Philosophical Notes on Cognition and Music

Can the philosophical quest for the essence of music be informed by the transgressive attempts to make music within the means traditionally proper to other temporal arts, such as literature? What can we learn about the essence of music from such hybrids? And are they hybrids at all? Can musical novels and short stories be legitimate objects of scrutiny for the philosopher of music, alongside with symphonies, Lieder, popular songs and jazz standards? Can they count as (qualified, perhaps) instantiations of the musical art, rather than mere representations and descriptions thereof? In my attempt to address these questions in the lights of the contemporary Philosophy of Music on one hand and the Word and Music Studies on the other I interpret Antoni Libera’s 2012 short story Toccata in C Major as a work of textual music. I comment on some heuristic advantages of such well-defended inclusion for the philosophical study of the essence of music.

2018

2021

This article aims to analyze music from a philosophical and theological perspective, using the principles of multi- and transdisciplinary methodology. After a brief introduction, which presents the main moments in the history of the musical phenomenon, a first chapter addresses the metaphysical dimension of music in classical composers. The second chapter shows the position of philosophers towards music, starting with Pythagoras and ending with Schopenhauer. The third chapter focuses on music theology in general, but also on the theology and metaphysics of music to the French philosopher of Romanian origin, Emil Cioran, who, after Augustin and Schopenhauer, wrote probably the deepest pages on the ontology of music. The last chapter refers to to the archetypal character of music.

Music Analysis, 2003

Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2014

New Sound, 2012

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2008

This third volume of Peter Kivy's collected essays follows The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and New Essays on Musical Understanding (Oxford University Press, 2001). It contains reflections on issues that continue to interest ...

2012

This paper introduces the concept of cognitive categories as to be found within different music aesthetical approaches. Additionally, it claims that isomorph cognitive categories can be found in other areas of human activity such as philosophy, mathematics and politics. In order to demonstrate the validity of this approach the concept of cognitive categories has been applied to different time periods of the Western Civilization commencing with the medieval ages and leading up to the avant-garde. The paper does not claim to be comprehensive but to open up an area for research which has received little attention so far.