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For some years, material progress in New Music seems to have reached an end, bringing about a crisis for music that defined itself through its newness. At the same time, there is an increasing number of young composers who distance themselves from a material-based aesthetic and see a way out of this impasse through turning to a visualisation and conceptualisation of music. The philosopher Harry Lehmann, who already called for a >substance-aesthetic turn< in the contemporary arts some time ago, is now connecting this one-sidedly in New Music to a greater emphasis on the conceptual through visualisation, theatricalisation and semanticisation. By contrast, the author shows that equating conceptualism with a substance-aesthetic turn involves a lack of aesthetic openness, as aesthetic substance can also develop in autonomous music, and also points to the problems that arise in the area of tension between the subordination of music to the purpose of representing extra-musical statements and the independent internal laws of autonomous music. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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E. M. Cioran is considered an outstanding philosophical exponent of pessimism and radical scepticism in the 20th century. His profound attachment to music is barely ever central to his work, but is evident in many peripheral references. What logocentric philosophy considers deficient in music - its a conceptual ambiguity or haziness, its affinity for ecstasy and intoxication - is to Cioran evidence of a higher quality »beyond all reason«. He explicitly admired the »great music« (especially the German) between Bach and Brahms as mankind's highest cultural achievement. His tendency to mention very few composers by name, and only rarely works, let alone details of works, could indicate that he perceived music - especially in his statements on J. S. Bach - in an ecstatic-mythical fashion as a form of nameless, unrecognisable »cosmic order« - and be taken as a refutation of his own »curses on the world«, which paradoxically affords a mysterious sense-space to the claimed senselessness of all reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a historical overview of popular music in the 20th century within the context of philosophy and theory. Topics discussed include pop and rock music such as by American music performer Lady Gaga, German philosopher Herbert Marcuse's work "Musik von anderen Planeten," 1968, and German sociologist and philosopher Theodor W. Adorno's work "On Popular Music" (1941).

Luigi Nono's composition Guai ai gelidi mostri, completed in 1983, belongs to the composer's late period and can, in some aspects, be understood as a preparation for his »tragedy of listening« Prometeo. This can be observed in the heightened treatment of space and time, the central use of live electronics, the distended tempi, the dynamic extremes and, above all, the shattering outbursts that suddenly rupture the otherwise restrained sonic continuum. The composition is a collective work. It came about in close collaboration with the painter Emilio Vedova, whose pictures from the carnival cycle … Cosiddetti Carnevali… 77/83 inspired Nono and the philosopher Massimo Cacciari, who provided the text. The present essay incorporates the pictorial, textual and philosophical levels into its examination of the work, combining aesthetic discourse with questions of work genesis and generation of material, as well as analysis of the work's temporal and formal aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is music determined by sound? What is the role of sound in the constitution of music, and what does it mean to hear music? To answer these questions a phenomenological approach is used here. From this perspective, musical sound is sound in a certain meaning, not sound as such. Furthermore, the relationships between the sounds are of the same importance for music as the sounds themselves; hence, it is not possible to reduce music to sound. To define the relationships between the musical sounds, it is necessary to bring them into a system of rules, as for example pitch spaces. But to a certain extent, musical sound escapes from such systems, there is a remainder of sound that Is only perceptible in pre-predicative experience. Nevertheless, this remainder is significant for the hearing of music, especially for gestalt-perception. The hearing of music is grounded in the inner time-consciousness and the structures of the passive synthesis. Also important is, in Wittgenstein's terms, the hearing of aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the results of an earlier study on the figure of Don Alfonso this essay offers a closer analysis of the doctrine advocated by the „old philosopher“. Selecting ten main aspects the concept of atheist materialism - which goes back to Epicure and was reformulated in modern times by La Mettrie and others - is shown to be the constitutive conviction of Don Alfonso, who as the principal character of this opera uses it for his enlightened intentions. Da Ponte / Mozart introduce this modern weltanschauung, which is generally adopted by the intellectual avant-garde, to the opera stage and submit it to a rigorous testing; Cosl fan tutte is contemporary philosophy set to music at the fin de siècle. We see that even sensitive love as the most sublime expression of human subjectivity succumbs to material laws and thus is controllable; but we also see that mechanistic-materialistic anthropology fails to do justice to the enlightened concept of humanity and thus is insufficient. In this way Così fan tutte despite the strict application of its philosophical program reaches beyond itself, anticipating the Magic Flute. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The „conflict of the faculties“ pervaded the entire 18th century. Its goal was to enforce the legitimate claims of reason upon the unimpeded search for truth and deriving from this, the leading role of the faculty of philosophy within the hierarchical university catalogue of disciplines, in which the three "higher" faculties (theology, jurisprudence, medicine) were juxtaposed by the philosophical faculty as the "lower" and hence subordinate. This dispute is also present in Cosi fan tutte. A representative of the lower faculty, the philosopher Don Alfonso wishes to convince the two couples of a demeanor that is based exclusively on reason for this alone promises happiness. He thus clearly emphasizes the leading role of philosophy even in matters of conducting one's life. In applying his enlightened educational plan, both medicine (represented by the "magnetic doctor", a practitioner of the Mesmeric doctrine) and Jurisprudence (represented in the persona of the notary Beccavivi) are exposed and ridiculed. By taking up this central theme of a time that propagated autonomy and rationalism and by presenting it on the opera stage, Mozart/Da Ponte's Cosi fan tutte reflects a fundamental concern of the Enlightenment. This observation supports the thesis that altogether Mozart's oeuvre can only be judged adequately if seen against the background of the dominant intellectual currents of his time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]