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Thoughts on Music - 2 - from Plato's Timaeus

"All audible sound is given us for the sake of harmony, which has motions akin to the orbits in our soul, and which, as anyone who makes intelligent use of the arts knows, is not to be used, as is commonly thought, to give irrational pleasure, but as a heaven-sent ally in reducing to order and harmony any disharmony in the revolutions within us. Rhythm, again, was given from the same heavenly source to help us in the same way, for most of us lack measure and grace."

Comment: We have learned a thing or two since Plato's time -- not least of which being an instinct to distrust absolute statements about the uses of art enshrined in a clockwork cosmology. But this statement resonates with me for articulating what I have found to be one of the great virtues of music.

If there is a moment in my life when I first became aware of the humanist possibilities of music, it was a turbulent day when I was 20 years old. Putting on Andras Schiff's "Well-Tempered Clavier" transported me utterly away from vexation into a timeless realm of exquisite geometries. Bach describes something true with his figures and relations, and I intuited a great order lying within my own heart. Through that intuition I could see the possibility of concord within my field of action.

Music is a primary instrument for resolving the tangled threads of this world, and for reconciling its hard edges. To this day music serves this sacred duty in my life.

Tags: bach, cosmology, humanism, plato

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Comment by Stephen William Smoliar on July 1, 2009 at 2:23pm: Actually, what I am trying to get at is the distinction between artifacts and the practices through which those artifacts are produced. (Note, for example, that the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary lists "fugue" as having a verb form as well as a noun form. The latter denotes the practice of producing an artifact that is an instance of the former.) The "autobiographical" nature of the second volume of WTC has more to do with those preludes and fugues being reflections on past practices that it does with whether or not preludes or fugues constitute legitimate ontological categories; and that is the primary message I was trying to get across in my blog post. (However, since that post never got beyond being a "rehearsal," I make no claims regarding the success of my attempt!) To translate this to Wittgenstein's example, our understanding of the concept of "game" has less to do with how well we can describe the attributes of "game" and more to do with how we can describe the practice of "play." From this point of view, every composition has within it the power to inform us about the practices of the composer. The challenge facing us as listeners is to be so informed!

Comment by Barnaby Thieme on July 1, 2009 at 12:03pm: Hi Stephen,

What I take you to be saying is that the preludes and fugues in Bach's WTC bear a family resemblance in Wittgenstein's sense. I understand what this means, although I don't see much difficulty in providing a formal definition of either "prelude" or "fugue". In seems to me on its face that preludes and fugues are better described formally than through an appeal to category resemblance, but I can leave that aside for the sake of argument.

I don't follow the jump from "the preludes and fugues have a 'family likeness'" to "this illustrates the fact that Bach belonged more to the family of his music than his biological family". Unless I'm mistaken this parallel relies on Wittgenstein's use of the word "family", but this is clearly a figure of speech.

Comment by Stephen William Smoliar on June 30, 2009 at 4:10pm: Personally, I am more partial to "Theaetetus," having written about it (yet again) today on my own blog! I also must confess that, having recently reviewed live performances of both the first volume and second volume of Well-Tempered Clavier, I found myself transported in the opposite direction (i.e. away from the "timeless realm of exquisite geometries"). Rather than any "truth" of "figures and relations," I found, particularly in the second volume, Bach venturing into an area where I least expected him to go: autobiography! Follow the hyperlink, and let me know if my reasoning makes any sense to you!