Music, Ontology and the Need for History: A Critical Discussion

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
Lisa Giombini

Abstract Although an ontological approach to musical works has dominated analytic aesthetics for almost fifty years, criticisms have recently started to spread in the philosophical literature. Contestants blame mainstream musical ontology for lacking historical awareness, questioning the cogency of metaphysical proposals that are substantially essentialist with regard to our musical concepts. My aim in this paper is to address this accusation by engaging the historicist critics in a sustained debate. I argue that even if the arguments based on history and sociology turn out to be accurate, this may not be enough of a reason to abandon the ontological project altogether. Ontology and history do not necessarily clash. Moreover, historical-sociological examinations do not fulfil our philosophical interest in music. I conclude by making a plea to “historical ontology,” a perspective that does not reject ontology but closely connects it to the dialectic between historical research and aesthetic interest.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
José Luís Postiga

When faced with the artistic-musical concepts developed in the second half of the twentieth century, it is common to observe them from the perspective of the scientific advances they have promoted or resulted from, the abstract organizations in which they are based, the aesthetic principles they create or and almost always fall within the individuality of the interpretation present in the creative act and its representativeness, regardless of the support in which it presents itself. Paradoxically, some of the main classical musical works written in the last quarter of the twentieth century resulted from the musicological study and/or musical representation of concepts, rites, religious practices representative of different cultures of the West and especially the East. In this sense, throughout the present article will be addressed works by composers of Western classical music, such as the case of Jonathan Harvey and Tristan Murail, characteristics of the musical currents that fit, from serialism to spectralism, as well as acoustic and electronic casts, which result. reinterpretations of religious practices of Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as sound behaviors of the communicative practice of peoples, such as the songs and instruments of Tibet and Mongolia.


Author(s):  
Pavel G. Shinkevich ◽  

This article is devoted to the study of musical text in the context of the Plato ontology. Our task is to show the process of cognitive comprehension of a musical text as an ontological and hermeneutic reflection. It is fundamentally important for the author to become acquainted with two basic philoso-phical positions, showing fundamentally opposite views on the musical ontology as a whole. To reveal the existence of a musical text at the ontological and hermeneutic levels, we need to develop the neces-sary tools to “subtract” the authentic meanings that underlie the creation of the creator of the text. In the context of the problem under study, we will get acquainted with the various ontological positions of philosophers such as Peter Kivy, Jerome Levinson and other thinkers. Observing, for example, the invisible controversy of Kiwi and Levinson, we can track two radically opposite approaches to the study of musical text. Developing the position of classical Platonism that musical compositions are discovered rather than created, Peter Kivy shows us musical works as discovered eternal types. The opposite position is that of Jerome Levinson, showing a musical composition as a soluble idea, which lies in the potentiality of the author. This approach criticizes the idea of combining musical creations with Platonic universals (Kivy), arguing, on the contrary, about the author’s onto-logical principle. Choosing one of the approaches to understanding the authentic intent of the author’s text, we need to establish the primary and secondary levels of reflection. Given the direct relationship between the author and the interpreter of the text, it is important for us to identify the ontological conditions for the emergence of the text as the primary level of reflective immersion. The level of hermeneutic exist-ence, which implies the conditions and variability of the musical variant of the text, we will attribute to second-order reflection. Thus, in the context of the Plato ontology, it is important for us to identify the uniqueness of the historical text and show the self-existence of its existence. In this regard, the author comes to the con-clusion that the moment of birth of the text is in intuitive experience as an eternal idea that does not depend on anything and does not go anywhere. This level is the most basic, since the fact of fixing the idea of the text in direct graphics is secondary, and having recognized the graphics, the transcriptor creates the interpretation-thing of the idea, just trying to establish similarity as the principle of com-munication. An attempt to establish this connection in the form of a musical interpretation is multivari-ate and coincides with the original idea only partially. As a result, at the hermeneutic level, scoring of musical notations enlivens the musical being of the text, but at the same time alienates us from under-standing its original idea.


Author(s):  
Julia Staffel

This chapter is about two kinds of lies, knowledge lies and group lies, which are considered to be interestingly different from typical lies. Typically, lies are told by an individual, and they are intended to convince their addressee of a false claim. By contrast, in telling a knowledge lie, the liar does not intend to deceive the addressee into believing a false claim. Instead, the liar intends to prevent the addressees from knowing, but not necessarily from believing, some true claim. Group lies are lies that are told by a group, such as a company, a government, or your knitting circle. Group lies are unlike typical lies, because they are not straightforwardly related to lies told by individuals who are members of the lying group. For each type of lie, I give a more rigorous characterization, then discuss why this kind of lie deserves special philosophical attention, and lastly provide some critical discussion of the accounts of each type of lie that have been proposed in the philosophical literature.


2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marek Tamm ◽  
Eugen Zeleňák

AbstractThis article proposes to identify the conceptual structure guiding Frank Ankersmit’s philosophy of history. We argue that philosophical analysis of history consists in Ankersmit’s approach of three different levels: 1) the level of the past itself which is the subject of ontology, 2) the level of description of the past that is studied by epistemology, and 3) the level of representation of the past which should be analysed primarily by means of aesthetics. In other words, the realm of history is constituted of three aspects: 1) historical experience, 2) historical research, and 3) historical representation. During his whole academic career, Ankersmit has been interested in the first and the third aspects and has tried deliberately to avoid any serious engagement in epistemology (historical research). Ankersmit’s philosophy of history is built on a few fundamental dichotomies that can be considered as a kind of axioms of his thinking: 1) the distinction between historical research and historical writing, and 2) the distinction between description and historical representation. The article offers a critical discussion of Ankersmit’s two different approaches to the philosophy of history: cognitivist philosophy of history (analysis of historical representation) and existentialist philosophy of history (analysis of historical experience), and concludes by a short overview of the impact and significance of his historical-philosophical work and of his idea of the uniqueness of history.


2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 162-182
Author(s):  
Luca Gasparri

Abstract A traditional proposition in the philosophy and the sociology of science wants that consensus between specialists of a scientific discipline is a reliable indicator of their access to genuine knowledge. In an interesting reassessment of this principle, Aviezer Tucker has analyzed the implications and the significance of this thesis in relation to historical research, and has established that parts of the historiographical community that display high degrees of consensus among their practitioners can be described in terms of the same relationship existing in empirical sciences between the exemplification of significant level of agreement and shared knowledge. After a concise summary of Tucker’s general view of the relationship between consensus and knowledge and an analysis of its discussion by Boaz Miller, this paper proposes a critical discussion of the limits and the virtues of this approach and concludes that it is possible to assume that a theory of the sort outlined by Tucker and Miller may describe in an exhaustive way the dynamics of the consensual communities only after some important caveats and integrations. In the closing section, a brief review of Tucker’s picture of historiographical consensus will be proposed.


PhaenEx ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 59 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBIN JAMES

Because music communicates extra-propositionally, philosophers often use musical concepts and metaphors to discuss implicit and/or affective knowledges. Music is a productive means to philosophically analyze affect, but only when these analyses are grounded in rigorous studies of actual musical works and practices. When we don’t ground our study of music in musical practices, works, and theories, “music” just becomes a mirror of whatever assumptions and biases we already have. I show how the overly-abstract treatment of music and sound in Jean-Luc Nancy’s Listening leads to significant philosophical and political problems. By following his musical metaphors all the way through, I show how his theory of listening naturalizes maleness/masculinity, and, like liberal multiculturalism, values “difference” only as a way to re-center whiteness and patriarchy. As an alternative, I use R&B/electropop singer Kelis’s 2010 single “Acapella” (sic) to develop an alternative account of music, affect, and the politics of difference.


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 1-135
Author(s):  
Alessandro Arbo

Abstract The cases of copyright infringement that occasionally crop up in the world of music raise many interesting questions: what do we mean when we talk about the identity of a musical work and what does such an identity involve? What in fact are the properties that make it something worth protecting and preserving? These issues are not only of legal relevance, they are central to a philosophical discipline that has seen considerable advances over the last few decades: musical ontology. Taking into account its main theoretical models, this essay argues that an understanding of the ontological status of musical works should acknowledge the irreducible ambivalence of music as an “art of the trace” and as a “performative art.” It advocates a theory of the musical work as a “social object” and, more specifically, as a sound artefact that functions aesthetically and which is based on a trace informed by a normative value. Such a normativity is further explored in relation to three primary ways of conceiving and fixing the trace: orality, notation and phonography.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (S4) ◽  
pp. 162-170
Author(s):  
Valerii Marchenko ◽  
Cheng Yunjia ◽  
Lin Yitong ◽  
Iryna Antonyuk ◽  
Oleksii S. Khovpun

The transformation of symphonic music is an understudied subject for research. It has changed since the beginning of the 20th century and it can even be said that symphonic music has lost its popularity. An important feature of contemporary symphonic music is its transformation and acquiring a different form. Still, it remains in demand for the theatrical world. The authors aimed to investigate modern trends in symphonic music and works of contemporary composers. For studying examples of contemporary symphonic music and its performance on theatrical stages the authors used the following methods: historical research methods which formed the methodological framework of the study; methods of analysis and synthesis which were used to study information about contemporary symphonic music, contemporary composers, as well as their musical works. Contemporary pieces of symphonic music presented on the theatre stage were considered.


2004 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
P.R. Schoeman

The “prescientific” historical awareness and “early scientific” historical writing in the Nederduitsch Hervormde KerkThe scientific practice of Church History within the Nederduitsch Hervormde Kerk van Afrika commenced in 1920 with the submission of S P Engelbrecht’s doctoral thesis. The preliminary era can be typified as the “prescientific” historical awareness that started with an official “Pastoral Writing” by the Synod in 1855 and developed into the “early scientific” historical writing with the writing of Van Warmelo in 1881. This “early scientific” historical writing continued to develop until the early twentieth century. The aim of this article is to explore this era within the “Hervormde” church against the background of a reflection on the scientific nature of ecclesiastically historical research.


2016 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Martina Becker

AbstractThis article investigates the incoherence of art practices in the early Turkish Republic using the example of the variations present in Malik Aksel’s (1901–1987) work. The article starts from three conventional angles and then branches out along Aksel’s specific trajectories. It inquires into his relationship to a) the modernization processes in Ankara, b) the Art-Craft Department, the state institution at which he had been employed as an art teacher, and c) Europe, where he studied for four years in preparation for his position at the Art-Craft Department. The inquiry relies only on tangible traces of these relationships. In doing so, it recovers fragments of the complex actuality of creative practices, and identifies layers of what specifically the abstract notions of modernization, the institution and the state, as well as Westernization, actually covered in the case of this artist. These fragments also steer the investigation towards facets of Aksel’s work that the established notions do not encompass. With this approach this article seeks to supplement the prevailing reception-oriented studies on art in the early Turkish Republic and to contribute to the critical discussion of the methodological implications of art-historical research that expands the traditional disciplinary confines. The aim is to open avenues to recognize and account for art practices, or facets of them, that do not relate to the preserved, processed, and easily accessible art histories, thus aiming for an extended, more inclusive art historiography.


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