Schopenhauer’s Philosophy of Music
Schopenhauer believes that poetry does in the idea what philosophy does in the concept. That is, poetry does in an a posteriori intuition what philosophy does in a priori reasoning. This makes poetry more suited for youth and philosophy more suited for old age. But Schopenhauer does not see music simply as an augmentation of poetry. The musical notes take on a significance in their own right. The words are not as important when it comes to music and take on a secondary quality. And in fact, most often, a good composer is matching the words to suit the melody and not vice versa. Thus, music and poetry form the perfect combination together- one invoking the idea and the other invoking the will itself.
Schopenhauer ranks music the highest of all of the fine arts, with architecture having the lowest ranking, and poetry, sculpture, and painting in between. Schopenhauer believes that music is the only art form that does not exhibit the idea, but exhibits the Will directly. Since music exhibits the will, the bass should be placed at a much lower interval than the higher voices of tenor, alto, and soprano. When a musical tone is at a rational distance from the previous tone these two tones are said to be in harmony. This represents a lack of tension in or satisfaction of the will. When two tones are at an irrational distance from each other, this is called dissonance, and represents tension in the will. Rhythm forms the constitutive building blocks through which music is formed. Melody consists of the tones constantly entering discord and renewing itself. This takes place via rhythmic cycles, better often being obtained on “good beats.” Satisfaction consists in a discord resolving simultaneously with a good beat. For example, a melody goes about and is resolved first on a bad beat creating no satisfaction but then later on is resolved on a good beat creating greater satisfaction. In this case, the will is tinged with representation, making the effect pleasurable even in the case of tension in the will. That is, the will is not itself affected but an intellectual image of the will. As such we become nostalgic over the connection in our history we find between the music and our own will.
Music as isomorphism
I agree with Schopenhauer that music is not necessarily simply an extension of poetry. However, I give poetry a slightly higher evaluation that Schopenhauer as I believe there are wider array of ideas available than through there are concepts. The reason is that an a posteriori intuition has a wider array of ideas to draw on than through conceptual reasoning and need not necessarily subscribe to proper rational form. Not everything in the physical world reduces to philosophy.
However, I have a modification of the philosophy of music which I came up with as a teenager and that is that music is an isomorphic representation of emotional structure and mindset. This means that there is a one-to-one correspondence between the structure of emotion in the mind and the notes in music. The key is that every emotional structure in the mind is represented by a note pattern and every note pattern is represented by an emotion in the mind- i.e. it is an isomorphism. For example, certain dissonances can represent the emotional structure sadness/compassion, and a cluster of these can represent loose sadness/compassion. This transcends the one-dimensional mode advocated by Schopenhauer in which music simply represents tension or a lack of tension in the will. And under this guise there needs to be perhaps a bit less emphasis on the base. One should go at great lengths to obtain as unique and exotic of an emotional structure and mindset as possible.
The question now becomes what value does music have when one can be described the emotions by reading, for example, On the Passions by David Hume. However, there is a point of divergence and that is that music has access to direct qualitative features that are not available through reasoning alone. This can be demonstrated with arguments for qualia. As an example, suppose a person is born in a black in white room wearing black and white clothing and has never seen a color and spends their whole life reading about color. When that person finally sees a red apple, that person will probably have learned something new. Exotic timbre can help enhance music by inducing exotic mindsets. I’m sure this does not constitute the core of the musical experience and no one should substitute melody for timbre. But developments in timbre can help induce very exotic and unique mindsets. Timbre helps contribute to the mindset of the piece.
Idealism Studies 