Philosophy of Music

Il dibattito fra idealismo universalista e materialismo individualista ha avuto inizio più di duemila anni fa nell’Antica Grecia con Platone e Aristotele, ed è giunto fino all’epoca moderna con la contrapposizione fra Classicismo e Romanticismo. Nella prima metà dell’Ottocento i tumulti sociali e i malcontenti che portarono alla Rivoluzione Francese si scontrarono prima con le sue conseguenze dirette e poi con i meccanismi della Restaurazione; il senso di “nulla di fatto” portò a quella serie di atteggiamenti collettivi che nell’arte si traducono nei temi topici del Romanticismo, nello specifico: la fuga dalla realtà verso mondi lontani nello spazio e nel tempo; la fuga intimista introspettiva; l’esaltazione della coscienza e dell’autodeterminazione individuale in luogo di grandi ideali collettivisti sempre validi; e infine la scoperta dei concetti di infinito e di eterno ritorno, che applicati alla storia e all’evoluzione della società, danno vita a una concezione circolare del tempo, contrapposta a quella giudaico-cristiana finalistica del tempo lineare. A causa dello smontaggio di alcuni valori fondativi della società, che iniziava il suo cammino verso il moderno capitalismo, tali concetti portarono gli intellettuali e gli artisti da un lato a operare con maggior libertà espressiva, dall’altro a dover scendere a continui compromessi con i gusti dei committenti. Per alcuni ciò era in qualche misura sopportabile, ma la mercificazione dell’arte e la perdita del ruolo sociale dell’intellettuale causate dal ceto borghese sempre più plutocratico, generarono dapprima un atteggiamento caricaturale e provocatorio nei confronti delle sue conseguenze, e subito dopo ad una netta opposizione conflittuale. È l’inizio della variegata stagione delle Avanguardie storiche, che spaziano dall’Espressionismo alla Nuova Oggettività. Ancora una volta però, gli atteggiamenti provocatori sfociarono in aspri conflitti sociali fra le varie anime del “Modernismo”, inteso come coesistenza del tardo Romanticismo decadente, delle Avanguardie e del Positivismo; essi portarono rapidamente alle due guerre mondiali, che sanciscono rispettivamente la fine della stagione borghese, e la fine delle “grandi narrazioni” e l’inizio del Postmodernismo. Esso si profila come l’ennesima crisi dell’idealismo, aggravata però dalla totale liquefazione globalizzante della società e delle informazioni fino alla rottura del logocentrismo, sintomo che rappresenta l’unica grossa differenza con il Modernismo. Nell’arte postmoderna, la contrapposizione tra Postavanguardie e Neoromanticismo si presenta per la prima volta dopo duemila anni non come scontro ma come dialettica non-violenta tra idealismo e materialismo. Le prime si presentano come voglia di rivoluzionare il pensiero tramite una rivoluzione del linguaggio tramite il metodo dell’apprendimento sperimentale. Il secondo accetta in realtà la globalizzazione, ma non in maniera rassegnata: bensì vuole sfruttare romanticamente i linguaggi stilistici di epoche passate, decontestualizzati e fusi in una sinergia eclettica promossa ad elemento strutturante e armonizzante nelle opere d’arte. Esse diventano quindi immagini di un’idea nascosta nell’anima mundi, la “memoria collettiva eterna”, aperte tra l’altro a varie interpretazioni come le opere postavanguardiste. La differenza sta invece
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nell’intento di salvaguardia di una complessità non elitaristica in un’epoca privata del logocentrismo e in cui l’arte ha perso non solo ogni fine etico, ma anche la pretesa che possa averlo.
Analizzando tre brani con il corno, di cui uno per corno e pianoforte e due concerti per corno e orchestra, si sono andati a ricercare gli elementi che dimostrano l’appartenenza non al Romanticismo o ad un semplice “stile personale”, bensì ad uno stile nuovo legittimato da una nuova idea musicale, facendo tesoro della distinzione operata da Arnold Schönberg fra stile e idea. Ognuno di questi brani si colloca in modo diverso nella musica del Neoromanticismo corni stico, della quale in particolare si identifica il Secondo Concerto per Corno e Orchestra di Richard Strauss come uno dei precursori, in quanto sebbene lo stile non abbracci ancora un largo eclettismo storico, le idee sono già presenti in toto. En forêt di Eugène Bozza si configura come il più accademico e “antecedente” dei tre brani, che tuttavia si colloca perfettamente negli ideali neoromantici, mentre il Concerto per Corno e orchestra di John Williams, anch’esso assolutamente neoromantico, costituisce fra i tre il più complesso e sperimentale, caratterizzato da uno stile particolare e del tutto originale.
Il Neoromanticismo si afferma quindi non come revival del Romanticismo - tramontato assieme alle grandi narrazioni del passato - e neanche come sua semplice attualizzazione, ma come un’idea artistica nuova, figlia dell’epoca contemporanea postmoderna, che testimonia la possibilità non solo di entrare in polemica senza andare a cercare scontri ideologici, atteggiamento coerente del resto con l’accettazione della condizione di società liquida, ma anche di poter costruire la novità rimanendo legati alla totalità del passato collettivo eterno e all’anima mundi.

Tiger C. Roholt explains why grooves, which are forged in music's rhythmic nuances, remain hidden to some listeners. He argues that grooves are not graspable through the intellect nor through mere listening; rather, grooves are disclosed through our bodily engagement with music. We grasp a groove bodily by moving with music's pulsations. By invoking the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty's notion of "motor intentionality," Roholt shows that the "feel" of a groove, and the understanding of it, are two sides of a coin: to "get" a groove just is to comprehend it bodily and to feel that embodied comprehension.

Sound coming from outside the field of vision, from somewhere beyond, holds a privileged place in the Western imagination. When separated from their source, sounds seem to manifest transcendent realms, divine powers, or supernatural forces. According to legend, the philosopher Pythagoras lectured to his disciples from behind a veil, and two thousand years later, in the age of absolute music, listeners were similarly fascinated with disembodied sounds, employing various techniques to isolate sounds from their sources. With recording and radio came spatial and temporal separation of sounds from sources, and new ways of composing music.

Sound Unseen: Acousmatic Sound in Theory and Practice explores the phenomenon of acousmatic sound. An unusual and neglected word, "acousmatic" was first introduced into modern parlance in the mid-1960s by avant garde composer of musique concrète Pierre Schaeffer to describe the experience of hearing a sound without seeing its cause. Working through, and often against, Schaeffer's ideas, Brian Kane presents a powerful argument for the central yet overlooked role of acousmatic sound in music aesthetics, sound studies, literature, philosophy and the history of the senses. Kane investigates acousmatic sound from a number of methodological perspectives -- historical, cultural, philosophical and musical -- and provides a framework that makes sense of the many surprising and paradoxical ways that unseen sound has been understood. Finely detailed and thoroughly researched, Sound Unseen pursues unseen sounds through a stunning array of cases -- from Bayreuth to Kafka's "Burrow," Apollinaire to Zizek, music and metaphysics to architecture and automata, and from Pythagoras to the present -- to offer the definitive account of acousmatic sound in theory and practice.

The first major study in English of Pierre Schaeffer's theory of "acousmatics," Sound Unseen is an essential text for scholars of philosophy of music, electronic music, sound studies, and the history of the senses.

In this paper, I propose that embodied cognition in music has two distinct levels. The “surface” level relates to the apparent corporeal articulation such as the activated psychomotor program of a music performer, visible gestures in response to music, and rhythmic entrainment. The primary (though concealed) “deep” level of embodied cognition relates to the main coding aspects in music: the tonal relationships arranged in time. Music that we love – for example, a favorite melody – is made of combinations of a small number of basic melodic intervals that differ by their psychophysical characteristics, among which the level of tonal stability and consonant-dissonant dichotomy are the most important for the formation of tonal expectations that guide music perception. Listeners perceive music as a flow of tonal relationships arranged in time; the temporal and tonal dimensions are interwoven and constitute the tonal chronotope. The intuitive navigation in artistic tonal time-space relies on tonal expectations that are at the heart of melodic intentionality and musical motion. Melodic intentionality has its foundations in artfully sequenced tonal tension and release from tension. Significantly, perceived tonal tension is related to real physical tension. In a music listener, the patterns of perceived tonal tension most likely generate corresponding patterns of physical tension that contribute, along with other musical aspects, to forming a musical emotion, or the experience of psychological time in music. The tonal/temporal relationships encode musical content that dictates the motor behavior of music performers.  The proposed two-level model of embodied cognition connects core musicology with the data from studies in music perception and cognition as well as studies in affective neuroscience and musicianship-related brain plasticity. The paper identifies the need for collaboration among various subdisciplines in musicology and cognitive sciences in order to further the development of the nascent field of embodied cognition in music. The presented discourse relies on research in the tonal music of European tradition and it does not address either aleatoric music or the exotic musics of non-Western traditions. To make the proposed model of embodied cognition in music available for nonmusicians, the paper includes the basics of music theory.

MPhil Thesis at Canterbury Christchurch University. This thesis regards the ancient Pythagorean-Platonic idea of heavenly harmony as a philosophical paradox: stars are silent, music is not. The idea of ‘star music’ contains several potential opposites, including imagination and sense perception, the temporal and the eternal, transcendence and theophany, and others. The idea of ‘star music’ as a paradox can become a gateway to a different understanding of the universe, and a vehicle for a shift to a new – and yet very ancient – form of consciousness. The ancient Greeks had a holistic form of consciousness, which was continually intermingling with a transpersonal dimension. This ancient state of consciousness was related to a musical understanding of the world, the Pythagorean-Platonic experience of the universe as an ordered cosmos.

My research is approached from two angles, namely from the history of ideas and from musicianship, exploring how music is reflected in the world of thought. By reflexive re-reading of the sources, new insights into the nature of musical consciousness are explored. The idea of ‘star music’ can be found throughout the history of music and thought in the West, including Plato’s works and that of other ancient philosophers, through the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Romantic era and the twentieth century up to contemporary New Age music.

As a conclusion, the paradox of ‘star music’ is connected to an experience of a shared transcendent meaning of music, which can be present in the moment of a musical performance. ‘Star music’ is a living paradox.

“Un giorno, preso dal cruccio, mi scappò di dire che l’arte è una forma della morale, ma non un mezzo morale. Mi si rispose che era una massima oscura”. Nell’oscurità di questa formula riportata nelle Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen c’è tutta l’ambiguità della morale manniana, una morale eteronoma, le cui leggi sono quelle cui l’artista obbedisce nella produzione, nell’obbedienza all’opera. Etica, pessimismo, sacrificio, senso della forma sono, in Thomas Mann, termini difficilmente svincolabili gli uni dagli altri, ricondotti all’“aura etica” di una Heimatsphäre che contempla in sé, insieme al senso più alto dello Humanitätsideal, le declinazioni più oscure o tragiche del nichilismo. L’arte è il luogo privilegiato i cui convergono le antinomie delle spirito, un’arte ‘morale’ e ‘antimorale’, morale per il rigore della forma, la verità dell’espressione che non può darsi senza l’esperienza profonda e radicale di ciò che solo apparentemente le si oppone, senza le estasi erotico-wagneriane di tanti personaggi manniani, senza le irrinunciabili componenti di dilettantismo, malattia e degenerazione, senza, dunque, le implicazioni ‘antimorali’ dell’arte stessa, origine del ‘dolore’ e della ‘grandezza’ che costituiscono la dignità e l’ambiguità dell’attività artistica. Per il ruolo preminente della forma e del rigore strutturale, per la sua specificità metafisica e la potenza dei suoi effetti, la musica è, per Mann, il paradigma, “il più sacro archetipo di ogni arte”, l’arte in cui “la morale diventa forma”.

Georg Bertram recently argued that a consistent and accomplished philosophy of art should consider not only the specific nature of art, but also its value as human practice. Moreover, he resorted to artistic improvisation in order to illustrate a characteristic aspect of the constitution of artworks: the self-referential relations implied in the artworks and shaping the artworks do not result from an alleged closure of the artwork’s form, but are negotiated locally, in relation to each individual artwork. Following this line of reasoning, and while offering arguments both in the context of contemporary analytical aesthetics as well as in reference to Michel De Certeau’s philosophy of everyday life and to philosophy of art of the Turin philosopher Luigi Pareyson, I will defend that “art” may be a particular way to look at and to develop human practices and that the link between human practices and art is provided by improvisation.
Improvisation is not only a particular artistic technique. Improvisation incorporates and genetically shows the specificity of autonomous art as well as the value of art, that is, the link between human practices and art as a specific human practice. Indeed, as I will explain, art both derives from and is a particular way to improvise (upon) human practices, i.e. to develop them in unprecedented and valuable ways. Accordingly, improvisation, as a specific artistic procedure, will be understood as that kind of artistic production in which the human practices art is based in come, as it were, exemplarily to the fore. Hence, improvisation can be understood as the paradigm of art as human practice: as I shall suggest, art begins with, and ends in, improvisation.

According to the orthodox view of Kant’s philosophy of music, Kant is the founder of musical formalism, the view that music is pure, contentless form, and appreciated as such. On this orthodox view, Kant is an innovator in philosophy of music, though his views are confused and sometimes contradictory. Sometimes, we are told, Kant indicates that music is a fine art and sometimes that it is merely an agreeable art. None of the orthodox position is correct. Kant’s views on music are familiar, even a little old fashioned for their time. His views are consistent. He believes that some music is fine art and that the fine arts
are imitative arts. Imitative arts have content, and Kant believes that at least some music has content. Our views on Kant’s philosophy of music ought to be thoroughly revised.

The relationship between music and emotions has been recognised since ancient times. After some brief historical reference to the way in which the question was addressed up to the Modern Age, the article focuses on the contemporary debate on musical expressiveness. In particular, three theories are taken into consideration : the ‘arousal theory’, that takes up the traditional idea of musical expressiveness depending on the feelings aroused in the listener ; the ‘contour theory’, that elaborates on the idea that music is able to express emotions thanks to the resemblance between music and human behaviour, and the ‘person theory’, which, by integrating
aspects of the first two proposals, reworks the 18th-century ‘expressivist’ model, arguing that there is no expressivity (not even musical expressivity) without a (maybe imaginary) subject expressing itself.

Stephen Davies defends an analysis of musical expressivity dubbed the 'contour theory.' In other work, Davies argues that hominin music could be as much as 500,000 years old. The musical expressivity debate is typically concerned with 'pure' (or 'absolute') music, taking examples from the Western art music canon as paradigmatic. I register some reservations about applying contour theory to musical expressivity in hominin prehistory, even though we might have reason to think that early musical activities were 'pure' insofar as they were wordless (e.g., utilising vocables, not lyrics) and not programmatic.

U radu se razmatraju stavovi koje američki estetičar Teodor Grejsik (Theodore Gracyk) izlaže u knjizi 'Listening to Popular Music' o načinu na koji popularna muzika može predstavljati simbol za određeni odnos čoveka prema društvu. U radu pokušavam da pokažem da u šestom poglavlju pomenute knjige nije uspostavljen jasan teorijski odnos između Grejsikovih teza o odgovarajućem slušalačkom pristupu popularnoj muzici i njegovih predloga o tome kakve društvene vrednosti simbolizuje popularna muzika. U cilju traženja odgovarajućeg rešenja za ovaj problem, u radu povezujem Grejsikove stavove iz šestog poglavlja sa njegovim tezama o odnosu između estetskih i političkih vrednosti iz drugog poglavlja pomenute knjige.

En sus escritos musicales más destacados, Pierre Souvtchinsky alude de diversas formas a un mecanismo de desdoblamiento y concentración en el ámbito perceptivo. Estos conceptos y la reflexión sobre el tiempo musical (cronos), cuestión central en el filósofo, aparecen de manera particular en sus textos dedicados a Igor Stravinsky. En la primera parte de este artículo se expone y analiza dicho mecanismo, hasta ahora inexplorado en el pensamiento de Souvtchin-sky. Tratando de articular estos conceptos y el modo en que el filósofo aborda la música, el tiempo musical y la figura del compositor, en la segunda parte se propone la aplicación de los mismos para iluminar algunas particularidades del pensamiento musical de Stravinsky. Por último, ponderando la posible categorización de este mecanismo como principio estructural de la percepción, se sugiere la hipótesis de que pueda constituir una herramienta novedosa en el análisis del pensamiento musical.

RESUMEN Este artículo tiene como objetivo hacer una comparativa, desde el ámbito de la reeexión estética, entre la polifonía de Johann Sebastian Bach y la polifonía de Lars von Trier, entre la obra para órgano (de música sacra) «Ich ruf'zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ» (para dos claves y pedal –tres voces–), del Orgelbüchlein BWV 639 del compositor barroco y la materialización polifónica de la imagen audiovisual en la primera parte de la película Nymphomaniac de Lars von Trier, concretamente en el capítulo 5, titulado «The little Organ School». En este capítulo, y a colación de la narración de la protagonista del lm, Joe, se muestra la pantalla dividida en tres partes (tres voces) para explicar tres experiencias sexuales de la vida de la protagonista. El paralelismo entre música e imagen nos permitirán entender la relación del lenguaje musical y del lenguaje de la imagen en el director danés.

In her article "Technology and music: ethical and moral issues", Fol focuses on three technological innovations that present moral-vs. ethical value conflicts causing massive changes to the music profession: 1) the ability to send money easily in a fast and reliable way through the internet, with the entire transaction taking no more than a few clicks; 2) the emergence of paid "calls for scores", announced on easy-to-design simple websites; and 3) reliable online sound file streaming. Fol examines how the fast-paced technological development has allowed for the mental separation of the illegal consumption from its effects-namely the impossibility of professionals to make a living and the consequent decline of the music profession. Fol discusses the issues from different philosophical viewpoints on morality and proposes a moral code for independent professional musicians.

When discussing the topic of music and philosophy as a musicologist, we cross a threshold and take another direction. Limited by a musicological perspective, we are often tempted to have a reductionist attitude, leaning towards synthesis and simplification. Crossing this threshold to reach the philosophy of music, we head for the quest of the nature of the work and of our own musical experience, in which explanations not only do not reduce the thought, but may continue, at least theoretically, to infinity.
This impulse however is very quickly stopped by the unprovable, the unspeakable or, according to French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch, by "something that does not exist and yet is the most important thing of all the important things, the only one that is worth saying and the only one that in fact we can’t say!”  The philosophy of music allows us to seek this Presque-rien which precisely separates musicology from the philosophy of music, and which immerses us in the search for the deeper meaning of the work, faced with which we are like Giacinto Scelsi at his piano, stubbornly hitting a key and waiting for the quintessence of its essence or the meaning of meaning to appear.
Musicology, by saying Presque-tout, can never cross the threshold of this Presque-rien which is missing in the ultimate understanding of a work, can never elucidate the mystery, the Charm which emanates from a musical work and which, in fact, affects us first.
Vladimir Jankélévitch himself, who was both a practitioner of music and a philosopher, has followed through his writings the path between the grammarian and the philosopher, in other words, has covered this long distance of Presque-rien.

In 1870, Wilhelm Richard Wagner (1813-1883) wrote an essay to celebrate the centennial of Beethoven's birth. In this essay Wagner made the case that music is, unlike any other object we create or are attentive to in experience , in an immediate analogical relationship with the activity of the Schopenhauerian "will" and is always enlivened. By drawing on this idea, we can not only conceive of music as in an immediate analogical relationship with our personal experience, but as perhaps the only object of cognition that is in a constant state of personal vitality. It is by that very continuous vitality that it can return us to our own personhood with deeper insight and perspective. The essay concludes by exploring how attending to the musical object as a spiritual (existen-tial) exercise might reconnect us to our roots in sensus communis, educate us on our common personhood, and play an ethical role in our lives.

Este artículo pretende reconstruir la relación entre Nietzsche y Richard Wagner a través del análisis de los conceptos que el primero de ellos toma de Arthur Schopenhauer y que ve reflejados en el segundo. Schopenhauer veía en la Música no solo la máxima expresión del Arte sino la única disciplina completamente independiente del mundo de la representación. Nietzsche toma estas ideas y las lleva un paso más lejos, hasta el punto de considerar la Música como algo necesario para hacer despertar el elemento dionisíaco que nos permita revitalizar una cultura cada vez más decadente. Wagner se presentará en su vida como la figura del genio kantiano capaz de provocar esa revitalización.

Ali je danes o glasbi sploh mogoče razmišljati tako radikalno metafizično, kot je to še znal Arthur Schopenhauer na prelomu prejšnjega stoletja, ko je zapisal drzno misel, da bi "glasba ... lahko obstajala, četudi sveta sploh ne bi bilo"? 1 Ognjeviti zaljubljenec v modrost v svoji filozofiji namreč ni izpričal le vere v popolno neodvisnost glasbe od pojavljajočega se sveta, kolikor sega onkraj časa in prostora, temveč tudi daljnosežni uvid, da glasba presega <übergehen> same ideje, kolikor neposredno zrcali <abbilden> Resnico. Po njem glasba v "najsplošnejšem jeziku izreka notranje bistvo, nasebstvo sveta" <das Ansich der Welt>, 2 ki ga sam pojmuje kot vseobvladujočo voljo. Zato mu je kot kakšnemu daljnemu Platonovemu učencu kljub svojskemu pojmovanju platonskih idej kot neposrednih objektivacij skrivnostne absolutne volje, po katerih se venomer znova udejanja vidni svet, "učinkovanje glasbe toliko močnejše in prodornejše kakor učinkovanje drugih umetnosti, kajti medtem ko one govorijo samo o senci, glasba govori o bistvu <Wesen>." 3 Čeprav današnjemu glasboslovcu sredi kopice bolj ali manj domiselnih esejev in nadrobnih razčlemb take misli verjetno že na prvi pogled zvenijo tuje in nenavadno, se je zaradi njihove radikalne ontološke zavzetosti vendarle vredno vprašati naslednje: Kako je z glasbo in njenim razmerjem do sveta? Od kod glasba kot taka sploh prejema svoj obstoj? Kako lahko glasba "izreka notranje bistvo sveta"? Ali more glasba sploh kaj izrekati? Mar se pri takem vpraševanju ne znajdemo tudi sami na meji izrekljivega? In kaj navsezadnje osmišlja skrivnostno izrekanje glasbe, o čemer govori nenavadni filozof iz Danziga? Zgolj slepa, vase se zapletajoča volja sama? Vseobvladujoče hotenje kot poslednji temelj sveta? Ali pa se za vsem tem povsem nepričakovano skriva še nekaj drugega, usodnejšega in nedoumljivo drugačnega? Nekaj, česar se nadejamo, čeprav je neizrekljivo in neuglasbljivo? Nekaj, v kar lahko upamo in verujemo prav zato, ker je za sleherno mišljenje nedosegljivo in nerazpoložljivo? Nekaj, kar zmore zliti tisočere glasove v en sam odmev v zamaknjeni tišini ugrabljenega mistikovega srca?

The twentieth century saw the abandonment of traditional tonality in music. Later in the century, the American composer George Rochberg controversially used passages of tonality in such works as his String Quartet No. 3. This raises the question: is Rochberg regressive in using historical forms of music? Or is he, in fact, himself a modernist in his originality? Though the answer to this is unclear, it seems evident from the musical compositions themselves—as well as the other writings of the composers—that musical style does not determine modernism so much as the composers’ philosophy of the development of music.

Il mito di Beethoven prende corpo negli ambienti in cui Biagio Marin visse e si formò, fra Gorizia, Trieste, Firenze e Vienna nei primi decenni del Novecento, finendo per costituire un importante elemento d’ispirazione della sua stessa opera poetica.

"Carter's music poses struggles of opposition, for instance in timbre (Double Concerto), space (String Quartet No. 3) or pulse (String Quartet No. 5). His preference for the all-interval tetrachords, 4–Z15 [0, 1, 4, 6] and 4–Z29 [0, 1, 3, 7], is also well known. From these facets of Carter's music, I develop a narrative interpretation of his Petrarch sonnet–inspired solo flute piece, Scrivo in Vento (1991). Specifically, I forge narrative pathways by imagining the two tetrachords as active agents opposed in competition. Previous Scrivo analyses (Capuzzo 2002; Childs 2006) stress continuity by revealing Q-transforms and common-note voice leading between the tetrachords. While acknowledging such features, my analysis emphasises oppositional struggle by tracing the tetrachords as separate entities which cooperate and conflict as they manoeuvre to outdo each other.

The analysis advances three theses: (1) it guides listening to and reading Scrivo in a way which resonates with Carter's concern for the aesthetics of oppositional struggle, his choice of a sonnet as inspiration and his affinity for all-interval tetrachords; (2) it shows that music-analytical detail can be organised into dramatic narratives by (a) projecting dramatic roles onto categories asserted by a formal theory and (b) treating the formal theory's relations metaphorically as actions performed by each role as the musical work unfolds; and (3) it shows how detailed pc-set analysis can support a Heraclitean view of music: a flux of opposing forces seeking and resisting unity."

Peter Kivy has argued that scholars of the music of Dimitri Shostakovich are misguided when they make interpretations that attribute complex extra-musical content to works of his that bear no indications of such content, such as a title or an explicitly announced programme. Upon Kivy’s account, such works should rather be approached in terms of absolute music. In this paper, I show some decisive weaknesses in this critique. Drawing on the relevant philosophical literature, I examine Shostakovich’s use of musical quotations—an essential feature of his compositions that Kivy ignores—and the significant role these play in constructing the extra-musical content of his works. Relying, in part, on recent research on authorial intentions, I also argue that the criteria Kivy presents for the reclassification of, seeming cases of, absolute music as programme music is too strict. Such reclassifications need not be accompanied by an explanation as to why the composer has not provided any direct public indication of the content of the work, as Kivy insists.

Nel 1949 Wittgenstein stava lavorando all’ultima parte delle Ricerche filosofiche e durante una conversazione con Maurice Drury disse: «Nel libro mi è impossibile dire una sola parola su tutto quello che la musica ha significato nella mia vita. Come posso sperare allora di essere capito?».
In realtà l’importanza della musica è testimoniata dal fatto che negli scritti di Wittgenstein è presente una notevole quantità di osservazioni filosofiche e di riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale.
Il libro di Piero Niro propone un’indagine sul significato di queste osservazioni e affronta il problema wittgensteiniano dei «limiti del linguaggio» collegandolo alla crisi del linguaggio musicale determinata dalle avanguardie nel Novecento. Da questa indagine possono scaturire le ipotesi per la definizione di una estetica musicale wittgensteiniana.

Dalla Presentazione di Brian McGuinness:
[...] Nell’interessante trattazione di questi e altri argomenti, Piero Niro nota che il conservatorismo musicale di Wittgenstein mal si concilia con le idee del filosofo sulla libertà creativa, per quanto riguarda le regole del linguaggio. Il suo pensiero (ma non il suo gusto) sembra intonato piuttosto alle idee e al lavoro di Schönberg.
[...] A mio giudizio la lezione più importante che traiamo dal libro di Piero Niro è la dimostrazione della capacità di Wittgenstein di stabilire in ogni àmbito, in ogni mondo, un discorso appropriato, capace di verificare il senso e la mancanza di senso (o l’equivalenza tra le due cose). Non esiste una regola assoluta, né un modello matematico o fisico necessario ed esclusivo. Soprattutto, nessuna teoria. Ma anche il fatto che non c’è una teoria onnicomprensiva, allora, deve essere stabilito caso per caso.

(Excerpt from Foreword by Brian McGuinness:
[…] In his interesting discussion of these and related topics, Piero Niro points out that Wittgenstein’s conservatism as regards music sits ill with his ideas about creative freedom as regards language-rules. His thought (but not his taste) corresponds with the doctrines and practice of Schönberg.
[…] To my own mind the most important lesson to be learnt from Piero Niro’s book is the success with which (as he shows) Wittgenstein establishes within each area, each world as I have hinted above, a discourse appropriate to it, which guarantees its own sense and nonsense (or the equivalent). There is no single rule, no model in mathematics or natural science, that has to be followed. Above all no theory. But that there is none is not a theory either – it has to be seen from case to case.)

Table of Contents: Presentazione di Brian McGuinness - I. Introduzione - II. I riferimenti alla notazione musicale, al «linguaggio delle note» e al «pensiero musicale» presenti nel Tractatus logico-philosophicus e nei Quaderni 1914-1916 - III. Osservazioni filosofiche e riflessioni estetiche sul linguaggio musicale negli scritti successivi al Tractatus logico-philosophicus - IV. Il problema dei limiti del linguaggio e la crisi scaturita dalle ricerche delle avanguardie musicali nel Novecento - V. Annotazioni per un’estetica musicale wittgensteiniana - Osservazioni conclusive - Bibliografia delle opere citate - Indice dei nomi

Abstract:
I propose a paper presentation dedicated to the performance of Saint Teresa of Avila (1515-1582), her person, life and work, in Spanish contemporary classical music as result of a poiesis of Christian mysticism and body politics. Both processes can be studied departing from the music based on the writings of the nun, and her representations as cultural, political and mystical icon. This research work requires a theoretical and practical knowledge, not only of historical musicology, musical analysis and theory, but also of ethnomusicology and performance studies. However, that this is a preliminary study, really a kind of “Directions for further research”, and such does not have a specific argument.
There exists an extensive bibliography dedicated to the person and work of Saint Teresa of Avila, but a comparative study related to the reception of her person and work in musical creation has not been carried out. In the same way, the presence of musical and speculative practice in the work of the nun have been documented, but not her representation and resignification in later musical creation, or the possible relation of this phenomenon with the institutionalisation of this woman as cultural Hispanic icon.

Key word: Performance, St. Teresa of Avila, Body, Mysticism, Music.

RESEARCH NOTES PROCESS (brief series of experimental essays):http://susancampos.wordpress.com/category/estudios-de-performance/

I saggi raccolti in questo volume discutono alcuni temi della filosofia della musica nel Novecento : dalla presenza del mito di Beethoven nella cultura centroeuropea, all’interpretazione delle rapide metamorfosi dei materiali sonori posteriori alla crisi del sistema tonale, al proposito di individuare nella musica una peculiare esperienza della temporalità. L’esame critico coinvolge i criteri d’interpretazione dell’opera musicale fondati su paradigmi quali la fenomenologia, l’ermeneutica, il pensiero dialettico, la teoria della ricezione.