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Essence and Context: Exploring the Links Between Music and Philosophy in the Light of Henriette Renié’s Reflections

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Of Essence and Context

Part of the book series: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress ((NAHP,volume 7))

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Abstract

How could the essence of music be described? Could the many facets of music mirror one essence? These issues are considered against the background of Henriette Renié’s philosophical reflections. For years, Renié—an outstanding French virtuoso harpist, composer and pedagogue of international repute in her time—had consistently studied and applied to her concepts on essence in music the teachings of well-known philosophers and theologians, among others Plato, Saint Augustine, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, and Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry. The article is based on thoroughly examined source materials gathered in the course of extensive research carried out by the author in the USA and in France.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    All the cited excerpts are in my own translation from Polish (the excerpt from Paul Ricœur) and French (all the remaining excerpts) with the exception of the excerpts from Saint Augustine’s Confessions.

  2. 2.

    Latin motto: ad maiorem Dei gloriam.

  3. 3.

    Auguste Joseph Alphonse Gratry, known as Père Gratry (1805–1872)—French Catholic priest and theologian.

  4. 4.

    The title of Renié’s notebook is a paraphrase of the title of Gratry’s work Les Sources, conseils pour la conduite de l’esprit.

  5. 5.

    See poems A Villequier and Un jour, le morne esprit, le prophète sublime.

  6. 6.

    This being confirmed by the correspondence between Renié and the enumerated persons.

  7. 7.

    Renié and her mother, Gabrielle Marie Renié.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, Warsaw, Poland

    Temina Cadi Sulumuna

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  1. Temina Cadi Sulumuna
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Correspondence to Temina Cadi Sulumuna .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Music History, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Rūta Stanevičiūtė

  2. University of Hull, Kingston upon Hull, UK

    Nick Zangwill

  3. Department of Music Theory, Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Rima Povilionienė

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Sulumuna, T.C. (2019). Essence and Context: Exploring the Links Between Music and Philosophy in the Light of Henriette Renié’s Reflections. In: Stanevičiūtė, R., Zangwill, N., Povilionienė, R. (eds) Of Essence and Context. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14471-5_19

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