MHST 336 PHIL 231. Philosophy of Music

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1 MHST 336 PHIL 231 Philosophy of Music Instructors: James O Leary, Kohl 322, jolearly@oberlin.edu Katherine Thomson Jones, King 120D, kthomson@oberlin.edu Office Hours: Thomson Jones, King 120D: Monday, 12:00 PM 1:00 PM O Leary, Kohl 322: Wednesday, 12:00 PM 1:00 PM Combined, Slow Train Coffee Shop: Thursday, 4:00 PM 5:00 PM Class Meeting Time and Place: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:00 AM 12:15 PM, Bibbins 224 Enrollment: 45 Course Description As a unique College Conservatory collaboration, this course encourages any student who cares about music to reflect on its nature and significance. With a focus on Western art music as the subject of a rich philosophical tradition, the course introduces students to key texts and arguments in both historical and contemporary analytic musical aesthetics. Specific questions to be addressed include: What is a musical work? What is the nature of the special relation between music and the emotions? What is the relationship between music and language? And more broadly, in what ways can music be meaningful? With the combined instruction of a musicologist and a philosopher, this course offers a unique opportunity for deepening and diversifying our musical understanding. Prerequisites College students: 1 course in philosophy or instructor consent. Conservatory students: level course in music history or instructor consent. Please note that this course provides either College or Conservatory credit (not both). Students can choose whether to have the course count as MHST336 or as PHIL231. Course Materials A packet with all the readings for the course is available for purchase in Kohl 309. Scores and recordings of the necessary pieces of music will be on reserve in the Conservatory library. Course Requirements Academic Integrity: Students must submit their own, original work on all assignments and acknowledge the ways in which others contributed to that work. The policies regarding academic honesty are found on pp of the Student Regulations, Policies, and Procedures manual. Students are welcome to study together, and to discuss, edit, and critique each other s work, provided that it falls within the college s guidelines. Do not hesitate to contact your instructors if you have any questions regarding this matter. 1

2 Assignment Type Due Date Weight Five max. 500 word musical response pieces Mon , Wed , Mon , Wed , Wed by 6pm 12% each, 60% total Longer paper, max words Mon OR Mon by 6pm 35% Attendance and Participation 5% Course Schedule Feb 3 T Welcome! Feb 5 R Plato, The Republic, Book III 394d 412b, ed. G. R. F. Ferrari, trans. Tom Griffith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). THE BIRTH OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC Feb 10 T Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, excerpted in Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader, Vol. II, ed. Edward A. Lippman (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1988), Philip Alperson, Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 40.2 (1981): Feb 12 R Feb 17 T Lydia Goehr, Schopenhauer and the Musicians: An Inquiry into the Sounds of Silence and the Limits of Philosophizing about Music, in Schopenhauer, Philosophy and the Arts, ed. Dale Jacquette (Cambridge University Press, 1996), Musical Analysis : Richard Strauss, Tod und Verklärung (1888) FORMALISM Feb 19 R Immanuel Kant, Analytic of the Beautiful from The Critique of Judgment, excerpted in The Philosophy of Art: Readings Ancient and Modern, ed. Alex Neill and Aaron Ridley (New York: McGraw Hill, 1995), Musical RP Due: Mon by 6pm on Bb. Feb 24 T Feb 26 R Eduard Hanslick, The Beautiful in Music, excerpted in Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader, Eduard Hanslick, Does Music Represent Feelings? excerpted in Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader,

3 Nick Zangwill, Against Emotion: Hanslick was Right about Music, British Journal of Aesthetics 44 (2004): Mar 3 T Peter Kivy, The Fine Art of Repetition, in The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), Mar 5 R Musical Analysis : Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony No. 5 (1808) MUSIC AND EMOTION Mar 10 T Susanne Langer, On Significance in Music, in Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), Musical RP Due: Wed by 6pm on Bb. Mar 12 R Edward T. Cone, Expressiveness in Music, in The Composer s Voice (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), Mar 17 T Stephen Davies, The Expression of Emotion in Music Mind 89 (1980): Mar 19 R Jerrold Levinson, Music and Negative Emotion, in Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), Group 1 Term Paper Due: Mon by 6pm on Bb. SPRING BREAK Mar 31 T Musical Analysis : Christoph Willibald Gluck, Che farò senza Euridice from Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) MUSIC AND REPRESENTATION Apr 2 R Ann Clark, Is Music a Language? Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 41 (Winter 1982), Roger Scruton, Representation in Music, Philosophy 51 (1976). Musical RP Due: Mon by 6pm on Bb. Apr 7 T Jenefer Robinson, Music as a Representational Art in What is Music? An Introduction to the Philosophy of Music, ed. Philip Alperson (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1987), Carolyn Abbate, What the Sorcerer Said, in Unsung Voices (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), Apr 9 R Musical Analysis : Claude Debussy, Nuages from Nocturnes (1899) 3

4 WHAT IS A WORK OF MUSIC? Apr 14 T Roman Ingarden, The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity, tr. Adam Czerniawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986 [1928]), Peter Kivy, Platonism in Music: A Kind of Defense, in The Fine Art of Repetition, Musical RP Due: Wed by 6pm on Bb. Apr 16 R Jerrold Levinson, What a Musical Work Is, in Music, Art, and Metaphysics, Apr 21 T Lydia Goehr, Being True to the Work, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47.1 (Winter 1989): Apr 23 R Musical Analysis: John Cage, 4 33 (1952) THE VALUE OF MUSIC Apr 28 T Roger Scruton, Why Read Adorno? in Understanding Music: Philosophy and Interpretation (London: Continuum, 2009), Theodor Adorno, Philosophy of New Music, tr. Robert Hullot Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006 [1949]), Musical RP Due: Wed by 6pm on Bb. Apr 30 R...cont. May 5 T Vladimir Jankélévitch, Music and the Ineffable, tr. Carolyn Abbate (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003 [1961]), xxi 15, May 7 R cont. Group 2 Term Paper Due: Mon by 6pm. Assignments Musical Response Papers (max. 500 words, 12% each) Please respond to each of the following questions and submit your responses via Blackboard before the indicated times. Scores and recordings of each piece will be on reserve in the Conservatory Library and on Blackboard. Number 1 (due Monday, February 23 by 6PM on Blackboard): Does the depiction of the world beyond ( Himmelsraum ) in Strauss s Tod und Verklärung have the features of the Will as described by Schopenhauer? Does the music provide access to the Will or Transcendent reality? Describe how. 4

5 Number 2 (due Wednesday, March 11 by 6PM on Blackboard): With Kant and Hanslick in mind, what makes Beethoven s Symphony No. 5 beautiful? Can you fully account for your appreciation of the piece with their kind of Formalism? Number 3 (due Monday, April 6 by 6PM on Blackboard): Is there any emotion in Gluck s Che farò senza Euridice? that exists independently of the text? If so, how? If not, why not? Number 4 (due Wednesday, April 15 by 6PM on Blackboard): Does Debussy s Nuages from Nocturnes represent the clouds? How, exactly? (E.g., in virtue of the program? the structure? the interpretive tradition? any extramusical features?) Number 5 (due Wednesday, April 29 by 6PM on Blackboard): Is Cage s 4 33 a work of music? What constitutes the work in this case? (E.g., the sounds? the score? historical context?) Term Paper (max 2,500 words) Instructions: Please respond to ONE of the following prompts with a clear analysis of the relevant course readings and submit your paper via Blackboard on the corresponding date. Choose one or two (max three) course readings to discuss in your paper. Logistics: You will sign up during the second week of class to submit your paper with Group 1 (due March 23) OR with Group 2 (due May 11). You will only write ONE term paper. Please submit via Blackboard by following these instructions: Click on the Assignments tab. Attach your paper as a Word file. Type out and sign the Honor Pledge in the Comments box. Click Submit. Guidelines: First provide a careful reconstruction of the author s argument: try to list each claim the author makes as they approach a conclusion. Be efficient but careful. For the purposes of your paper, you need not focus on the entire text, but rather the specific arguments that help you address one of the questions below.there is no need to incorporate texts beyond the course readings. This is not a research paper.. After you ve reconstructed the author s argument, engage with the text by providing a critical analysis or comparison to another text. Feel free to use musical examples to support, illustrate, or challenge a philosophical point that you outline in your essay. In the process of reading and engaging your chosen texts, you will undoubtedly articulate many potential objections to what the writer has stated, and you will certainly encounter details that you find puzzling or even contradictory. Do not ignore these potential criticisms, but at the same time avoid the temptation to merely dismiss or debunk the text. Instead, first try to place these questions in a broader context: can the larger scope of the argument withstand this particular inconsistency? does it affect the underlying stability of the philosopher s system? what might have lead them to include this perplexing detail? Your goal should be to enter into a dialogue with the text, to sympathize with it, and to begin to understand how the ideas articulated by these philosophers build a complex system of claims and conclusions. Topics for Group 1 (Due Monday by 6pm): Respond to ONE of the following prompts with a critical analysis of the relevant course reading(s): 1. Is Schopenhauer right about the unique revelatory power of music? 5

6 2. Critically discuss Hanslick s claim that it is not the primary or sole artistic purpose of music to arouse or represent the emotions. 3. How do we appreciate (i.e., enjoy and understand) absolute music? 4. Can formalism adequately explain the way music is expressive of emotions? 5. What is it for music to be moving? (What is the relation, if there is one, between music being expressive and its being moving?) Topics for Group 2 (Due Monday by 6pm): Respond to ONE of the following prompts with a critical analysis of the relevant course reading(s): 1. To what extent is the narrative interpretation of absolute music appropriate and useful? 2. Can absolute music represent? If not, why not? If it can, how and in what ways? 3. When, if ever, and in what sense is it appropriate and useful to compare absolute music to a language? 4. What is the musical work? 5. Is music ineffable and how does this account for its proper role in our lives? 6