Philosophy and music Archives - Lodewijk Muns: Recent Episodes
Philosophy and music Archives - Lodewijk Muns
Elitism Classical music has been considered the mainstay of ‘western’ musical culture from around 1770 till 1970. Its institutions – orchestras, opera houses, choirs, conservatoires – were mainly supported, albeit often poorly, by a culturally ambitious upper middle class, which since the late 18th century increasingly took over the role of cultural patronage from the […]
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In 5,000,000,000 years, the sun will burn out. Considerably earlier, I suppose, our planet will have ceased to exist. It is still an unimaginable time span, and most likely beyond the existence of anything that we might recognize as ‘human’. So, no need to worry. Intuitively and irrationally, the thought sometimes does worry me. It’s […]
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The Arioso dolente from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 110 (which I discussed earlier) is an example of instrumental music that imitates a vocal genre. It is the pianist’s task to conjure an imaginary vocal-dramatic, but wordless monologue, the expression of the thoughts and feelings of some nameless and otherwise unidentified human being. Presumably these thoughts […]
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Music Representing Music The Arioso dolente (Klagender Gesang) from Beethoven’s Piano Sonata op. 110 in A-flat major represents what the words written over it indicate: a mournful song, or vocal lament. The listener will easily recognize its quasi-vocal qualities without help from the score. (Many have noted the arioso’s similarity with Es ist vollbracht from […]
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A pianist is improvising. Inadvertently his fingers have hit upon the beginning of a familiar phrase. What is that tune? … How does it continue? … Oh, that’s it … Papillons. This is how the workings of memory are portrayed in the Florestan episode in Schumann’s Carnaval op. 9 (1837). As I’ve written before, this […]
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Having finally acquired a smartphone, I had to choose a ringtone. A trivial problem; but one that blew my thoughts into more philosophical directions. Many people choose for this purpose some favourite piece of music. I find this hard to understand. Of all the music I know and enjoy, I can’t think of any piece I […]
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