Ideas and Matter

The legacy of idealism has been a guiding doctrine for the study of nineteenth-century music, from an emphasis on neo-Platonic musical works, acousmatic voices and intangible forms, to listening experiences disembodied, ineffable, and within the scene of what Mark Evan Bonds has called “music as thought.”1 This special issue presents a quartet of articles whose subjects mark a deliberate departure from this legacy. Collectively, they pose the question of whether the regime of idealismhas obscured the emergent perspective of natural science during the period, and with it, those of philosophical and scientific materialism that engaged composers, listeners, and their art.ERC Horizon 2020 fundin

Sound as hermeneutic, or Helmholtz and the quest for objective perception

In 1878, at the height of his fame, Helmholtz asked what was objective in perception, declaring that—in contrast to empirical science—it is the “artist [who] has beheld the real.” His lecture sought to show how sensory perception can be law-like, and how the effects of art are ultimately grounded in such law-likeness. Such a claim for an objective measure of perception was not unprecedented, yet it failed to distinguish cleanly between what is objective and what is real, opening up a discursive space regarding what sound “is,” and what its objective perception may be. Its arguments followed calls for “a science of beauty” based on number, and was motivated, in part, by Helmholtz's attempt to distance himself from the “weaknesses of Romanticism.” This articles argues that Helmholtz's bold claims were only possible on the basis of the writings of German materialists during the 1840s and 50s, and because sound had been figured for decades as an ambiguous object. On this basis, the article considers the role of sound within epistemological debates over sense perception and concepts of the real during the later nineteenth century. It examines the ways in which sound's abstract character became co-opted within Anglo-German discourse concerning objective perception and the scientifically real, initially through the lens of Helmholtz's 1878 lecture, but later broadening this focus to include the mid-century architects of a philosophical materialism, as well as their detractors. A closing case study, a closely documented wager between a geologist and a philosopher about the “real” of sound ca. 1850, demonstrates the imaginative uses of sound as a metonym for philosophical debate. This raises questions about the relation of sensation and number, the contested affinity between sound and concepts of the absolute, and the underlying desire to possess objects of sensory experience.</jats:p

Melody

Melody is a fundamental concept in Western musical thought; it connotes the form and affective power of successive sounds in motion, perceived as an aesthetic unity. Yet for many writers, melody does not exist as an autonomous form, and for those who credit its existence, few agree on what it is, or how it functions in relation to harmonic voice leading and phrase rhythm. This chapter examines the historical emergence of a theory of melody in the West, from Aristoxenus to Leonard Bernstein; it traces the rich intellectual currents that saw melody variously coupled to ideas of voice, schemes of rhythmic symmetry, overtones, spatial organization, theories of evolution, and computational analysis

Exercising musical minds: Phrenology and music pedagogy in London circa 1830

The icon of the machine in early-nineteenth-century Britain was subject to a number of contemporary critiques in which pedagogy and the life of the mind were implicated, but to what extent was education in music composition influenced by this? A number of journal articles appeared on the topic of music and phrenology, bolstered by the establishment of the London Phrenological Society (1823), and its sister organization, the British Phrenological Association (1838). They placed the creative imagination, music, and the “natural” life of the mind into a fraught discourse around music and materialism. The cost of a material mind was a perceived loss of contact with the “gifts of naturer … the dynamical nature of man … the mystic depths of man's soul” (Carlyle), but the concept of machine was also invested with magical potential to transform matter, to generate energy, and can be understood as a new ideal type of mechanism. These confliciting ideals and anxieties over mechanism, as paradigm and rallying cry, are here situated in the context of music pedagogy during the second quarter of the century, with particular reference to amateur musicians and the popular appeal of phrenological “exercise,” and of devices such as Johann Bernhard Logier's “chiroplast.”This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the University of California Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2015.39.2.9

Exercising Musical Minds: Phrenology and Music Pedagogy in London circa 1830

This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the University of California Press via http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/ncm.2015.39.2.9

Melody

Melody is a fundamental concept in Western musical thought; it connotes the form and affective power of successive sounds in motion, perceived as an aesthetic unity. Yet for many writers, melody does not exist as an autonomous form, and for those who credit its existence, few agree on what it is, or how it functions in relation to harmonic voice leading and phrase rhythm. This chapter examines the historical emergence of a theory of melody in the West, from Aristoxenus to Leonard Bernstein; it traces the rich intellectual currents that saw melody variously coupled to ideas of voice, schemes of rhythmic symmetry, overtones, spatial organization, theories of evolution, and computational analysis

Philosophical and psychological ideas in the post-civil war novels of Ramon J Sender.

PhDThe novels Sender has written since the Spanish Civil War are interesting above all for their ideas. These centre on two main topics: one, philosophical - the nature of reality -, the other, psychological - the problems of adjustment to reality. Such ideas and topics are not to be found in Sender's pre-Civil War works; nor are these works characterised by the considerable ambiguity and structural complexity of the later books which challenge the reader with doubts and questions rather than supply-him with answers. The quasi-autobiographical novels, ih particular, among Sender's post-Civil War works, suggest that the war was a watershed in his life and thought. Certainly that is the major experience with which his fictional counterparts have to struggle - the non-autobiographical works often focus on other traumatic experiences. Certainly too, when Sender came to rework pre-Civil-War material in post-Civil War novels his originalviews were either changed or - more frequently - questioned and presented as being no more valid than a number of quite different views. Moreover, the lives of Sender's fictional counterparts - in his post-Civil War autobiographical novels - amount to hypothetical, moral and existential variations on the author's own life, before, during and after the Civil War. The complex structure and ambiguity of Sender's post-Civil War works are wedded to the philosophical and psychological topics they present and explore. Structure and ideas both reflect his response to the traumatic challenge which the Spanish Civil War forced upon his understanding and capacity for adjustment. In writing these works Sender has tried to shed some light on the reality of his own life - including its unknown and unknowable aspects - and by so doing confirmSto the attentive reader, the profound seriousness and importance of Sender's post-war writing

Introduction: The Laboratory and the Stage

At first sight, opera and science would seem to occupy quite separate spaces. The one typically unfolds on the stage of a theatre, the other most often takes place in a laboratory or lecture hall. The one draws on creative inspiration in entwining music, poetry and spectacle, the other on inductive reasoning through observation and experiment; patient activities that, for John Herschel in 1831, constituted the ‘fountains of all natural science’. And while the one offers an opportunity for emotional and intellectual engagement through the public gaze, the other cautiously validates the empiricism of verifiable experience through critical acts of witnessing. To yoke the two together, then, may appear arbitrary