Where is the Meaning in an Elegant Piece for Piano? With Dr. Antonella Di Giulio!
Mozart & Haydn - Music from the 18th Century
If you listen to a song or you are accompanying a song, you know for sure that the meaning of the music is connected to the meaning of the lyrics. When you play some romantic pieces, like for example a Chopin鈥檚 Ballade, you might find out that the music is actually telling a story.
But where is the meaning in a piece of music written in the 18th century for keyboard only?
Is that music meaningless? Or was this type of music only composed for solely entertainment purposes?
In this Livestream, we will discuss the difficult topic of the relationship between music and meaning!
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Hello Antonella! I have just seen your yesterday workshop about the Meaning of Music. It's very, very interesting and insightful. When you were talking about Wittgenstein, I just remembered the great influence of Arthur Schopenhauer in his philosophy. I think that Schopenhauer wrote some of the most inspired pages about Music in the third part of his main book: The World as Will and Representation. I know his approach is very abstract but I find it extremely interesting.
According to Schopenhauer, Will is the essence of the World, the essence of Reality. But what Will does mean? You can say Life, but that is too general, vague. So..., Will is the energy of all beings, and it is concreted in the struggle of survival, in the tension of each desire that looks for its satisfaction, in the way that emotions lead our actions... As you can see, we cannot express clearly, with words, what Will is. We could only say something poorly close to it. Will is the raw material, the primary "humus" of the movement, life, action... of every single existence stuff, from a star to a simple insect, from a flower to a human being...
And now we can talk about our subject. Music is, Schopenhauer says, the most direct expression of Will, because both have the same structure: movement, tension and resolution, desire and satisfaction, and all of that under the frame of Time. So, beyond conceptual language, in a primary way of expression, pre-linguistic and partially unconscious, human beings are passionately attracted and influenced by music we are, of course, possessed by the essence of the world. We are a concretion of the Will as well, very special indeed but, whether we like it or not, we are essentially Will. And, this is one of the main key points, we know and live all of that, through Music, under the beauty and distance that aesthetic experience brings. In fact, Music is the most beautiful and effective consolation of human life; since a Life that is in its nature Will, there is no place for hope, rationality, sense or whatever (Schopenhauer is one of the most pessimistic philosophers in history).
In conclusion, Music is the language of Will, the most direct expression of Will, that means, according to Schopenhauer, Music is the language of Life and, because of that, is privileged language of Emotions, Desires, Love, Lost... in a pre-linguistic way or, if you prefer, beyond whatever conceptual or rational explanation. That would be the reason of its universal and seductive power.
Well, thank you Antonella for suggesting these kind of philosophical subjects in your workshop.
Apart from that, a question, which is the deadline to upload a video in the week four of the challenge?
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Juan Carlos Olite thank you for your insights!
I was interviewing yesterday prof. Klein about musical meaning and he came up to a similar conclusion using Lacan鈥檚 philosophy foe the basis of his inquiry.
I am not sure we really have a deadline for the challenge, but I assume it would be somehow a flexible thing: it is an unexpressed deadline in the next few days
. Feel free
to upload a video whenever you are ready.
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Antonella Di Giulio Thank you so much, Antonella! I haven't read any of him yet. I will look for this book "Music and the crisis of modern subject", it promises to be very interesting.
I am not sure in the case of Lacan, but it is very clear Schopenhauer influence on Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Thomas Mann and, maybe here there is a connection, Freud.
Ahhhh, I have just found this interview on Youtube! I will see it later...
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Juan Carlos Olite I find that many philosophers and semioticians reached very similar conclusions and yet all labeled their findings with different words. The differences in the 20th century are subtle.... and the thought process seems to evolve from one thinker to the other.
As a starting point for my inquiry years ago, I had read a lot about the open work and Umberto Eco. And then I figured that Eco changed his mind quite a lot over the years and that is a good thing because the definition of "open work" was very far from a musical work.
While I was reading Prof. Klein's book I had the feeling that more than inspired by the Saussurian linguistic model, Lacan had the Peircein triadic model in mind.
Philosophy and semiotics are such fascinating subjects...
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Antonella Di Giulio I have enjoyed a lot your interview with Michael Klein. Very interesting and funny at the same time. I am very intriguing about his new book, what a fascinating subject: the music, or rather the absence of music, in the apocalyptic movies... Thank you so much, Antonella, for discovering us all these ideas.
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Thank you for sharing. There is space for human being, from many points of view (composer, listener, performer......also the listener become performer when push "the play button", but in a different way, it's like asking what you are looking for when you listen to music). Music is a complex network of relationships that creates relationships, probably from a hermeneutic point of view. I think that every question needs an answer and the time to do that. I like to think to Music as variation science.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESRwx36lvOM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn9Sffjo4WU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxmSJrzwNFk-
Massimo maj thanks!
Sometimes we might just look for answers to the wrong questions.
:)
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Massimo maj Honestly, I do not like any of the videos... Brendel maybe it is closer to what is in the score and maybe Gulda. Glenn Gould has just his own way of reading the music that is very far from what is in the score.
If you would take some of the Brendel interpretation and some Gulda, your piece would sound amazing.
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Massimo maj Watch this for example https://youtu.be/Kvk-X5TrCDw
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Antonella Di Giulio Thank you, I really appreciate it.
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