From my manuscript on Ethics and Aesthetics.......
Contemplation takes many forms, from the sometimes lead me by the nose approach of literature and emotionally sometimes music, to the slam effects of paintings and sculptures, with a lot of sublimity in between. All, however, as works of Art, are united in their intelligibility.
What, for instance, tho, is intelligible about music?
As Rand pointed out, we gain our knowledge thru the use of concepts that is, by means of abstractions. But out cognition, however, begins with the ability to perceive. Art brings man's concepts to the perceptual level of his consciousness and allows him top grasp them directly, as if they were percepts, she added. As I said earlier, this means that a work of Art takes the abstractions of metaphysics and makes them into specifics the concretes. Now, concretes are usually thought of in terms of entities yet Rand, writing in her Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, has said that concretes subsume not only entities, but attributes, actions, and relationships. To me, this includes situations as well what, I would say, in terms of music, as emotional situations. This brings me to conclude that Rand did indeed make a error in assuming that Helmholtz's use of sensations meant that music is auditorily experienced as sensations, not precepts. But, as Davird Kelley pointed out in his Evidence of the Senses, all sounds are properly to be regarded as percepts, as he goes on to explain their feature as being an attribute of specifics in an auditory context. The harmonic sounds, as tones, then get integrated into what is called a melody, the fundamental aspect of music.
Aside from her misdirected mis-understanding of the sensation/perception issue of musical experience, there are two criticisms of her view of music I also find a need to address. The first is that she premised the \essence of music as being mathematical. The easiest way to respond to such a criticism is to remember that she defined mathematics as the science of measurement and also to remember that a sheet of music, any music, is a sheet full of measurement. Yes, there are other aspects of music that give texture to the music, put the measurements into contexts but the bottom line is that music is an exoppression of auditory stimulus according to mathematical means. It is on that basis, the fundamental level, that she expressed the way music is involved in one's sense of life and was concerned with.
The other cirticism leveled at her music t heory is the one she really didn't give a satisfactory answer to what is the re-presentational aspect of music that co-responds to reality? I suspect part of the problem in giving a good answer to this was her sensation/perception mis-understanding aspect of how the mind hears music. But, if one were to re-translate her sensation mistaken observations and put them into perceptual concretes, it seems a much more integrated and noncontradictory view emerges.
While I am primarily an artist, tho I also sculpt, I also am an avid listener od serious music. One thing I've observed is that for the most part of human hustory, music was in accompanyment with song and dance. It wasn't until about 300 years or so ago that secular music really made its mark, and music started being played for its own sake. But, for the time music was connected with voice especially, and dence, there was never a question about its expressive meanings. This is to say there was no problem as to what aspect of reality music's meaning referred to, music's emotional respondings. The question would only arise when music per se was in volved. Yet, as far as I am concerned, it seems a false problem, as the same set of pitch, beat, tone, etc. That music makes use of when accompanying vocals should elicit the same response emotionally when not accompanying vocals, when the music stands on its own. This is clearly noted in such instances as laments, or songs of joy, or the emotions of solemnity, or the gaiety of dance. Music, as such, is a very abstract Art, and in expressing what it is and does in a form similar to the definition of Art, I would have to say that music selects and styles certain important or meaningful aural experiences, making use of certain configurations which best express those qualities, drawing out the relative emotional responses abstracting, as it were, to better the perception.
Even when one deals with music beyond a single instrument or small group of instruments, as, say, the expressiveness of an orchestra, where far greater variety of tones and emotional derivations can be achieved, note that there is still a co-respondent to singing the violins, which are analogous to the vocal, whether singly as in a violin concerto, or grouping as if a choral, as they are arranged in the orchestra itself. In any case, it is clear there is intelligibility, a definite "re-presentation of..." in music, and a definite reference to "some aspect of reality."
Now, there is more on this which I could continue saying something about, filling in some of the details of this music section to smooth out what seem rough patches but I am not really interested. I only wanted to say enough to indicate primarily for others that Rand's aesthetic views do indeed apply to the other arenas of Art as they do to literature and, I hope I've shown, to rendering. I could, for instance, go on with the moral implications that are to be found in music, which have been disputed by others who claim that moral examples cannot be displayed other than thru literature, but I hope that by showing at least clues to the supposed dilemna in speaking of rendering, so , too, someone will detail it for music [if not, and nobody else comes forth to do so, then I reluctantly will have to "teach the children" I just hope not.... there are, after all, other adults around].
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