Feb. 10

DAY II

Schopenhauer and Wagner

01. Intro. We are going to have to delay some of the presentations, maybe up to Spring Break.

• I am going in circles/spirals. Coming back to the same ideas...
• Aesthetics but not too scholarly - I am a composer...
• Musicology but not too scholarly - more practical than strict.
• The necessity of listening to the music discussed (Tristan, Liszt). Tristan, like Beethoven's last String Quartets and Piano Sonatas, like the Art of Fugue - absolute necessity to know them if you are a musician.

• The tonal system as hierarchy - typical Enlightenment mentality
• Back to Petrarca's Sonet 104 - 3d relationship, chromatic modulation
• Jeux d'eau a villa d'Este - modal, parallel movement.
• Finish last week's presentation (audience, etc.)

1. Schopenhauer - The World as Will and Representation. Influence of past philosophers on the arts: Hegel's thesis-antithesis-synthesis and the sonata form; Kant: the thing in itself. Schopenhauer's theory:

• We know the world as representation; this requires an object and a subject. All representations conform to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (Kant) - i.e. involve time, space and causality. Scientific/materialistic thinking tries to describe the world as such.
• This does not explain the why. The answer is the WILL. We know directly the will from the representation of our own body/self. The will permeates everything and objectivates itself in various forms but the Will is one, same in me as in a stone. Sort of an universal desire. The Will is outside time and space and causality.
• The world as representation includes particular phenomena, diverse - the Will is one.
• Platonic IDEAS are objectivations of the will, still outside space, time and causality. Art 's purpose is to present such IDEAS, removed from particulars, showing them through apparently "real", particular objects
• Music is a special art and Schopenhauer admits that he can not logically explain the difference: it represents the world itself in its totality (any piece of music). As such is almost on the same level with the Platonic Ideas. First (or the only?) philosopher to put it on such a high pedestal (until then - Kant- described it as the lowest among arts since it does not use concepts).
• What Schopenhauer actually does is make the apology of abstract art....
• The WILL is all pervasive, everything is a manifestation of the WILL, The WILL to live. All our actions are driven by desires which, when fulfilled, give birth to new ones. There is no end to this except in death. When contemplating art, we arrive at a state in which our personal desires are shut off. Selfless contemplation during which the desires, everything driven by the WILL is turned off. (Because we are looking at things which are outside time and space and causality).
• Music puts us there right away and is a universal language, instantly understood by everybody.

2. Wagner's development of Schopenhauer's ideas. Glosses over Schopenhauer's naive musical examples (the bass, the melody, etc. Rossini as an great composer...). mentions Beethoven. Takes from Schopenhauer the idea of visual arts needing light (=rational understanding) and opposes the world of sound (=intuitive understanding). The NIGHT=Death. Lohengrin and Elsa = rational and intuitive knowledge. with the intuitive being the superior knowledge. The whole second act of Tristan as Night. Only Death can fulfill their love, only in death can they be totally united - by surpassing their own individuality.

• Hans Sachs' comment that "everything is Wahn"
• Wagner's comments on the smooth transitions in act 2 - proud of himself.
• Buddhism - Nirvana. "A world behind which there is nothing"
• Christianity = hypocrisy; letter to Liszt about Dante and the Paradise - choirs.... Christianity as a branch of Buddhism corrupted by Judaism.
• Decadence in 19th century and the "Jewish" problem. Meyerbeer and the "grand opera" - the main thrust of his anger is at the commercialization of art/music/opera more than at the "jewishness" of Meyerbeer. (Berlioz: Rossini = the fat, happy man)
• The Artwork of the Future. Syncretism in reviving the Greek tragedy, where all the arts join in.
• The Myth as opposed to History. Tapping the collective subconsciousness - see Jung.

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