Boris,
I feel on music, is, that notes we become familiar with, become objects,
the same as what we perceive with our eyes and become forms,like in
painting or sculpture. So relating those forms, melodies happen.
So , all Mozart and Jazz composers do, is make improvisations
according
to their skill and aesthetics and hopefully, ours. then joy happens.
That's the simple version . Little lamseekivy. Eat didn't fit ;-)
just kidding.
Old American melody from the 30's.
mando
On Oct 21, 2009, at 12:23 PM, Boris Shoshensky wrote:
"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"
Another example of Kivy's simplistic approach to arts.
We can't separate "contentfull" of music from all other arts, true
arts. They
all have the same immanent nature expressed in different forms. The
term
"absolute music" is simply dumb. No art is "at play in the world of
the work
alone". Autonomy of art is not absolute.
What about creator (artist), and "creator" of creator- Nature?
Boris Shoshensky
To: [email protected]
Subject: Reading Kivy: Chapter 7 "The Liberation of Music"
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:49:42 GMT
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.
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