Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Music and philosophy'

Music as Pure Duration: a dialogue between music and philosophy is a multi-method Practice Based Research project that contributes to dialogue between music and philosophy within the field of music. The thesis is comprised of a compositional portfolio and written component. It places hybrid of New Music and Electroacoustics in dialogue with Metaphysics. By interpreting Bergson’s temporality and Husserl’s consciousness of internal time through music, it questions how temporality is distinct in music compared to physical objects and sound. Chapter One defines the study. Chapter Two focuses on the composition of Sedemus, reading the design schematic of a chair as instruction for music. It discusses the relationship between spatiality and temporality, accuracy and interpretation. Chapter Three critiques Sedemus, leading to the dialogic composition of Sedere Audire. It differentiates analytical knowledge from intuitive knowledge in the context of music and sound. Chapter Four offers music as a metaphysical concept, realized as Day Born. It investigates the heard and the audible. Underpinned by Husserl’s treatment of Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory, it is succession, simultaneity, and continuity that appear critical to the differentiation of non-audio and audio entities. In the context of Hermann’s definition, Chapter Five focuses on analytical accuracy in the sonification of a cuboid and uncovers a tension between validity and aesthetics. Chapter Six presents compositions informed by the concepts of unfolding (in Struck), differentiating analysis and intuition (in Discern), and piano as object or musical instrument (in Reduce). Chapter Seven summarises the research findings and points towards continuing research. Sedemus, Sedere Audire, Day Born, and the sonifications demonstrate new insights gained through practical and philosophical analysis whilst Struck, Discern, and Reduce demonstrate tacit and intuitive knowledge. This research is intended to be of interest to musicians, especially those seeking to embed their music practice within philosophy. It is expected that philosophers with specific interest in temporality, Bergson, or Husserl, may also find interest.

Theodor Adorno's depiction of Stravinsky and Schoenberg in the Philosophy of Modern Music has been a source of much controversy. Many have criticised the Frankfurt Scholar for his biased portrayals. A common tendency shared among commentators has been to interpret Adorno's text literally. Yet upon closer examination, one sees that Adorno's intention was to write not only a literal text, but also a poetic text. Following in the tradition of Karl Kraus, and Walter Benjamin, Adorno's text is laden with symbols, metaphors, allusions and allegories that encircle socio-cultural and historical issues. Stravinsky and Schoenberg are often caricatures, and their works a means to discuss kitsch and avant-garde art during the rise of fascism in Germany. Even Adorno's portrayal of art in Germany is symbolic; his insights into state capitalist culture during World-War Two are meant to act as an acidic and prophetic analysis of monopoly capitalist culture in the post-World-War II era. Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music was meant to be a Flaschenpost, a 'message in a bottle', designed to remain rebarbative through time. This thesis suggests that when one applies his insights to late capitalist society, they seem more relevant than ever.

Theodor Adorno's depiction of Stravinsky and Schoenberg in the 'Philosophy of Modern Music' has been a source of much controversy. Many have criticised the Frankfurt Scholar for his biased portrayals. A common tendency shared among commentators has been to interpret Adorno's text literally. Yet upon closer examination, one sees that Adorno's intention was to write not only a literal text, but also a poetic text. Following in the tradition of Karl Kraus, and Walter Benjamin, Adorno's text is laden with symbols, metaphors, allusions and allegories that encircle socio-cultural and historical issues. Stravinsky and Schoenberg are often caricatures, and their works a means to discuss kitsch and avant-garde art during the rise of fascism in Germany. Even Adorno's portrayal of art in Germany is symbolic; his insights into state capitalist culture during World-War Two are meant to act as an acidic and prophetic analysis of monopoly capitalist culture in the post- World-War II era. Adorno's 'Philosophy of Modern Music' was meant to be a Flaschenpost, a 'message in a bottle', designed to remain rebarbative through time. This thesis suggests that when one applies his insights to late capitalist society, they seem more relevant than ever.

This thesis investigates one of the key figures of Russian pianism in the twentieth century, Heinrich Gustavovich Neuhaus (1888 - 1964). Although Neuhaus is known, particularly in the West, as an important pedagogue of the Moscow Conservatory rather than a performing artist in his own right, this thesis seeks to address the tension between Neuhaus's identities as a pedagogue and his overshadowed conception of himself as a performer - thus presenting a fuller understanding of his specific attitude to the task of musical interpretation. The reader is introduced to aspects of Neuhaus's biography which became decisive factors in the formation of his key aesthetic, philosophical, pedagogical and performative beliefs. The diverse national influences in Neuhaus's upbringing - from his familial circumstances, European education and subsequent career in Russia - are investigated in order to help locate Neuhaus within the wider contexts of Russian and Central European culture at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, this introduction will highlight ways in which Neuhaus's national identity has been oversimplified in recent literature by both Russian and non-Russian authors. Whilst this thesis draws on a range of contemporaneous and recent international sources throughout its investigation, it presents a substantial amount of Russian-language material that has previously been unavailable in an English translation: this includes many writings and articles by Heinrich Neuhaus, his colleagues and the leading musicologists and critics of his time. The core of the thesis traces Neuhaus's personal philosophical approach to the act of performance and explores the impact it had on his interpretations of Beethoven and Chopin. This will show that despite aspiring to a modern, Urtext-centred approach and sensibility to the score, Neuhaus's Romantic subjectivity meant that he was unafraid of making assumptions and decisions which often misinterpreted or transformed the image of the composer to reflect his own artistic identity. Thus, the investigation of Heinrich Neuhaus as a performing artist, alongside his role as a pedagogue, presents a powerful model of interpretation as a creative process, from which performers today can learn.

Philosophy
Ph.D.
My project explores why it is so difficult to reconcile questions about the nature and meaning of music in philosophy with the case of Iranian classical music. This tradition is highly performative, musicians rarely use scores, and, importantly, that anyone who calls herself a musician but cannot extemporize is not really considered much of a musician in Iran at all. Yet curiously, despite the emphasis on extemporization in this tradition, there is, nonetheless, a resounding sonic familiarity among performances considered as falling in the classical genre, so much so that it seems odd to say that extemporization is the extemporization of something new. Moreover, there is very little concern with musical works, as understood in the western classical sense. My first chapter articulates the methodology I advocate. This methodology is adapted from Lydia Goehr’s The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992). Goehr offers a reading of the history western classical music that looks for the concepts around which its discourses center. I argue that the application of similar analysis to what scholars in other music traditions have to say about music will reveal something about the concepts around which their practices center. The emphasis is on reading the discourses of a practice for the concepts that dictate the thinking about it. This, I suggest, helps to make sense of what musicality means in the tradition in question. My central claim is that when Iranian classical music is read this way, one concept emerges as centrally significant. This concept is not of the work, but of embodied activity: a notion of doing in musical practice that relies heavily on the idea of musical dexterity in the performing moment, without this doing being oriented to the creation of something work-like. My second, third, and fourth chapters articulate and situate this reading against discussions about the ontological significance of performance in the philosophy of music. In my second chapter, I argue that the historical attention to mentally composed sound structures in Eduard Hanslick’s 1854 book, On the Musically Beautiful—a foundational text for the contemporary philosophy of music—leaves out the performing activity in musical practice. This, I suggest, is captured in the difference of approach to the musical nightingale: a metaphor that serves to illustrate musicality in the Iranian context but stands in Hanslick’s theory, for everything that music is not. In my third chapter, I offer a detailed reading of Iranian classical music to expose more fully the conceptual shape and force of the sort of embodied activity that the trope of the nightingale captures, when scholars of Iranian classical music analogize it—as they so often do—as the metaphorical aspiration of classical musicians, because it is considered the most musical being on earth in virtue of its dexterity. This, I contextualize using Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge (1966). In my fourth chapter, I explore the extent to which the reading I offer of Iranian classical music may be accommodated by contemporary discussions in the ontology of performance by turning to contemporary discussions that move away from addressing performances of works, but center on the significance of performative activity itself. This happens most commonly for the case of musical improvisation, after the question is introduced by Philip Alperson in “On Musical Improvisation” (1984). My claim here is that there is a crucial difference between the two cases. This difference is that embodied activity is not product-oriented in Iranian classical music practice, but rather, dexterity or technique oriented. In my final chapter, I explore how this insight can be extended more broadly into philosophical analysis, particularly in its comparative dimensions. I suggest there are implications not only for the ontology of performance, but notions of self-expression, creativity, and aesthetic attention, when they are considered in this culturally comparative light. In doing so, I hope to raise questions about the potential for doing non-reductive comparative ontology, and what can be gained, in a broad sense, from the effort of looking at artistic practice through a culturally different lens.
Temple University--Theses

This thesis aims to demonstrate the congruence between music and philosophy. The demonstration has three aspects: a discussion of philosophical and ontological aspects of music, a discussion of the importance of music in the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and a discussion of philosophy itself. The starting point for the demonstration is a discussion of the philosophy of music in relation to the ontology of the musical work, the relationship of performance to notation and the musical work, the nature of improvisation and the temporality of music. I discuss the contextualisation of the musical work concept, the aporetic character of music and consider phenomenological accounts of music and time consciousness. Following this discussion I propose an ontological concept of the musical work as a topos of musical activity. The second section discusses music in the context of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. It develops characteristics of music which are also relevant to theoria and philosophy. Most notable among these are the characterisations of music as play and energeia. I consider music in the context of the Aristotelian distinction between praxis and poiesis and argue for a qualified conception of music as energeia. The concluding section of the thesis deals with philosophy itself. I discuss the requirements of philosophy to maintain the energeia of thinking in the living and breathing word in the context of Plato’s Phaedrus. I attempt to demonstrate that the active conceptions of philosophy as a journey, examination of life, way of life (Hadot) and Lebensphilosophie align philosophy with a conception of music as meditatio mortis and form of temporality.

This paper examines the relationship of architecture to music in terms of rhythm, harmony and order in both the Greek Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. These basic concepts are crucial because they emphasize 'fullness' of experience and demonstrate the extent to which our own regulating experience of the world has become empirical (or formal). The discussion thus places architectural theory within the movement of ideas between mythical thought and metaphysical construct; it places architectural practice within the movement between bodily experience and reasoning.

This thesis consists of a portfolio of compositions linked to ancient Greece and a theoretical and historical explanation of the music of ancient Greece which led to the composing of each piece. Every composition explores an aspect of ancient Greek tuning systems or a tuning system that related to Ancient Greece. Compositions for solo violin, solo alto flute, solo quarter-tone alto flute and solo clarinet use monophony as well as harmonics from the overtone series and number series. A chamber work, string quartet and solo piano piece exploit heterophony. Harmony and polyphony based on quarter-tones from ancient Greek style scales are issued in a work for choir and orchestra. The compositions do not reconstruct music from ancient Greece but rather use the ideas of the past as a step forward to new original compositions and a new style of writing.

In this thesis I explore how music-text relations in Frank Zappa’s music work together to express a central narrative, with a particular focus on his use of musical allusion. First, I frame Zappa’s creative perspective from a Dadaist philosophy, illuminating an underlying critique of American culture through the use of musical and lyrical devices such as allusion. I explore how Zappa uses allusion as a narrative device and how these allusions affect a listener’s interpretation of a track. Finally, I provide an in-depth analysis of “Billy the Mountain” from the 1972 album Just Another Band From L.A. I first present an overview and analysis of the narrative as it is presented in the lyrics and then explore how musical parameters contribute to the narrative of the track. By understanding the interaction of music and text, I create a platform from which Zappa’s music can be better understood.

Can music be made with words alone, artistically arranged? Can music be part of a novel or a short story? Can a novella realize a musical form, and does it mean it is a musical piece? Is being a piece of literature incompatible with being a piece of music as well? If so – in what way or ways? If not, for what reason? These simple questions are the conceptual starting point of the research developed in the present dissertation. It investigates the essential interrelation between music and artistic prose in cases of imitation of music within the latter. Musica textualis, its central concept, is introduced in the first part as a meeting point of two distinct traditions of study, namely Philosophy of Music, on one hand, and the Word and Music Studies, on the other. It is an aporetic field emerging organically in the course of the historical development and dissolution of the system of the arts. Mutual intermedial imitations on the level of artistic creation and appreciation are continuously counterpointed by parallel processes within the history of aesthetic thought, metaphysics of art and musico-literary criticism, influencing greatly ways of perceiving and understanding distinct artforms and the aesthetic experiences they elicit. One of the main aims of the present research was to establish the actual status of the literary incarnations of music in artistic prose. The initial hypothesis was that there are some special cases, where music is not only represented in words by means of description, evocation, allusion and other standard literary techniques, but is actually there in the text, strictly speaking. Such local cases are possible and instantiated: the paradigm example is (Mann, 1967) with its model interpretation in (Scher, 1967), but there are also antecedent cases such as (Woolf, 1921) interpreted in (Harmat, 2008) or very recent artistically outstanding realizations as (Libera, 2013), interpreted here. What emerges as a positive theory from this research is the category of musica textualis. It denotes a mixed form which unites word-made-music with literary prose in a compound whole sui generis. It is conceptually symmetrical to programme music, where the real presence of music and literature in a compound structure perceptually made solely of musical sounds without words is not contested. Through its complex nature and fragile statute, it functions as a regulative ideal for the above-mentioned eponymous aporetic field. The explanatory force, methodological and interpretative implications of this theory are significant. Especially, the very process of its historical emergence through the aesthetics of Romanticism, the development of programme music and R. Wagner’s musical drama technique and the “intermedia turn” characterizing Modernism, unveil its necessary place in the conceptual map of the complex interrelation of these two temporal allographic arts: epics and music. The dissertation takes into account the vast and problematic discussion internal to the Word and Music studies and similar branches of intermodal/interart/transdisciplinary studies in their classical Anglophone version cf. (Scher, 1970; Wolf, 1999; Petermann, 2014), as well as in their Polish counterpart, anticipated critically in the work of Tadeusz Szulc (1937), and recently developed in, e.g. (Balbus, 2004; Hejmej, 2008, 2012). Also French and other studies are taken into consideration, cf. e.g. (Pautrot, 2004; Picard, 2008, 2010). It can potentially contribute to some significant clarifications in these controversial fields, but it is methodologically autonomous. It combines some elements of conceptual analysis and argumentation typical of analytic Philosophy of Art with a broader “continental” contextual horizon and interpretative ambitions. The main source of its insight comes from the immediate aesthetic experience of prose containing crucial instantiations of what can be interpreted as musica textualis. These insights are confronted with the achievements of the classical Philosophy of Music on one hand and the Word and Music practice on the other. As far as it is known, this is a novel approach within Philosophy. This method, intended as facilitating future mutual dialogue between the disciplines, is potentially beneficial for both (and open for further dialogue with musicology, which today is keen on borrowing research tools from Literary Theory). For the philosophers of music it discovers a neglected area of study, through a meticulous polemics with the conceptualizations of music at hand in the analytic tradition. It shows that works of musica textualis are, at least in part (like operas or Lieder, for that matter) works of music, and that there are no substantial grounds for excluding them from philosophical scrutiny of music. It shows that only the most anti-essentialist, accidentalist philosopher could find a coherent reason to reject a work of musica textualis from the realm of music on contingent grounds of the communis opinio; even his reasoning, though, is ultimately proven fallacious. Other philosophers are invited to rethink the way they localize essential features of the phenomenon in question. For the literary scholars interested in the practices described as musicalization of fiction, intermedial transposition / translation / transfer, the musical novel, music in the words within the venerated tradition of the comparison of the arts on the axis Music – Literature and especially in the 20th Century born Word and Music Studies – musica textualis can become a helpful tool in the on-going methodological dispute. It helps to distinguish genuine problems of method within the Word and Music Studies from what emerges as the vital aporetical core of interart phenomena such as Mann’s Doctor Faustus. This core confronts us with questions which cannot be resolved through some consensus within the scholarly community, but are better accepted and cherished as fertile sources of artistic and intellectual inspiration. The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part introduces the concept of musica textualis, and places it within the contemporary philosophical discussion on music, explaining in detail its Boethian pedigree as well as its relation to the state of the art within Word and Music studies, as discussed in the Introduction. In the chapter Music Beyond the Senses it offers some novel arguments against definitions of music that would exclude musica textualis a priori; it defends a slight modification of the definition of music advanced by (Kania, 2011). Problematic cases of silent music are discussed extensively and the notion of intentional calibration – inspired by stances taken by Husserl, Ingarden, Iser, Wittgenstein, Wollheim, Scruton and others – is introduced. The second part consists of three chapters consecrated to three Polish authors (Iwaszkiewicz, Libera, Bartnicki) whose work is interpreted as displaying three radically different modes of musica textualis. This choice, by no means exhaustive, is intended to illustrate the introduced concept at work in dissimilar cases, sharing though one property: all have been paid little or no attention by the international musico-literary scholarship (not to mention the philosophers of music). The third and conclusive part shows musica textualis as a genuine aporetic field.
Al centro della ricerca presenata nella dissertazione si pone la domanda se la musica possa essere parte di un romanzo o un racconto breve o, in altri termini, se il fatto che un’opera sia letteraria sia (in)compatibile con il suo essere anche un’opera musicale. Si può far musica con le parole? E se sì, in che modo? Se invece la risposta è “no”, per quali ragioni? La dissertazione indaga le relazioni tra musica e prosa artistica nei casi in cui all’interno di quest’ultima vi sia un’imitazione della musica. Il lavoro è articolato in tre parti. Nella prima parte introduco il concetto di musica textualis, lo colloco nella contemporanea discussione filosofica sulla musica e ne spiego la discendenza Boeziana. Si tratta del concetto centrale della ricerca, il punto d’incontro di due diverse tradizioni di studio, vale a dire, da un lato la filosofia della musica e, dall’altro, i cosiddetti Word and Music Studies, offrendo lo stato dell’arte. Sempre in questa parte, nel capitolo intitolato Music Beyond the Senses, offro alcuni argomenti nuovi contro le definizioni della musica che escluderebbero a priori la musica textualis. Inoltre, vengono discussi estensivamente casi di silent music. Nel capitolo successivo viene sviluppata la riflessione sul carattere intenzionale di ogni proprieta musicale, ispirata a posizioni di Husserl, Ingarden, Iser, Wittgenstein, Wollheim, Scruton e altri. Una definizione di musica ispirata a Kania (2011) viene proposta per accomodare musica textualis. Il mio lavoro prende in considerazione l’ampia discussone interna ai Word and Music studies e agli analoghi filoni di studio sull’intermodalità sia nella classica versione anglofona (Scher, 1970; Wolf, 1999; Prieto, 2002; Shockley, 2009; Petermann, 2014), sia nella controparte di lingua polacca, anticipata nei lavori di Tadeusz Szulc (1937) e sviluppata in anni più recenti ad esempio (Hejmej e Głowiński). Anche contributi provenienti dall’area linguistica francese sono presi in considerazione (Pautrot, Picard). Nei tre capitoli della seconda parte del lavoro mi rivolgo a tre autori polacchi (Iwaszkiewicz, Libera, Bartnicki), interpretandone le opere come esempi di tre modi radicalmente diversi di musica textualis. La scelta di questi autori, in nessun modo esaustiva, è volta a illustrare come i concetti precedentemente introdotti operino in casi diversi che, tuttavia, condividono una proprietà: tutti hanno prestato poca o nessuna attenzione alla scholarship musico-letteraria internazionale (per non menzionare la filosofia della musica). Nella terza e ultima parte della dissertazione offro ulteriori riflessioni sulla musica textualis in quanto nozione che fa sorgere un genuino campo aporetico. La dissertazione mostra come il complesso campo d’indagine della musica textualis emerga dallo sviluppo e dalla dissoluzione del sistema delle arti. Reciproche imitazioni intermediali a livello della creazione e dell’apprezzamento artistico trovano riscontro in processi paralleli nell’estetica, nella metafisica dell’arte e sul piano della critica musicale e letteraria, influenzando il modo di percepire e comprendere forme d’arte diverse e l’esperienza estetica che occasionano. Uno degli scopi principali della ricerca è stato di stabilire lo status attuale dell’incarnazione della musica nella prosa artistica. L’ipotesi iniziale è stata quella di una presenza della musica nel testo, inteso come spartito per un’interpretazione musicale, e non tanto in descrizioni, evocazioni e attraverso altre tecniche letterarie. Al riguardo l’esempio paradigmatico è il Doktor Faustus di Thomas Mann, ma vi sono anche antecedenti come Monday or Tuesday di Virginia Woolf ed esempi più recenti come lo straordinatio Toccata in do maggiore di Antoni Libera (trad. it. 2015), di cui la dissertazione offre un’interpretazione. Alla luce dell’analisi di questi casi, un risultato della ricerca è di mostrare che la categoria di musica textualis denota una forma mista che unisce musica-fatta-con-le-parole e prosa letteraria in un tutto sui generis. Si tratta di una realizzazione concettualmente simmetrica alla musica a programma, nella quale la presenza reale di musica e letteratura in una struttura composta, percettivamente costituita solo da suoni musicali senza parole, pur essendo contestabile da parte dei formalisti estremi, rimane pur sempre chiaramente concettualizzata. Nel mio lavoro metto in luce la forza esplicativa e le implicazioni metodologiche e interpretative di questa prospettiva teorica, il cui luogo nella mappa concettuale delle relazioni complesse delle due arti allografiche temporali – l’epica e la musica – è del resto rivelato già dal processo della sua emergenza storica nell’estetica romantica, nello sviluppo della musica a programma, nel dramma musicale wagneriano e nell’“intermedia turn” modernista. La dissertazione combina elementi di analisi concettuale tipici della filosofia analitica con le più ampie ambizioni interpretative “continentali”. La fonte principale delle sue intuizioni deriva comunque dall’esperienza (estetica) di una prosa contenente esemplificazioni cruciali di ciò che può essere interpretato come musica textualis. Tali intuizioni sono confrontate da un lato con i risultati della classica filosofia della musica, dall’altro, con la pratica della Word and Music. Si tratta di un approccio filosofico che apre, per la filosofia della musica, un campo di studio trascurato dalle teorie sulla musica presenti nella tradizione analitica. Mostro che le opere di musica textualis sono, almeno in parte, opere musicali, e che non vi sono ragioni sostanziali per escluderle dall’indagine filosofica della musica. La ricerca mostra inoltre come, per gli studiosi di letteratura interessati alla pratica descritta come musicalization of fiction, trasposizone intermediale o music in the words, all’interno della tradizione del paragone fra le arti lungo l’asse musica-letteratura, l’ipotesi musica textualis possa essere uno strumento utile nella continua disputa metodologica. Essa aiuta a distinguere i genuini problemi di metodo interni ai Word and Music Studies da quanto emerge come il vitale nucleo aporetico di fenomeni inter-artistici come il Doktor Faustus di Mann. Questo nucleo presenta questioni che, secondo me, vanno accettate e coltivate come fertili fonti di ispirazione artistica e intellettuale.

“Mysticism,” according to the Oxford dictionary, can be defined as “belief in or devotion to the spiritual apprehension of truths inaccessible to the intellect.” More generally, it applies to the aspects of spirituality and religion that can only be directly experienced, rather than described or learned. This dissertation examines how mysticism fits into the aesthetic, compositional, and musical philosophies of four prominent composers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries—Ernest Bloch, Olivier Messiaen, Sophia Gubaidulina, and John Zorn, with a cameo by the Jewish composer David Finko—and how their engagement with the concept of mysticism and the mystical experience can be seen in a selection of their works featuring the violin: Bloch's Baal Shem suite and Poème mystique; Finko's Lamentations of Jeremiah, Zorn's Kol Nidre, Goetia, All Hallow's Eve, and Amour fou; Gubaidulina's In tempus praesens; and Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time. These works exemplify the mysticism shared by these composers, despite their different religious and cultural backgrounds, particularly their belief in the transcendental nature of music. This belief is expressed in their works through programmatic, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic, and formal elements, all of which display, to a greater or lesser degree, the influence of mystical philosophy and symbolism.

Nihilism is often associated with feelings of despair, hopelessness and meaningless. It is certainly true that once the implications of this philosophy become apparent that these feelings are valid. However, this reaction is merely the first stage of dealing with nihilism and stopping here fails to examine the various types of nihilism that deal specifically with knowledge, ethics, metaphysics, truth, and art. Nihilism at its base is a philosophy that recognizes the history of human thought and what it means to be and to think. My focus is the way in which a completed nihilism is in fact an emancipatory act and the implications it has for art and the artist in the 21st century.

In this thesis we construct a critical encounter between the composer John Cage and the philosopher Gilles Deleuze. This encounter circulates through a constellation of problems found across and between mid-twentieth century musical, artistic, and philosophical practices, the central focus for our line of enquiry being the concept of experimentation. We emphasize the production of a method of experimentation through a practice historically situated with regards to the traditions of the respective fields of music and philosophy. However, we argue that these experimental practices are not reducible to their historical traditions, but rather, by adopting what we term a problematic reading, or transcendental critique, with regards to historical givens, they take their historical situation as the site of an experimental departure. We follow Cage through his relation to the history of Western classical music, his contemporaries in the musical avant-garde, and artistic movements surrounding and in some respects stemming from Cage’s work, and Deleuze through his relation to Kant, phenomenology, and structuralism, in order to map the production of a practice of experimentation spanning music, art, and philosophy. Some specific figures we engage with in these respective traditions include Jean-Phillipe Rameau, Pierre Schaeffer, Marcel Duchamp, Pierre Boulez, Robert Morris, Yoko Ono, La Monte Young, Edmund Husserl, Maurice-Merleau-Ponty, Alain Badiou, and Félix Guattari. In so doing we seek to find between these practices points of both conjunction and disjunction which enrich our understanding of Cage’s and Deleuze’s work, and, more widely speaking, of the passage of twentieth century music and philosophy in general. Here we hope to make contributions to the fields of continental philosophy and music theory especially, and to open a point of engagement with the nascent field of sound studies.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2007.
Title from title screen (viewed 28 March 2008). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Dept. of Philosophy, Faculty of Arts. Degree awarded 2007; thesis submitted 2006. Includes bibliographical references. Also available in print form.

While the American composer John Cage is often classified as an influential figure in the realm of modernist music, the controversial nature of Cage's work has proven to be more far-reaching than many had initially contended. Through a process of re-examining the work of Cage through a postmodern lens, this thesis rejects the notion that Cage was confined to the realm of modernism, and demonstrates that the composer not only exhibited postmodern tendencies through his ideas and concepts, but also aesthetically in his compositions. By illuminating these postmodern compositional practices and postmodern-influenced belief systems expressed by Cage as an artist, a reinterpretation of the composer and his work is carried out, while also addressing criticisms leveled toward Cage as a postmodernist. Through this contemporary reanalysis, the thesis demonstrates that Cage was a composer that transcended genres and classifications to ultimately resonate as a viable figure of postmodern music.

Studies of musical agency have been growing in the field of music theory since the publication of Edward T. Cone's book The Composer's Voice (1974). Indeed, recent publications by scholars such as Robert Hatten and Seth Monahan demonstrate that musical agency continues to be a topic worthy of investigation today. These authors tend to explore the function of agents within a piece, virtually ignoring the way agents arise in music. In this dissertation I work toward a solution to this problem by developing a theory of musical agency that explores the following questions: (1) How do virtual agents emerge in music? (2) What is the relationship between agency and narrative? (3) Can virtual agents influence music at levels deeper than the surface?

I propose that the concept of musical intention provides music theorists with a possible answer to this question. Action Theory, a robust subfield active in philosophy and sociology, views intentionality as a focal point in research on human agency—research that deserves more attention in studies of musical agency. Following assertions by action theorists Donald Davidson and Alfred Mele, I argue that an entity only attains the status of an agent when it performs an intentional act. With respect to music, then, I outline six categories of intentionality that can offer support to an agential hearing: gesture, contradiction of musical forces, unexpected event, conflict, repetition/restatement, and change of state. Further, I suggest that certain passages of music can be interpreted as intentional acts performed by virtual musical agents.

I begin by reviewing the literature surrounding Action Theory in philosophy and sociology, and Agency in music theory in Chapter One. After defining each category of intentionality in Chapter Two, I investigate how the categories of intentionality interact with recent theories of musical narrative and Schenkerian analysis in Chapter Three. To demonstrate how my insights apply to analysis, I examine Beethoven's Bagatelle Op. 126, No. 2 and Mendelssohn's Song Without Words Op. 30, No. 6. These two analyses also serve as an introduction to the way in which my methodology is applied in analysis. In Chapter Four, I use the categories of intentionality in combination with both narrative and Schenkerian analysis to develop an agential reading of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A, D. 959. My agential analysis adds nuance to Hatten's (1993) and Charles Fisk's (2001) readings of the work. I suggest that two agents are present at the beginning of the movement, and I investigate how these agents act throughout all four movements of the piece. In the first three movements, the two agents are in conflict with one another, and by the end of the fourth movement the two agents achieve a synthesis that resolves their conflict. Not only does an understanding of intentionality in music clarify earlier work on musical agency, but it also provides opportunities for richer interpretive analyses. To conclude my dissertation I suggest possible avenues for further investigation, and I briefly apply my methodology to a passage of post-tonal music.

Sergei Ivanovich Taneev's Doctrine of the Canon (Moscow, 1929) is the complement of Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style (Moscow, 1909). Both works are unique in the history of music theory due to Taneev's application of algebra for the demonstration of general laws of vertical- and horizontal-shifting counterpoint in the strict style. Together they form the cornerstone of Russian, twentieth-century contrapuntal theory. This dissertation provides a translation of Doctrine of the Canon into English, and commentary. The commentary offers a comparison of Taneev's method with those of his contemporaries, a synthesis of relevant information from Convertible Counterpoint in the Strict Style with information in Doctrine of the Canon, a discussion of political influences on the theories that developed from Doctrine of the Canon, and a summation of developments of Taneev's theories of imitative counterpoint found in the works of the Soviet music theorists Semyon Semyonovich Bogatyryov, Mark Kopytman, Evgeny Nikolaevich Korchinsky, Sergey Sergeevich Skrebkov, and Nikolay Andreevich Timofeev.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2004.
Vita. Includes computer program for No flower, no incense, only sound: P. 192-239. Sound tape contains 2 compositions by the composer and an improvisation by Ivan Manzanilla with the composer: No flower, no incense, only sound; excerpt of A-window; Mirrors of the past. Includes bibliographical references (p. 241).

This thesis explores the relationships that exist between reification, the conceptualisation of music, and the composition of new concert music. In general terms, reification can be described as the mental process of conceiving abstract concepts as tangible and concrete things. The problem of reification in the conceptualisation of musical works is one that exists between a rock and a hard place: we rely on something like reification in order to gain any sense of meaning from our experiences of the abstract aspects of musical works, but treating the reified understanding of these aspects as if they are what makes musical works meaningful ignores the emergent and transitory aspects of our interactions with musical works as being inherently meaningful in and of themselves. Through a variety of ethnographic, phenomenological and narrative methods, this thesis aims to challenge the long-held notions of meaning construction within the field of analytical aesthetics. It also aims provide a conceptual framework with which composers can use to practically study, collect data and analyse the conceptualisation of meaning in their compositions, as well as apply this understanding to audiences’ conceptualisation of meaning in musical works. The results of this thesis project culminate in the creation and presentation of three artistic outcomes: a new and original work for chamber ensemble, and two audio papers that explore the synthesis of interview responses and recordings of musical works within the framework of an audio-based discourse. Semi-structured interviews in the form of stimulated recall sessions were conducted as a means of obtaining data from participants about their interpretation of meaning in musical works. The use of metaphors as a conceptual framework with which to code and analyse data collected from these sessions allowed for the linguistic conceptualisation of musical meaning that avoided the theory construction and analytical aesthetic tendencies of modern music philosophy. This conceptual framework was also applied in the coding and analysis of a compositional perspective of the new work in order to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between composers and audiences in their interpretations of musical meaning. While this thesis does not purport to offer a “theory” for the conceptualisation of meaning in musical works (such an exercise is both impossible and pointless), the findings presented in the analysis of the new composition and audio papers allows for a conceptual framework that takes into account the everyday use of language in communicating the experiences of composers and audience members in their conceptualisation of meaning in musical works.

This research project investigated techniques for composing visual music and achieving balance in the relationship between sound and image. It comprises this thesis and a portfolio of compositions. The investigation began with an interest in the relationships between colour and sound and later expanded to include form and motion, the remaining factors of Thomas Wilfred’s lumia (1947). Working with a cohesive theme, such as lumia, proved to be an effective way of creating a coherent aesthetic in portfolio pieces. Other themes were therefore investigated including composing with visual and audio materials recorded from the single source of Thailand, the wave phenomena of refraction and diffraction and a filmed natural sunset interpreted in electroacoustic music. Two distinct compositional techniques were used, material transference, where qualities were transferred between sound and image, and compositional thinking, which assisted in creating audio-visual compositions that possessed musical qualities. Material transference proved to be the most productive technique during composing and it was discovered that effectuating it algorithmically created a strong bond between sound and image. Compositional thinking assisted in creating the form of the portfolio pieces and was found to apply to both video and music. Compositional thinking was found to be useful at the macro level, where structural form was designed, and material transference worked at a finer micro level, transferring individual qualities between sound and video objects.

I start from the principle that composition is a historical lineage of techniques that have traditionally been applied to music but need not be. To illustrate this, I apply composition principles to the writing of this PhD thesis. In describing this process, I draw parallels between the music work I have composed during 2013-2017 and the process of thesis writing. Along the way, I show how quantization is not only central to my composition practice but fundamental to the act of composing; I rethink the basic epistemological principles of PhD research, using John Cage's ideology of chance and Arthur Koestler's idea of bisociation; I develop a new set of categories for classifying artworks that use combinatorics, under the umbrella neologism 'completism'; expand upon James Tenney's ideas to create a new typology of musical form based on completist principles; and finish by composing the bibliography, font, page-layout, semantics, word choice, and syntax of the Conclusion of this thesis.

My thesis examines philosophical questions about music according to Neoplatonism: what is music and what is the place of music in the structure of reality. I focus my examination of Neoplatonic music on the philosopher ProcIus. For ProcIus, music is something much richer than the phenomenon usually called music. My thesis studies this wide notion of music: music as art and as science, and furthermore music as a principle of order and harmony in the universe. Accordingly, music is intimately related to metaphysical principles: the WorldSoul and the Intellect. In Chapter I, I concentrate on the explanation of the mathematical proportions that are the basis for the musical scale of the Timaeus of Plato, according to ProcIus' commentary on this dialogue. Secondly, in Chapters II and III, I study ProcIus' metaphysical interpretation of the scale, understood as a symbol of the hierarchy of levels in Neoplatonism. In Chapter IV, I study what is the value of music for human life, in Proclus' commentary on the Republic. Neoplatonism is a philosophy of Unity, and in this context, music and hannony are a way of returning to Unity from multiplicity and division. I study how music can guide the human soul to come back to the origin of reality, with the help of musician gods such as Hennes, the Muses and Apollo. My dissertation shows the connection between philosophy, mathematics, art and mythology. Music is a privileged art because it is related by an essential kinship to the soul. I have applied the Boethian classification of music to the inner logic of my thesis in order to show that in Neoplatonism all these aspects are organized in a complex conception of music. Neoplatonic music is consequently understood as an encompassing phenomenon, which mirrors the encompassing nature of Neoplatonic philosophy.

Music Education
Ph.D.
This dissertation investigates extant literature on the contributions of spirituality within music education from perspectives of philosophical writers in the field. It introduces Integral Theory, which features a five element heuristic: a) four quadrants of human experience, specifically, subjective, objective, individual, and collective perspectives; b) levels (or stages) of human development; c) lines of human development; d) states of consciousness; and e) types or styles of being and acting in the world. Finally, this dissertation applies Integral Theory's multi-perspective approach to the dynamic elements that engage body, mind, and spirit as teacher and learner perform, listen to, compose, and improvise music. I use Integral Theory's four quadrants of human experience to summarize, categorize, analyze, and map aspects of presenters' papers and the final round table discussion at the Spirituality Symposium, Spirituality: More than just a concept?, during the International Society of Music Education Conference (ISME), July, 2008, in Bologna, Italy. I use Integral Theory's levels of human development to map Edward Sarath's Levels of Creative Awareness, as he applies it to trans-stylistic jazz improvisation pedagogy. Sarath's melding of jazz music practices, and music theory and analysis with personal and collective non-music influences, transpersonal elements, and meditation mirrors Integral Theory's second element. Results from this philosophical inquiry show that discussions and pedagogy focusing on spirituality in music education include (a) teacher and student levels of proficiency and excellence in music, (b) personal and collective transformation, (c) diverse descriptions and interpretations of transcendence as they pertain to music's effect on persons, (d) understanding self and other especially meaning, value, belief, and moral systems, (e) receiving and dealing with emotions and feelings in professional settings, (f) brain, biological, and physical aspects, (g) personal and collective imagination, creativity, mystery, wonder, intention, attention, awareness, mindfulness, playfulness, authenticity, flow, (h) identified stake-holding cultural collectives, (i) environmental, institutional, educational, religious, and ideological factors, and (j) curriculum and experiential practices and guidelines. A close reading of flow pedagogy in early childhood music teaching shows some similar methodologies.
Temple University--Theses

Abstract :Music educators are busy people, dealing with a crowded curriculum, an assortment of teacher duties, and the pressure to create and present performances at different grade levels. Everyday obligations leave teachers little opportunity to reflect on their work and to critically assess the values which underlie their educational choices. Practical survival, suggests Broomhead, “is a more potent motivator than ensuring the philosophical soundness of daily classroom activities” (2004, p. 21). Over the past twenty-five years, school music programs across the globe have increasingly aimed at being more diversified and culturally inclusive. This has been an outcome of policy makers, theorists, and practitioners responding to changes in contemporary school populations and societies, the result of decolonisation, economic migration and other aspects of globalisation. These cultural and demographic changes have led to some music programs being modified and expanded to better reflect the cultural diversity of student bodies, but seem to have barely affected others. In order to examine this trend, this thesis investigates the occurrence, place and role of cultural diversity in a selection of primary music programs in Singapore and in Brisbane, Australia, highlighting the ways in which philosophy, policy, curriculum and teacher training influence teacher practice. The three main objectives of this study are: 1) to provide an overview of current practices in this field in both cities; 2) to examine the appeals for more diverse music programs by current music philosophers and the rhetoric of policy makers in response to these requests; and 3) to report on discrepancies between policy and actual practice occurring in primary music classrooms and teacher training, and the challenges and obstacles teachers face when attempting to include a variety of music cultures in their programs. Between June 2008 and February 2010, data was collected at twenty primary schools and six teacher training institutions in Singapore and Brisbane through 44 interviews, extensive observation of music classes and scrutiny of curricula and policy documents. In both cities, one can find examples of schools with a strong focus on Western musical concepts and skills, and also schools committed to providing students a music education based on a greater diversity of music cultures. These cities provide an interesting contrast with respect to the history of nation building, governance, cultural policy, educational policy and cultural make-up, while also presenting many similarities. The choice of these specific research locations was also informed by my own teacher training and teaching experience in both cities, which has led to a personal interest in researching the changes in music education programs over the past twenty-five years, and has facilitated access to people and sources. This document opens with an auto-ethnographic introduction in order to highlight how my education and work experience has led me to research this topic. This section introduces the research questions and a description of the methodology used, which is in turn informed by an extensive review of relevant literature. The importance of philosophical inquiry and critical reflection on teacher practice is reiterated throughout this thesis. Key themes are summarised and highlighted in the personal reflections that conclude each chapter. These reflections have allowed me to critically analyse the research topics and the role they play in my own teaching situation. It has been beneficial for me to weigh up the various positions presented by theorists writing on culturally diverse music education, and to make professional decisions on the major issues that affect my practice. I believe my teaching has already been positively impacted by this exercise, as I have been encouraged to revisit these issues frequently and make changes accordingly. Through the analysis of interview data several main themes emerge. The findings across these themes highlight that while many music teachers are indeed making attempts to address a variety of music cultures in their classrooms, several influential factors such as state and national educational policies, music curriculum documents, teacher training courses and most importantly constructs – professional and personal philosophies of music education – greatly impact the success and continuance of these attempts. In this way, this study aims to provide important insights to inform teachers, teacher educators and policy makers about the current state of cultural diversity in primary music classrooms in Brisbane and Singapore. It highlights examples of best practice and presents recommendations to developers of educational policies and school curricula. In addition, it is anticipated that results of this study may inform changes in teacher training in other parts of the world, with the aim of equipping educators to be more competent and confident in addressing cultural diversity in the music classroom.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Queensland Conservatorium of Music, Griffith University.
Arts, Education and Law
Full Text

Inharmonicity is a concept implicit in acoustic systems that explains the production of non-linear (non-integer) harmonics. While inharmonicity in and of itself is not always audible per se, its effects are no less than creating the basis for timbre and differential sound discrimination. In other words, inharmonic and non-linear signals are essential for human audition, yet they appear and disappear almost instantaneously. This paper attempts to elucidate the wide-reaching effects of inharmonicity and non-linear dynamic systems in a concrete sense by examining their relationships to the listening body and mind, as well as in an abstract sense in considering the theoretical implications of noise and non-linearity on the process of thought, potentiality, and subjective meaning-making.

The paper opens with several accounts related to foregrounding historical ideas about the relationship between sound and body, leading up to a contemporary understanding of sound in the sense of physics and acoustics. Therein, a modern account of inharmonicity and perception is given through current research in psychoacoustics, psychology, and dynamic systems. Finally, the tactic of ‘creative listening’ is introduced following from a discussion of the relationships between noise and thought in 20^th- and 21^st century aesthetics and philosophy.

The development of Estonia’s national music culture has really taken place over the last 145 years, thanks to the national choral song festival tradition that began in 1869 and has continued until today. Song festivals have been always important as a form of non-political resistance confirming Estonian identity and self-confidence. Many have characterized Estonia as a “singing nation” and we know that a great contribution to this is provided by music teachers at schools.

xv, 198 p. : music
Music has meaning. But what is the nature and source of meaning, what tools can we use to illuminate meaning in musical analysis, and how can we relate aspects of musical structure to our embodied experience? This dissertation provides some possible answers to these questions by examining the role that metaphors and models play in creating musical meaning. By applying Mark Johnson and Steve Larson's conceptual metaphors for musical motion, Larson's theory of musical forces, perspectives on musical gesture, and a wide variety of models in music analysis, I show how meaning is constructed in selected works by Bach and Schubert. My approach focuses on our experience of musical motion as a source of expressive meaning. The analysis of two gigue subjects by Bach shows how we create expressive meaning by mapping musical gestures onto physical gestures, and five detailed case studies from Schubert's Winterreise show how the same basic underlying pulse leads to different expressive meanings based on how that pulse maps onto walking motion. One thread that runs through this dissertation is that models play a significant role in creating meaning; this idea is central to my analysis of the prelude from Bach's fourth cello suite. Questions of meaning are not new to musical discourse; however, claims about meaning often lurk below the surface in many musical analyses. I aim to make the discussion of meaning explicit by laying bare the mechanisms by which meaning is enacted when we engage with music. The view of musical meaning adopted in this study is based on several complementary ideas about meaning in general: meaning is something our minds create, meaning is not fixed, meaning is synonymous with understanding, and meaning emerges from our embodied experience. Other scholars who address musical meaning (for example, Hatten and Larson) typically adopt a singular approach. Although I do not create a new theory of meaning, I employ numerous converging viewpoints. By using a multi-faceted approach, we are able to choose the best available tools to discuss aspects of our musical experience and relate the expressive meaning of that experience to details of musical structure.
Committee in charge: Stephen Rodgers, Chairperson; Jack Boss, Member; Lori Kruckenberg, Member; Steven Larson, Member; Mark Johnson, Outside Member