Philosophy Thread

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by Quijote

Hi Mambo,
Just to take one passage from your posting above, I'm not sure that is quite the case. It will be hard to me to locate precisely its locus, but I recall that Adorno mentions that art can have a functional purpose, or perhaps 'ritualistic purpose' would be more apt a term.

hi Quijote - i don't doubt if Adorno may have said art can have functional or ritualistic purposes - i could have been too
hard on Adorno - i don't know all of his writings.
And i appreciate, Felix, more details about Adorno. On the subject of short sentences or quotes, St. Oscar was a master of them.
Some of his short quotes are also hard to interpret and i wish Oscar
may have explained more of what he meant.
I recall, Felix, that you had used short sentences in earlier times, and may have been embarrassed. If they did the trick in conveying ideas,
who cares. I think some people use longer sentences to just
'inflate' their arguments, or sound more erudite.
They sacrifice understandability for overly florid language.
I always feel, why use a $5 word when a 5-cent one will do as well.

back to your note Quijote about Adorno saying art can have functional purposes - it would be closer to what is often perceived
as an integral part of the German character - if something is not
functional or useful, what good is it?
At first i wondered about "The Tragedy of German Music" thread, but
i think it was more of a political nature than music.
It is surprising there is as much German art as there is, so the previous broad-brush statement about Germans is not too accurate.
The French are often perceived as more artistic and less utilitarian than the Germans. Also inaccurate, i'd guess.

When i listen to Paul Hindemith's music, it is so artistic and of
pleasing character, that i never think of any functional purpose behind
it. He may have written pieces that were intended to be functional - if a fellow Hindemithian fan can point one out, please do.

that's my $3.22 worth, Mambo

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by Mambo

hi Quijote - i don't doubt if Adorno may have said art can have functional or ritualistic purposes - i could have been too hard on Adorno - i don't know all of his writings.

Me neither, Mambo. I read he left us some 9,000 pages or so of writings, with a good third dedicated to music. We have work to do!

Originally Posted by Mambo

The French are often perceived as more artistic and less utilitarian than the Germans. Also inaccurate, i'd guess.

I live in France (have done so for quite a few years now) : pretty inaccurate, yes, but still a nation of moaning, cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Hah! Love 'em and hate 'em at the same time.

Originally Posted by Mambo

that's my $3.22 worth, Mambo

Good money well spent, and always engaging. Une bise de ma part pour vous, Mambo. Allez, pour Felix aussi ! XXX

[Héctor]

Where are we, when we hear music?

Theodor Adorno is one of two philosophers whom I would like to cite by means of introduction. In his 1949 publication Philosophie der neuen Musik, Adorno quotes the warning of his friend Eduard Steuermann that we are in danger of forgetting ‘the
experience of music’. This is equally true for the ‘lay’ listener who, as Adorno puts it, ‘only desires music which babbles on as an incidental accompaniment to his work’, as for the expert, whose knowledge is in danger of becoming seasoned pedantry. Adorno: “While he can manipulate every piece of counterpoint, he has long since lost sight of that counterpoint’s purpose”. Adorno’s remedy is that we as listeners focus on the ‘individual work of art’ accepting the fact that, in doing so, our knowledge of general music theory or music history fails to serve us adequately. He realises that his proposition departs drastically from the normal tools used to understand ‘die Sache [i.e.
‘the matter’], wie sie an und für sich selbst ist’, for it implies much more than analysis, commentary and criticism. Nevertheless, Adorno dismisses the idea that ‘general, tacitly accepted’ conditions can be placed on the compositional process.

While Adorno looks for the presence of a piece of music in the ‘object’, to use the word he himself chose, Peter Sloterdijk chooses another point of departure, via a variation of Hannah Ahrendt’s question ‘Where are we, when we think?’ Sloterdijk asks: ‘Where are we, when we hear music?’ His idea is that we hear music before we are even born: the heartbeat and the voice of our mothers. As a foetus we anticipate life as a ‘sound world’, but once we are born we experience it as a ‘crash world’. This has the result of our ear’s longing to return to the womb. Music thus establishes a link between two aspirations: to move towards the world and to escape it. Sloterdijk links this idea with two classes of music, one which turns its back on the world and one which embraces it. An answer to the question of where we are when we hear music is only possible, says Sloterdijk, ‘when music as a whole might be traced back to an unmistakeable basic experience’. He then formulates a reply to the question of the presence of music: ‘Musik ist nur im hörenden Subjekt’ (‘Music exists only in the one who listens’). This does not mean to say that music itself could be of limited importance, for the reverse is also true: ‘Das hörende Subjekt ist nur in der Musik.’

Adorno and Sloterdijk are, of course, only two of many philosophers who are relevant to our thoughts about music. To say that their contributions don’t add up to a single musical philosophy, even regarding establishing the presence of music, would be the
understatement of the century. In fact, all we seem to be able to say for certain is that works of art are ‘situational’, to use the rather inelegant but clear neologism introduced by management experts Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard in 1969. When a work of art is present, this postulates a situation in which the work may be named present. To elaborate on Adorno, we know that the music in such a situation plays an important role and, to elaborate on Sloterdijk, we know that the listener also plays an essential part.

Reality seems to confirm the idea that works of art are situational. Strictly speaking, art works like this: someone invites somebody else by saying ‘listen to this’. Or ‘look at this’. You listen, you look. Your senses are open, in the case of music not just your ears, in the case of visual art not just your eyes. Inevitably, art establishes itself differently on each occasion: we cannot step in the same river twice, to cite Heraclites.

Hans Fidom, Music as Installation Art

[Felix]

So much interesting mail! I'll certainly come back to it. I have to write personal mail which I have neglected. Slow writer.

A presto,
Felix

[Mambo]

Originally Posted by Quijote

Me neither, Mambo. I read he left us some 9,000 pages or so of writings, with a good third dedicated to music. We have work to do!


I live in France (have done so for quite a few years now) : pretty inaccurate, yes, but still a nation of moaning, cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Hah! Love 'em and hate 'em at the same time.


Good money well spent, and always engaging. Une bise de ma part pour vous, Mambo. Allez, pour Felix aussi ! XXX

Like that first note on Adorno's number of pages.
I may have that number in diary notes - but Adorno is probably
more thought provoking .

On the work to do - the number of pieces of music i need to
revisit and listen to for the first time are at least 9000.

On the French - i don't think they feel as cozy with Americans or any
other non-French nationality, as say the British or Germans do.

[Felix]

I still have ideas to add about Adorno but I'm getting old and tired, but they will come. My age, 72, is not considered excessively old now, but I feel like I'm 2000 years old, though there is still a 16 year old in me.

I remember writing about the relevance of our experience of life as whole, philosophic. historical, social etc (in Adorno) and Quixote then wrote to say he was reading an essay which stuck to musical content without these external references. I can assure you they are always present in his mind even if not present in analytical elucidations and I'll try when I get a chance to make this clearer. I'm reading the notes for a book he never completed on the reproduction of music and here he is often concerned just with the structure of works. The wider historical context comes in for a moment via Wagner's notes on interpreting Beethoven. Wagner thinks Beethoven's orchestration was often faulty as he had inherited the bygone orchestra of Haydn and Mozart which was no longer adequate for expressing his musical ideas. Wagner cites many passages in which he sees these defects and does a lot of touching up. Adorno agrees with him up to a point but thinks he meddles too much and that in some cases it might be better just to stick to the 'bad' orchestration

In correspondence Alan Berg greatly admired Adorno's all-inclusiveness and said he thought Adorno would achieve the highest level in philosophic interpretation, but he was worried about the articles Adorno published or wanted to publish on works just performed or about to be performed, as he wanted some easier publicity to promote his works. He told Adorno that most readers would not understand his articles. Berg had to put up with very famous conductors distorting the contents of Wozzeck, but he was pleased all the same, despite the inadequacies, that his work was being performed at all and receiving mostly enthusiastic applause - until the Nazis came.

Scott has gone into hiding for the moment because he is incredibly busy with composing and conducting. He was reading Adorno's Negative Dialectics and I was half expecting him to write that eventually the book was getting on his nerves. On the contrary, he had read the book twice and was beginning it for a third time and described its contents as 'fabulous." At this rate he will be able to teach me something about Adorno.
**

About the French. I have a real crush on them and everything French. I lived there for two years and left . the Namibian wilds to go to Paris because I wanted to read the poetry of Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud. I met a swarthy Rimbaud there who wanted to make me into his Verlaine, but I was too bourgewoose to run out of cafés without paying. - I knew the Parisians had a reputation for rudenss. Maybe this is true on the streets of other big cities. I have heard similar things about New York. In London it was above all in Soho that the people who worked there - as I did - had a brusque no-nosense attitude. I got to feel the Parisian rudeness and as I learnt more French I was able to point at the rude person and say, "You know you are famous - yes, you, you in person! The whole world speaks about your rudeness." They were quite disconcerted. - Eventually I tuned into the Parisian tone of voice and then I became just one of them.

I went back for holidays to Paris afterwards. Holidays can go one way or the other and be deceptive. On one such holiday I struck lucky and met only enchanting people on the streets and everywhere. I think the French could feel my enthusiasm for them and this may have helped. I went to see a play in the big theatre - I forget its name - and sat in the cheapest seats up in the gods, front row. Three French students sat next to me and were absolutely fascinated and enthusiastic about their conversation with me. We went out of the theatre together and I accompanied them to the entrance of the Metro they had to take. They started going down the stairs, then one of them turned around, ran back, threw his arms around me, embraced and kissed me. - Later I thought, that is the chance of a lifetime gone, but maybe it's better to lose these magical chances, as you don't know what the reality would have been like.

Yours,
Felix