Philosophy of music

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Philosophy of music is the study of fundamental questions regarding music. The philosophical study of music has many connections with philosophical questions in metaphysics and aesthetics. Some basic questions in the philosophy of music are:

· What is the definition of music? (what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for classifying something as music?)

· What is the relationship between music and mind?

· What does musical history reveal to us about the world?

· What is the connection between music and emotions?

· What is meaning in relation to music?

· 1 Philosophical issues

o 1.1 Definition of music

o 1.2 Absolute music vs program music

o 1.3 Meaning and purpose

o 1.4 Aesthetics of music

· 2 See also

· 3 Notes

· 4 References

· 5 Further reading

· 6 External links

Philosophical issues[edit]

Definition of music[edit]

Main article: Definition of music

One common definition of music is "organized sound".^{[ citation needed ]} There are many different ways of denoting the fundamental aspects of musicwhich extend beyond tones: popular aspects include melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre. However, Musique concrète often consists only of sound samples of non-musical nature, sometimes in random juxtaposition. Ambient music may often consist merely of recordings of wildlife or nature. The arrival of these avant-garde forms of music in the 20th century have been a major challenge to traditional views on music, leading to broader characterizations.^{[ citation needed ]}

Absolute music vs program music[edit]

Main articles: Absolute music and Program music

There was intense debate over the matter during the late Romantic Era, with the majority of opposition to absolute instrumental-based music coming from Richard Wagner, Friedrich Nietzscheand Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Wagner's works were chiefly programmatic and often used vocalization, and he said that "Where music can go no further, there comes the word… the word stands higher than the tone." Nietzsche wrote many commentaries applauding the music of Wagner and was in fact an amateur composer himself.^[1]

Other Romantic philosophers and proponents of absolute music, such as Johann von Goethe saw music not only as a subjective human "language" but as an absolute transcendent means of peering into a higher realm of order and beauty. Some expressed a spiritual connection with music. In Part IV of his chief work, The World as Will and Representation (1819), Arthur Schopenhauer said that "music is the answer to the mystery of life. The most profound of all the arts, it expresses the deepest thoughts of life." In "The Immediate Stages of the Erotic, or Musical Erotic", a chapter of Either/Or (1843), Søren Kierkegaard examines the profundity of music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the sensual nature of Don Giovanni.

Meaning and purpose[edit]

In his 1997 book How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker dubbed music "auditory cheesecake",^{[ this quote needs a citation ]} a phrase that in the years since has served as a challenge to the musicologists and psychologists who believe otherwise.^[2] Among those to note this stir was Philip Ball in his book The Music Instinct ^[3] where he noted that music seems to reach to the very core of what it means to be human: "There are cultures in the world where to say 'I'm not musical' would be meaningless," Ball writes, "akin to saying 'I'm not alive'." In a filmed debate, Ball suggests that music might get its emotive power through its ability to mimic people and perhaps its ability to entice us lies in music's ability to set up an expectation and then violate it.^[4]

Aesthetics of music[edit]

Main article: Aesthetics of music

In the pre-modern tradition, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic and harmonic organization. In the eighteenth century, focus shifted to the experience of hearing music, and thus to questions about its beauty and human enjoyment (plaisir and jouissance) of music. The origin of this philosophic shift is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant. Through their writing, the ancient term aesthetics, meaning sensory perception, received its present-day connotation. In recent decades philosophers have tended to emphasize issues besides beauty and enjoyment. For example, music's capacity to express emotion has been a central issue.

A symphony orchestra

Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy. In the 20th century, important contributions were made by Peter Kivy, Jerrold Levinson, Roger Scruton, andStephen Davies. However, many musicians, music critics, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music. In the 19th century, a significant debate arose between Eduard Hanslick, a music critic and musicologist, and composer Richard Wagner. Harry Partch and some othermusicologists, such as Kyle Gann, have studied and tried to popularize microtonal music and the usage of alternate musical scales. Also many modern composers like La Monte Young, Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca paid much attention to a scale called just intonation.

It is often thought that music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect, and psychology; it can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. The philosopher Plato suggests in the Republic that music has a direct effect on the soul. Therefore, he proposes that in the ideal regime music would be closely regulated by the state (Book VII). There has been a strong tendency in the aesthetics of music to emphasize the paramount importance of compositional structure; however, other issues concerning the aesthetics of music include lyricism, harmony, hypnotism, emotiveness, temporal dynamics,resonance, playfulness, and color (see also musical development).

http://philosophytalk.org/shows/philosophy-music

The Philosophy of Music

What is it:

Most people enjoy music daily and have strong listening preferences. Music – along with love – is often thought of as a universal language. But what makes a collection of sounds a piece of music as opposed to just noise? Can music teach us anything? And is the value of music objective? John and Ken explore what philosophy has to tell us about music – and vice versa – with Peter Kivy from Rutgers University, author of Sounding Off: Eleven Essays in the Philosophy of Music.

Listening Notes:

John and Ken begin by trying to pin down an exact definition for music. Ken proposes that it is a collection of organized sounds, although realizing that there are many organized sounds in the world which we usually don't consider music. John accordingly notes that philosophers and musicologists might consider organization a necessary but not sufficient condition for a set of sounds to be musical. For a long time music was accompanied by voice, but John points out that historically we don't know that much about the details of music except those musical traditions surrounding religion or tradition that were written about or passed on.

Ken points out that music has a lot of emotional power over us, but differs a lot from other forms of art. In a novel or a play the emotions are linked to the world represented to the observer, but in music it is harder to understand where the emotions come from. Sad music almost universally makes people sad, but is it something in the music or in us that moves us so? John points out that music was one of the first art forms to be thought of as non-representational, and that it has a stronger universal connection to our emotions than other non-representational forms like abstract visual art. John explains the distinction between primary and secondary qualities and philosophy and relates them to the emotional response we have to music. Ken thinks that there is something internal to music that determines its effect upon us, noting that small structural changes in a piece can drastically alter our emotional experience.

John and Ken introduce the guest, Peter Kivy; Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy from Rutgers University, also author of many article and a book concerning the philosophy of music. Peter Kivy begins by noting that the given definition of music as a collection of organized sounds is troublesome in contemporary times with the rise of random and atonal musical styles, though Jon wonders whether anyone actually listens to such music. Peter Kivy points out that a lot of music out there doesn't get listened to anyway! In order to see how hard it is to define music, John and Ken play the beginning of Mozart's 41st Symphony and compare that to Varese's Ionization piece. Ken points out that music may be one of those things that you know when you experience it, but cannot precisely define. Peter Kivy mentions a piece called Talking Fugue where the "music" consists of overlaid conversations. John concludes that music seems to be a concept with paradigm cases we all recognize and fringe cases which may seem musical to one person but not to another. Ken further suggests that calling something music is an honorific title that shows we appreciate it.

Next Ken and John ask Peter to explain how the non-representational art of music, especially wordless music, can produce such passionate emotional responses in people. Peter Kivy believes that it doesn't! Or, at least, that the emotions evinced by music are not the garden variety emotions, but rather a specific love and enthusiasm for the music, an emotional response which does not really have a name. Kivy argues this point through the distinction of good and bad sad music, and how good sad music arouses a stronger feeling of sadness than bad sad music. Ken challenges Peter Kivy with examples of music enhancing garden variety emotions like fear and excitement in movies. Peter acknowledges that the music combined with the film can arouse fear, but points out that the soundtrack alone does not have the same effect. John brings up examples of historically meaningful and patriotic songs as well as anthems which arouse contradictory emotions. Peter Kivy argues that these feelings arise from associations and are not quite aesthetically relevant.

Callers discuss Peter Kivy's theories on the garden variety emotions and music as well as the relationship between mathematics and music, music in movies, and other styles and subjects. Kivy suggests that individuals in other fields may experience the same sort of emotional experience with their subjects that musicians and music-lovers do when they appreciate great pieces. Finally, John and Ken discuss the relationship between the culture of music and ethics, morality, and civilization with Peter Kivy, concluding that music really is an important part of societies around the world.

· The 60-second Philosopher (seek to 4:47): Ian Shoales speeds through the subject of "earworms" or musical jingles that worm into your brain and get stuck in your head forever.

Music, Meaning, and Emotion

Today's episode is about the philosophy of music. Our guest will be Peter Kivy, a leading philosopher of music and a former colleague of mine from Rutgers University.

I fancy myself a pretty accomplished philosopher. I've been at this philosophy thing for about 25 years now. I also consider myself a decent musician. In my youth I played a lot of music -- trombone, violin, piano. Plus I sang in various choirs. I don't perform much anymore, but I still consume music of all sorts.

But I have to admit that although I'm not bad at philosophy and pretty good at music, I've never given music a great deal of philosophical attention. That's one reason I'm so looking forward to our conversation with Peter later today. He has given a very great deal of philosophical thought to music. I think he's written something on the order of five or six books specifically about the philosophy of music. So I expect to learn a lot from him.

Just to get the juices flowing, I thought I'd ruminate in my elementary, not yet completely well work-out sort of way on some things that I personally find philosophically puzzling about music. Here goes.

First worry. What distinguishes music from non-music? The world is replete with sound -- both man made sounds and the sounds of nature. Many of these sounds are quite beautiful -- the cries of various animals, the sound of the ocean, the whistling wind, the human voice, the majestic boom of the space shuttle as it rockets into space. But only a few of the sounds with which the world is replete count as music. Is there anything deep to say about what distinguishes music from non-music?

I'm not sure. One initially tempting thought is that music can be demarcated from non-music by its structure and organization. Music comes with a key signature, with meter, with melody, harmony and all that. Certainly a lot of music is organized and structured in this way. Almost all music that I enjoy listening to, for example, has some or all of these features. But there are probably instances of music that have none or few of these features -- late twentieth century and early 21st century "classical" music comes quickly to mind. That suggests that there may not be any necessary and sufficient conditions for what counts as music rather than non-music. It probably doesn't matter that there aren't such conditions. Most of us certainly know music when we hear it, even if we couldn't define it.

Second Worry. Music is often quite emotionally gripping. By turns, it can make us feel sad or elated, It can convey a sense of unfulfilled longing, of awe and wonder. It can make us laugh or cry. Music may even convey anger or regret.

It's not, I think, hard to come up with a first pass explanation of how music with lyrics or that accompanies other contentful representations might convey such emotion. When we set words to music, the words retain at least the expressive and representational powers that they have all on their own. But even here there are some complexities, I think. Music may certainly enhance the expressive power of the words, images, or scenes it accompanies. Imagine a scene in a scary movie. First imagine it without any music. Then imagine it with a subtle but creepy melody rising slowly. Which is more effective? It will depend, of course, on the details. But we've all seen movies in which the music greatly enhances the sense of doom lurking around the corner. (When I was a kid I used to imagine that when I finally fell in love, and declared my love to my beloved, an invisible orchestra would begin playing some swelling romantic tune as my beloved and I exchanged our first tender kiss.) But if music can enhance the expressive power of a scene or a speech, then it's not the words or the scene alone that does the expressing, even when we have words accompanied by music.

It's also possible I suppose for there to be a mismatch between the music and the words (or other representations). Imagine angry words sung to a happy uplifting melody. I suppose, also, that it's possible to exploit such mismatches intentionally and creatively. The result I guess would be a kind of irony or perhaps even satire.

"Pure" music -- for lack of a better term -- probably does raise the issue more accutely, though. By pure music I mean music entirely devoid of representational content -- music accompanied by no scenes or words or images or narration. Just pure sound (ordered and structured to be sure) but still just pure non-representational sound. How does such music achieve such astounding emotive power in the absence of all representational content?

I don't really know the answer, to be frank. I'm not sure I have even a proto-theory. I do wonder, though, whether the emotion is, as it were, "in the music" or merely in our reaction to the music. Let me explain what I mean. You could, I suppose, think that when we called music sad or mournful or happy or said that it expresses unfulfilled longing, we mean nothing more than that it evokes such sentiments "in us." And there might be no deep explanation of why just these sound sequences should evoke just these sentiments or feelings in us. Maybe psychology might eventually reveal something deep. But there might be nothing more than brute fact or something about evolution or something about cultural constructions.

On the other hand, you might think that when we call a piece of music sad we are getting at some sort of response-independent facts about the music itself, about, as it were, the internal qualities of the music.

I tend to think it's a "both and" sort of thing -- though it wouldn't take much to talk me out of this half-formed view.

My thought is that when we call a piece of music sad, we are saying both something about its, as it were, intrinsic musical character -- albeit indirectly -- and also something about our response to it. In particular, by calling the music sad, we "license" certain emotional reponses as "appropriate" in light of the intrinsic musical character of the piece. If you aren't moved to sadness by sad music, you've in a way misperceived the music. Or that, at any rate, is what I believe at the moment. Let's see if it holds up after a conversation with a world-class expert.

The reductive metaphysician in me would like it to be the case that we could eventually say, in non-emotive terms, just what it is about the intrinsic musical character of a piece of music that makes it correct to say that the music is sad. But the music lover in me, wonders if we would really understand music better if we really could do such a thing.

There's a lot more that could be said about all this. Unfortunately, I've got to take off for the studio now. And one certainly shouldn't drive and blog at the same time. (DWB is surely at least as dangerous as DWI.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/108/Music_in_Philosophy

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