Some thoughts on the aesthetics of music

Aesthetics

Nicholas Cook: Music, Performance, Meaning

Hammermeister German Aesthetic tradition

Musical form and the listener:

When showing the same piece to different listeners and are asked to identify any objective form of structure.

“… they chose not to be interested in the objective structure and instead to focus upon its psychological consequences”

“… several listeners would make a comment at exactly the same time… In such cases, and despite their discrepancies, the listeners´ responses seem to have shared a certain evolution.”

Thus is it possible, through these experiments, to generate a piece of art that arouses the same passions in the soul at an exact same place or bar and reach an equal response? From here, is it possible to create the perfect art that has a communal feeling and psychological response?

I believe music to be the highest form of beauty. Now this comes from Kant´s view that the highest form of beauty is indeed the human body, for it receives its beauty through its manifestation of a purpose. But since music comes from man, but at the same time, like Thomas Mann pointed out, a work of art has its own existence in the mind of the artist way before its creation, it could be considered as an extension of man. Therefore a piece of music does have a purpose, even if it is that of existing, and can educate the aesthetic soul through its unreachable source of pleasure that keeps fading away.

Even further, if a work of art is considered as independent from his creator, it has some metaphysical connotations that make us think of this piece as the free beauty (no concept of what it is meant to be) and also the adherent beauty (concept of a particular purpose) of Kant. It does not have any secure concept we can handle, but at the same time, because it arouses emotions, it serves the purpose of transmitting a feeling, and in the case of great pieces of music, even changing the state of the soul.

 Music achieves beauty, perfection and sensual pleasure for Mendelssohn. Now for Kant the aesthetic pleasure of beauty does not incite desire but frees us all from such longings. When we repeat the same piece of music over and over again is because we cannot identify the sources of pleasure, for it has no concept that we can later relate to, and thus we go back to Baumgarten´s clear and confused cognitions. This cognition is basically the idea that we know it exists but we cannot list the elements that sum up the whole. This communal “je ne sais quoi”, this later subjective universality present in all of us creates a balance between the inner self and the world, where at some point the same feeling and opinion will eventually combine.

Music performance:

As to Schenker´s views that during a musical performance there has to be an intelligent connection within the structure; that say, if I understood correctly, a musical phrase that is repeated has to have certain connection with the first in order to have coherence. But Cook´s experiments demonstrate that listeners that heard that repeated theme in another bar, (talking on psychological terms) clearly felt that it did not achieve the same effect as the first one did. For it has now become a matter of spatialization. And it is therefore a paradox to play these connections but at the same time maintaining the structure of it. Diversity on playing a piece depends on the amount of detail the performer puts in. But why should a repeated theme sound exactly the same as the first, if it has a different meaning in space and memory? A piece of music that is performed is in constant evolution, it is not a painting, and the sounds are soon extinguished into the air. To understand the connections is good, for the performer will be able to demonstrate a sophisticated musical intellect that will surely elevate music up to a position of pure beauty. But these connections are already in the music, and therefore need not to be constantly remembered; the physical notes will do this. The job of the performer is then to provide, like a theorist, a musical analysis that (which according to Cook, if we link this to musical performance instead of actual theory) is a satisfying interpretation of the composition.

Schenker, influenced by Schopenhauer’s views that music was a means of escaping the turbulence of the will and attaining a calm awareness of the world of ideas, said that a true artist must therefore “master all storm and agitation, all turbulence high and low”, or if not he will be a victim of his own will. This contemplative awareness of the Idea will allow the artist to look far beyond what it is mere appearance. For performance means, through the control of his own will, just like Nature controls and arouses storms or waves, he will control the reaction his interpretation has over men. Certain serenity in spirit is always adequate but the total control of feelings might though, with forced tension, derive in the failure of provoking any spontaneous emotion, since a music interpretation must, as an ethereal evolution thing that it is, attain certain levels of spontaneity for it to be a living art that rises and then dies.