Schopenhauer’s Hierarchy of the Arts

Above architecture (called “frozen music” by Schelling) are painting and sculpture – all of which are after all tied rather closely to the phenomena with which they deal rather than the truth of the Will behind the phenomena – then prose, which is at its highest when it is least concerned with plot and action and most with contemplation; poetry; drama – and above all the tragedies in which the protagonists let go at the end of life in acceptance, resignation, a ceasing of striving, an abandonment of (the) Will. However, for Schopenhauer, music is the highest art of all, because it is the most abstract, the least tied to phenomenal concepts. In 1877 Walter Pater was to write that "all art aspires to the condition of music." He meant that all true art should strive to get as close as possible to the purity of Schopenhauer's concept of abstract music. Later, abstract painters would eschew concrete representations of the world; and some of them, such as Kandinsky, would often give titles with musical connotations to their paintings. Music can, for instance, express all the emotions (joy, sadness etc) as such, without any accessories or motives. Note the extra ‘inexpressible’ dimension music can give to opera, often overcoming the sheer banality or absurdity of the plot or libretto.

That music speaks of and will be found in another, heavenly, world has been understood since the beginning of human consciousness. (As mentioned, Pythagoras had shown the relationship of music to mathematics, and to the ancient Greeks mathematics was considered the closest approach to the meaning of the world. Some people thought that that point had received further proof when Newton successfully combined mathematics and astronomy.)

Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music as being best when at its most abstract ran counter to Wagner’s early theories of Gesamtkunstwerk; but once Wagner had read Schopenhauer in 1854, he theoretically agreed with him and become his ardent disciple. In practice, Wagner continued to marry text and music as powerfully as he had done before, but in Tristan und Isolde (1856), for the writing of which he broke off writing Siegfried, he came closest to giving the music the full Schopenhauerian role.

Nietzsche (1844 to 1900)

Although there was much in Schopenhauer’s philosophy with which he disagreed, Friedrich Nietzsche was also influenced by his ideas on music. In The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music (1871), Nietzsche agreed that through art, and especially through music, one can for a while escape from the misery of earthly life and have a glimpse of the transcendental.

Nietzsche also picked up on Wagner’s idea that there were two elements in the arts which should balance each other: the Apollonian (creative order or organisation) and the Dionysian (chaotic inspiration). He initially saw this fusion in Wagner’s music, and believed that Wagner’s art was, among other things, the salvation of Germany. But he turned against Wagner in 1876, and in Nietzsche contra Wagner (1889), he accused him of, among other things, having abandoned the necessary Apollonian element.

http://psychcentral.com/lib/music-how-it-impacts-your-brain-emotions/

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