Abstract
Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (ca. 480–524) would have been most puzzled by what Shakespeare’s Lorenzo says. The reasons for his supposed perplexity lie in the background views on music that he appropriates from ancient Greek philosophy. Boethius’ compendium on music, De institutione musica (The Fundamentals of Music), along with similar texts on arithmetic, geometry and astronomy, formed the medieval quadrivium. It is surprising that the scholastic philosophers, who were often deeply concerned with logical consistency and order, were unperturbed by the inconsistencies running rampant throughout De institutione musica. On the one hand, the work’s first part is Pythagorean: music was inseparable from numbers, which governed the universe. Music exemplified the cosmic order. On the other hand, the work’s latter sections contain anti-Pythagorean sentiments; music is not necessarily anything that expresses universal orders. So, it is difficult to say precisely what Boethius thought about music. Further complicating this is the fact that, with respect to music, Boethius was not always a terribly original thinker. He often borrowed from a (now lost) treatise on music by Nicomachus and from the first book of Ptolemy’s Harmonics. Still, in the most original section of the book, the opening chapters, Boethius expresses a view of music that is relevant to the historical development of music and how thinkers addressed problems in the philosophy of music.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.
The Merchant of Venice, Act V, Scene 1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
This is an overstatement, but it is often made; the epic of Gilgamesh predates those of Homer.
- 2.
- 3.
For an example of needless perplexity see (Smith, 2001, p. 7).
- 4.
- 5.
It is interesting to note that Paul Hindemith has the exact opposite view of music. “The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings. Dreams, memories, musical reactions—all three are made of the same stuff.” Visual arts and poetry release direct emotions. Music is a trickster. “Paintings, poems, sculptures, works of architecture … do not—contrary to music—release images of feelings; instead they speak to the real, untransformed, and unmodified feelings.” (Hindemith, 1961, p.42)
- 6.
Clearly some would argue that Theodor W. Adorno (1903–1969) would be a suitable candidate for such status.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
It is interesting to note that Kivy rejects the form-content identity in music simply because the latter has no content. (See his “On the Unity of Form and Content” in (Kivy, 1997).) But again, this makes his notion of “enhanced formalism” very difficult to understand.
- 10.
Would anyone call such an event a “piece of music?” Perhaps, and this raises the interesting, but difficult question of the ontology of music. I will return to this briefly at the end of this paper.
- 11.
This, I suggest, is a large topic and merits much further exploration. However, that is a task for another time.
- 12.
For an extended discussion of this question see (Robinson, 1994).
- 13.
For an examination of the implicit metaphysics involved in making judgments concerning representations, see (Greaves, 2002).
- 14.
For an extended critique of the resemblance theory of representation, see (Goodman, 1976, § 1), “Reality Remade.”
- 15.
I am barely scratching the surface of all the problems connected to representation. For a general discussion see (Goodman, 1976).
- 16.
This is another huge issue in the philosophy of science but one that I shall simply pass over here.
- 17.
This is a subject of much dispute and involves many more issues than I can go into here. See (Davies, 2005).
Bibliography
Beardsley, M. C. (1981). Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis.
Bicknell, J. (2002). Can music convey semantic content? A Kantian approach. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 3:153–261.
Critchley, M. (1977). Musicological epilepsy. In Critchley, M. and Henson, R. A., editors, Music and the Brain. Heineman Medical Books, London.
Davies, S. (2005). The ontology of musical works and the authenticity of their performances. In Themes in the Philosophy of Music, pages 1–26. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols. Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, IN, Second Edition.
Greaves, M. (2002). The Philosophical Status of Diagrams. CSLI Publications, Standford.
Grout, D. J. and Palisca, C. V., editors (1963). A History of Western Music. W.W. Norton, New York, NY.
Hanslick, E. (1963). Music Criticism, 1846–99. Penguin Books, Harmondsworth.
Hardy, G. H. (1969). A Mathematician’s Apology. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Hilbert, D. (1991). On the infinite. In Benacerraf, P. and Putnam, H., editors, Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, second edition.
Hindemith, P. (1961). A Composer’s World. Anchor Books, New York, NY.
Kivy, P. (1990). Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on Purely Musical Experience. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY.
Kivy, P. (1993). The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kivy, P. (1997). Philosophies of Art: An Essay in Differences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kristeller, P. O. (1992). The modern system of the arts. In Kivy, P., editor, Essays on the History of Aesthetics. University of Rochester Press, Rochester, NY.
Machlis, J. (1970). The Enjoyment of Music. W.W. Norton & Company, New York, NY, 3rd edition.
Menuhin, Y. (1972). Theme and Variations. Stein and Day, New York, NY.
Powell, B. B. (2004). Homer. Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
Putnam, H. (1983). Models and reality. In Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3, pages 1–26. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Quine, W. V. O. (1969). Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. Columbia University Press, New York, NY.
Robinson, J. (1994). Music as a representational art. In Anderson, P., editor, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music. Pennsylvania State Press, University Park.
Sacks, O. (1981). Awakenings. Pan Books, London, revised edition.
Schopenhauer, A. (1966). The World as Will and Representation, volume 1. Dover Books, New York, NY. transl. E. F. Payne.
Shapiro, S. (2000). Thinking About Mathematics. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Smith, N. D. (2001). Some thoughts about the origins of Greek ethics. The Journal of Ethics, 5:3–20.
Wittgenstein, L. (1961). Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London. transl. David F. Pears and Brian F. McGuinness.
Yewdale, M. S. (1928). The metaphysical foundations of pure music. The Musical Quarterly, 14(3):397–402.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Feist, R. (2011). Musing on Music. In: DeVidi, D., Hallett, M., Clarke, P. (eds) Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, Vintage Enthusiasms. The Western Ontario Series in Philosophy of Science, vol 75. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0214-1_25
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0214-1_25
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0213-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0214-1
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPhilosophy and Religion (R0)