant artist of the twentieth century by analysing the strategic logic of Nonviolence in his responses to numerous violent attacks by the repressive and oppressive regimes of the post independent Africa, nay Nigeria. Using the conceptual tool of music as social process and philosophical tool of critical and constructive analysis, the study combines documentary data in Fela’s Afrobeat and Key Informant Interview, in order to demonstrate the strategic logic of nonviolence in conflict engagement and transformation in Fela. The study argues that Afrobeat is a musical philosophy shaped by disregard for human rights and gross irresponsibility on the part of government that have manifested in Africa/Nigeria’s underdevelopment since the Union Jack was lowered in 1960s. The study avers that chose to be part of politics of revolution by using his music to exude protest and persuasion, non-cooperation and intervention against injustice that has created the many problems of man and social reality. The study concludes that Fela won against the oppressed post-colonial African leaders as he was the public conscience of the oppressed Africans who have continued to win despite being repressed.

Musical Scholarship of the “Golden Age” of the Qing Dynasty Based on 17th and 18th Century Books and Treatises

In 1772, by the order of the Emperor Qiánlóng, work began on the compilation and copying of the collection of classical Chinese works known as the Sìkù Quánshū, which included books on musical philosophy, aesthetics, drama, palace ceremonies, as well as treatises on European music theory written at that period of time in China. The detailed review of some of these works presented in the article is aimed at introducing new information about the content of music theory sources from the times of the reign of Kāngxī and Qiánlóng into the corpus of Russian musical scholarship. The authentic documents of the era demonstrate that the “Golden Age” of the musical culture of the Qīng court possessed its own stylistic characteristic features, as reflected in the diverse scholarly interests of Chinese scholars in the 17th and the 18th centuries. As part of the new cultural and political reality, classical Chinese musicology was inculcated with a number of transformative aspects, from the revolutionary theoretical expositions of Emperor Kāngxī to his active implementation of Western European musical knowledge. On the other hand, the strict fixation in the treatises of the musical aspect of the ceremonial events of the palace confirms the intention of the Qīng emperors to preserve traditional rituals as the foundation of their own political stability, explicitly demonstrating a continuity of the art of music of previous dynasties.

A Philosophical Inquiry into Practical Music Education in the Digital Age

Abstract Starting from the perspectives of constructivist philosophy and process philosophy, this paper uses descriptive analysis to explore the philosophy concept of practical music education, and concludes that practical music philosophy is the result of the comprehensive effect of many factors in music education. On the basis of the philosophy concept of music education, combining the characteristic parameters and objective function and similarity algorithm to construct a practical music education philosophy resource recommendation model to realize the construction of practical music education philosophy in colleges and universities, and adopting the method of statistical analysis to research and analyze the practical music education philosophy in the digital era. The results show that the score of instrumental performance students (4.0431) is significantly lower than that of students of other majors, and the difference is significant, with higher humanistic literacy in art and sports and a better foundation in cultural courses. The order of correlation between the scores of emotional identity dimension and the factors influencing the work of values cultivation in the philosophy of practical music education is, in descending order, the object of education (0.499), the subject of education (0.451), the mediator of education (0.476), and the ring of education (0.287), which indicates that the object of education (college students) is the most important factor influencing the work of values cultivation in the philosophy of practical music education. The purpose of this study is to examine the meaning and significance of practical music education philosophy, which is a significant source of inspiration for music education in China today.

Neuerscheinungen zu Nietzsches Musikästhetik und Musikphilosophie

Abstract New Publications on Nietzsche’s Musical Aesthetics and Philosophy of Music. The significance of music in Nietzsche’s aesthetic writings is undisputed. However, the question of the role that music played in Nietzsche’s thought and writing process still yields divergent answers which are not free of speculative interpretations. New publications on Nietzsche’s aesthetics of music cover a wide range of themes: from the significance that the syllabic rhythms of Greek antiquity held for Nietzsche to the relationship between sounds and language in poetic texts, for example, and the processes to which Nietzsche applied himself as a composer of music. This makes it very clear that music is not simply a complementary element to express what cannot be said in language, nor is it a form of relief from the tragic perception of life.

Evolution of the ontology of ancient Chinese music

The subject of the study is the ontological ideas of ancient Chinese music in the context of the formation of philosophical schools of Ancient China, which make it possible to identify a number of philosophical categories that underlie traditional chinese music and outline different approaches to its understanding and interpretation. Most Chinese researchers in the field of musical aesthetics focus on the art of music, rare to pay attention to the philosophical origins of the categories of music that past thinkers wrote about when analyzing laws of existence of the universe. Restoring and rethinking these values in the context of the philosophical and cultural analysis of ancient Chinese music is key to this work, which allows us to gain an understanding of the specifics of ancient Chinese culture and its musical heritage. The novelty of the work lies in carrying out the correlation of genesis of the musical ontology of Ancient China with the dynamics of the formation of the philosophical schools of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, their rise or fall depending on the historical and cultural situation. Musical philosophy in China has not yet become an independent discipline, so the presented work makes a significant contribution to the field of musical ontology. During the study, the authors revealed three main aspects which are basic for the ontology of ancient Chinese music: The nature of music has its source three categories: Tao, air and sound, existing both in a natural state in nature and embodied in musical structure and instruments; Sound and rhythm being the essence to any musical work, organize the sounding space in accordance with the cosmic order; The metaphysical nature of music is justified by the basic principles of Taoist philosophy and number theory.

Correction to: A Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s Philosophy of Music

Correction to: A Dual-Process Model of Xunzi’s Philosophy of Music

AESTHETIC THEORY IN TURKIS MUSIC PERFORMANCE METHODS

The issue of what should be the elements that make up the aesthetics in Turkish Music performance methods has not been adequately addressed scientifically. However, Turkish music contains the rich aesthetic accumulation of a deep-rooted cultural heritage that extends to the present day. It is inevitable that the aesthetic elements in the maqam, rhythm and melodic structures of Turkish Music works will make significant contributions to both academic studies and performance. In this context, aesthetics and music philosophy especially in the creation processes of musical works have a special importance. Therefore, the study of aesthetic elements in the genres and forms of Turkish Music repertoire emerges as a compulsory field. The value of aesthetics, which is defined as the way of searching for the beautiful, in Turkish Music works is directly proportional to the compositions of the makams and tempos. In the analysis of a musical work, the form that forms the building blocks of the work is very important. Aesthetic questioning on the form should be made through the elements of motif, sentence, clause and section. However, studying all of the aesthetic elements of Turkish Music, which has a very wide repertoire, requires a lot of effort and time. In this article, first of all, aesthetic perception, aesthetic attitude, aesthetic pleasure etc. related to aesthetic theory. By emphasizing the main concepts, the aesthetic elements in the performance of Turkish Music works with the aesthetic questioning method, which is one of the most basic elements of creativity, are studied under the headings by giving examples.

Rancière, music, and the musicality of teaching

Abstract While the aesthetics of Rancière is a well-explored topic, there has been something missing from the reception of his works, and that is the relation between Rancière’s aesthetics and music. However, in recent years an interest in this relation has resulted in several academic contributions, which is sign enough that there is in fact a musical element in his works. Rancière himself, in response to this reception, has acknowledged as much. Music is a human form of expression that uses the physicality of air to produce vibrations that encounter and resonate with the human body. Musicality is the ability to attend to such vibrations and harness the expectations and surprises that they bring about. In this article, I explore how a musical approach to Rancière’s writings can inform educational philosophy, especially as regards the practice of teaching. Particular attention is paid to his notion of the sensorium as a sensible realm where we experience and encounter difference and otherness, in political events as well as in teaching situations. Attending ethically to these situations is predicated on a certain sensibility that involves certain aesthetic qualities. In this article, I explore this sensibility as a particular educational musicality. Drawing from educational philosophy, the aesthetic theory of Jacques Rancière, and music philosophy, I connect this musicality of teaching to an ability to navigate in an ethical space that comes to life through a material/sensible community of interests formed in teaching practice. I use the term acousmatic experience as an explorative device in an attempt to depict teaching practice as something that can bring about a specific educational sensorium.

Противостояние музыки и политики

This essay presents the situation concerning the music philosophy in the XX century: the factor of politics gradually was established in the paradigm of artistic culture. It is shown that the politics became a permanent violence in relation to art as in relation to life. This permanent violence is a will for power or a clear will for dominating life and art which can move apart and then inextricably intertwine. Thus, the politics appears in her unconventional artistic and aesthetic discourse: being aesthetic in life and artistic in art. In this paper the phenomenon of the origin of the indivisibility and immeasurable formula is characterized. Since then, life and politics cannot do without art which is their mirror as well as art tries to distance itself from society and politics but cannot break free of the shackles of the socio-political context and the relevant pragmatic discourse. This discourse leaves an indelible imprint on everything connected with art and aesthetics.

Vitalist Approach in the Analysis of G.V. Sviridov's Musical Philosophy

Vitalist Approach in the Analysis of G.V. Sviridov's Musical Philosophy

Музыкальная картина мира Микалоюса Константиноса Чюрлёниса

The article examines a number of musical canvases by M. K. Churlenis, one of the notable artists of the Silver Age, often conventionally referred to as “second-hand masters”. The main purpose of the article is to identify and comprehend the complex, extraordinary path of the artist, composer, poet, coinciding with the main trends in the development of Russian art of the turn of the epoch (late XIX - early XX centuries). The novelty of the research is determined by the lack of systematization of the phenomenon in art, as we see the music of the symbolist artist Churlenis. The relevance of the chosen topic is connected with the comprehension of the composer's experimentation, which is the basis of his musical worldview and creative method. The evolutionism of Churlenis' activity is obvious, the desire to search for a new artistic paradigm, a new format of thinking, which in our opinion seems innovative against the background of artistic products of the era of the Russian religious Renaissance. As a result, the need for a deep analysis of the composer's original musical philosophy is revealed. In conclusion, it is said about the important contribution of the sounding philosophy of M. K. Churlenis to the anthology of music of the cultural Renaissance in Russia at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries.

A Violin Symbolic in B. Poplavsky’s Poetry

The article is devoted to the research of violin symbolic in Boris Poplav-
 sky’s poetry. We consider connections of this image with musical philosophy of
 the poet of Russian Montparnasse, with the poetry of his predecessors (O. Man-
 delstam, A. Blok) and with constant literary cultural connotations, associated
 with the image of the violin.
 Symbolic of this musical instrument is multifaceted and difficult in Pop-
 lavsky’s literary work. This is due to the poet’s spiritual search. It has ambivalent
 meanings that is clear in his book of verses «Flags», when a violin appears as a
 carrier of magic and beauty dead in cold and horrible world, which doesn’t un-
 derstand beauty of the real art and rejects it («Dark Madonna»), and as «False
 Fiddlestick», which has dissonance music, connected with the theme of Death and
 eschatological motives («Rose of Death»).
 The violin also appears in poems dedicated to the poet’s important theme
 of art, music and the crowd, where it is associated with the theme of aggression
 and crime. The stringed instrument has become a predator causing pain and suf-
 fering in the world around it, which does not include music. Another development
 in the plot showing the struggle between art and reality is the disappearance of
 disastrous musical instruments that should create one magical sound. Their mis-
 sion is heroic, they must give the world the miracle of music, but the tragedy is
 that this reality cannot accept this magic

Znamenny Chant as a Constant of the Artistic World of Yuri Butsko: Chamber Music

The article is devoted to the chamber-instrumental works of one of the brightest representatives of the Russian school of composition of the second half of the twentieth century, Yuri Butsko, in which his religious and musical philosophy is multidimensional and vividly embodied. The focus is made on the discovery of the author's approach to the "reintoning" of the cult chant in the fabric of secular composition and its role in the processes of meaning and text formation of the artistic whole. The works created by the composer mainly in the early period (1960 – 1970s) in chamber genres are considered as a kind of creative laboratory in which the principles of dialogical poetics of religious and secular principles are formed, manifesting itself both at the conceptual level and at the level of textual relations. As a result of the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that the church monody in the works of Yuri Butsko manifests itself as a dynamic construct, the musical vocabulary and semantic field of which, on the one hand, are amenable to reinterpretation in the process of creating new artistic samples based on it, on the other – have a transformative force that has a significant impact on the content, compositional-dramaturgical, intonation-thematic structure of the work. Both at the conceptual level, realized in the process of interactions of such structures as the symbolic invariant formula of the plot of Golgotha, the external program, the "plot" of the quoted chant, and at the level of textual relations, a multilevel original system of conjugation of Old Russian chant and individual author's poetics is formed in the chamber opuses of Yuri Butsko, which has no analogues in Russian music culture.

MIND AS A CAUSAL SYSTEM IN AL FARABI’S PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Music elaborates through with a more powerful cognition system in which melodies shares some aspects with mathematics and language in general. This research reveals the basic aspects of analysis, music as a self-referential structure and transformative system, and focuses on the concept and definition of perception. There is still not many treatises in the philosophy of music about the functioning of musical emotion in the brain. Al Farabi’s Great Music Book is the first and still unique in this regard. One of the most important reasons that makes this work valuable is that Fârâbî’s work named Kitab al Musiqa brings new information to his music studies. This review details the evolutionary development of music and its cultural and psychological effects on the human mind. For centuries, philosophers queried the interaction and fundamental principles and causality of music in human life. The concept of musical perception, which is formed as a result of the relationship between perception and music, has been examined. A musical perception process was created by using general perception processes. Al Farabi illustrates the clarity of these questions from a neuroscience perspective in his Kitab al Musiqa al Kabir review. We examine with innovative results in the conditions of an intense history of intellectual research established by cognitive systems that insist on various aspects of human musical behavior. The main purpose of this article is to remember Al Farabi’s authority in music philosophy. This article claims that Farabi’s philosophy is valid in the conceptual framework of this century. Methodologically, we chose to translate from the original Arabic manuscript of Kitab al Musiqa al Kabir. The proposition in Al Farabi’s Philosophy that music is a kind of image is impressive.

Music, Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture ed. by Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler

Reviewed by: Music, Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture ed. by Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler Bradford Lee Eden Music, Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Edited by Katherine Butler and Samantha Bassler. (Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Music, 19.) Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2019. [xiii, 318 p. ISBN 9781783273713 (hardback), $99; ISBN 9781787444409 (e-book), $24.99.] Music examples, illustrations, color plates, bibliography, index. The interconnections between folklore, myth, and story are both numerous and varied. Many origin myths and legends incorporate aspects of music, song, and drama in their construction, along with both human and supernatural individuals who embody and glorify musical attributes and abilities. This book provides a kind of navigational guide to the rich mythological traditions of various cultures and countries from the fifth to the early eighteenth centuries, blending a range of musical perspectives. Case studies encompass literary, theatrical, and iconographical scholarship wrapped around musical meanings, musical philosophy, musical techniques, musical theory, and musical performance linked to various myths and stories throughout history. Divided into seven sections and fifteen chapters, arranged both thematically and chronologically, this book provides a rich source of music’s influence on numerous stories and mythologies. The editors provide a detailed historical introduction to the topic, framing the essays that follow through discussion of musical figures throughout history and myth, including Orpheus, Jubal, the Muses, Pythagoras, and Apollo, to name but a few. Butler and Bassler also explain three approaches to the study and interpretation of musical myths at various times and places: the cosmological tradition centered around classical mythology, the Euhemerist or historical tradition, which interpreted the classical gods as historical men, and the moral or allegorical tradition, which arose during the Renaissance and saw the allegory of musical myth and story separated from any gods or historical personages. The editors provide brief summaries of the chapters while linking the entire contents together philosophically, from the Neoplatonist view of music as universal harmony to the Cartesian viewpoint of the separation of mind and body. [End Page 416] Section 1 focuses on the medieval period, with three essays on the influence of myth in music theory. John MacInnis examines how medieval music theorists incorporated Greek mythological narratives surrounding the harmony of the planets and universe as well as theological underpinnings around the human soul. Ferdia J. Stone-Davis explores Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy and similar early music treatises as blendings of music as myth and myth as music, providing meaning to the world and the universe in new ways. Elina G. Hamilton then considers the significance of origin myths and the genealogies constructed for music as an influence on fourteenth-century English singers and through the early fifteenth-century musical treatise De origine et effectu musicae. Section 2 contains two chapters on iconographical representations of myth and music during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Jason Stoessel traces the influence of Minerva through various biblical, historical, and allegorical figures, illustrating how the biblical figure Tubalcain in particular became associated iconographically with polyphonic, vernacular song collections. Stoessel provides this analysis through a reconsideration of Dosso Dossi’s Allegory of Music. Tim Shephard and Patrick McMahon then focus on early sixteenth-century Italian visual representations of the myth of the musical contest between Apollo and Pan, specifically how King Midas obtained ass ears and how various artists portrayed and reshaped this myth in ways that influenced moral and musical judgment in 1520s Italy. Section 3 has two chapters that examine Renaissance philosophies of music in relation to myth. Jacomien Prins contrasts two interpretations of the figure of Orpheus by the late fifteenth- century Italian philosophers Marsilio Ficino and Girolamo Cardano, showing how a mythical figure could engender new aesthetic standards and ideas. Katherine Butler then describes the nature of music in early modern England and how metanarratives around competing myths were used to justify new and changed perceptions of humanity’s relationship to nature and the ancient world. Section 4 moves from conceptual to practical aspects of musical performance in England and Italy in the sixteenth century. Jamie Apgar examines biblical stories of angel song from the early church and connections to alternatim choral singing in Protestant...

Glenn Gould in six scenes

Glenn Gould’s legacy revolves around his retirement from the concert hall in 1964. Studies of his artistry often reflect on that by following a particular impulse: to seek out the rational underpinnings of this decision and to explain them in terms of a larger technological or aesthetic vision. Drawing in particular on the work of Virginia Held and Sara Ahmed, this article conceptualises Gould’s abandonment of the concert hall as an act of self-care, a mechanism for coping with the increasingly intrusive and exploitative celebrity musical culture into which he was catapulted as a young musician. Thus, this article frames Gould’s self-care in terms of six overlapping scenes, as he performed in the concert hall and recording studio, in interviews and essays, and in front of the camera as photographic subject and television actor, culminating with a case study based on an excerpt from Bruno Monsaingeon’s documentary Glenn Gould: The Alchemist. The study concludes by suggesting that Gould’s artistic choices (and achievements) had much more to do with cultivating caring relations that allowed him to thrive than they did with an individual pursuit of a grand musical philosophy.

ANNE BOYD AT 75: A CELEBRATION THROUGH THE STRING QUARTET

AbstractAnne Boyd (b. 1946) is one of Australia's most celebrated composers and educators. Her formal training began at the University of Sydney, where she worked with Peter Sculthorpe (1929–2014), who became a highly influential figure for her both musically and personally. Having completed her DPhil at the University of York in 1972 on a Commonwealth Scholarship, Boyd took up teaching posts in Sussex and Hong Kong, before returning to Sydney as Professor of Music, the first Australian and first woman to hold this position. Her music has been performed worldwide and draws on a synthesis of East-Asian and Western elements, with a clear focus on timbre and texture, invoking ideas of meditation, nature and ritual. This article presents a transcription of a virtual interview conducted with Boyd in February 2021 and uses the genre of the string quartet as a lens through which the composer elaborates and expands upon some of the key aspects of her musical approach and philosophy.