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Richard Eldridge Department of Philosophy Swarthmore College December 4, 2003 Thursday, 4:00pm-6:00pm Nursing, Room 125 Hegel is frequently understood to hold that music must be text-based in order to succeed as an art. Yet in apparent contradiction he also holds that Classical Style so-called absolute or purely instrumental music has produced miracles of composition and virtuosity that lift the soul to unprecedented heights. In contemporary philosophy of music and in the history of the philosophy of music, argument has raged between musical formalists (such as Eduard Hanslick), who defend the power of music alone as "tonally moving forms" and musical anti-formalists (such as Edward Cone), who hear in music implied personae and plots of their progress. Drawing on Hegel's general philosophy of mind, I argue that Hegel's views, rightly understood, are not contradictory and that they enable us to mediate and resolve the formalist/anti-formalist debate. Music is hearable as music only by beings such as us, who possess intellectual capacities and interests in freedom in addition to mere auditory response capacities. To the extent that music addresses our interest in freedom, it is indeed 'about' something, as anti-formalists hold. Yet its mode of address to this interest is abstract and, as Hegel puts it, "inner," so that no definite plots attach to pieces of purely instrumental music, as formalists hold. I conclude by reviewing briefly possibilities for a contemporary art music of "cadenced interjection" that takes its inspiration from Classical Style music but achieves its cadences by other than classical means.  |
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Last updated 4/8/08 10:32 PM
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