The first half of this final chapter pursues, again, the same question raised in Chapter 6 -- i.e. the content of wordless music, and since, as Kivy has already noted, there is no limit to the ingenuity of proposing such content, Kivy's refutation of it's importance is becoming a bit tiresome. But I suppose that as a philosopher who specializes in music, that refutation is his professional duty, and those who have ever performed Bach's "Art of the Fugue" might find this discussion interesting.
But the chapter gets interesting when Kivy finally asks "If absolute music has no content, why on earth are so many people so interested in it? Why, in a word, do they love it so much?" (p. 202) And Kivy's answer is: "I do not value, enjoy, or love music in spite of the fact that, unlike the literary or visual arts, it has no content..... but .... just because it has no content" And he pulls out a quote from Schopenhauer that shares his sentiment: "When, however, an external cause or inward disposition raises us out of the endless stream of willing, and snatches knowledge from the thraldom of the will, the attention is now no longer directed to the motives of willing, but comprehends things free from their relation to the will. Thus it considers things without interest , without subjectivity, purely objectively; it is entirely given up to them in so far as they are merely representations, and not motives. Then, all at once the peace, always sought but always escaping us on the first path of willing, comes to us of its own accord, and all is well with us" Which Kivy then presents as a notion of "liberation". The literary and visual arts engage us with the world -- but music liberates us from it. "what I am suggesting is that in the contentfull arts our thought processes work both in the world of the work and in the world of the world, whereas in absolute music, our thought processes, at least ideally, are at play in the world of the work alone" "It is the blessing of absolute music that it frees our thought to wander in worlds that are completely self sufficient: worlds where all is resolved, so to speak, with no loose ends, worlds that when they are grasped satisfactorily, give us thought processes that , if the composer is up to it, can only succeed, can only resolve to a satisfactory conclusion" And then, finally, he addresses the question as to why an abstract painting or sculpture might not produce the same effect: "It is, of course, true that the visual arts have produced examples of non-representational objects, paintings, sculptures, "constructions" in our own century, and there is no reason to doubt that in such cases the same liberating quality ... may well accrue to the experience of these artistic objects as well. But the fact remains - and it is a fact in need of explanation - that no artistic practice in the Western world has approached absolute music in significance as an art of this "liberating" kind" Do you agree? I'm not sure -- because, on the one hand, I'm not aware of a lot of discussion about music as "liberation" from anyone except Kivy, and I don't know how often that idea is raised in discussions of, say, minimalist painting/sculpture which would seem to be the most likely place to find it. And so much of 20th C. absolute music offers nothing like the feeling of 'resolution' that Kivy has been enjoying in music from earlier centuries. And don't sporting events offer liberation from our daily world as well? And what is the difference between 'liberation' and 'escapism' ? Which is to say - that I find Kivy's explanation for why I love some non-verbal music to be utterly inadequate. But, clearly, it does work for him And that I find interesting. ____________________________________________________________ Smile! Click here for access to quality cosmetic dentistry! http://thirdpartyoffers.netzero.net/TGL2231/fc/BLSrjnxVBc4snu1FOZM2qltdMKP5KB TvP9HpSNQWAYN5LRIb5royKCOtZL6/
