Wittgenstein as Philosophical Tone-Poet: Philosophy and Music in Dialogue

221 Pages·2014·1.145 MB·English

by  Bela Szabados

W P t -P
ittgenstein as hilosoPhical one oet
STUDIEN ZUR ÖSTERREICHISCHEN PHILOSOPHIE
Gegründet von Rudolf Haller
Herausgegeben von Mauro Antonelli
BAND XLV
W P t -P
ittgenstein as hilosoPhical one oet
PHILOSOPHY AND MUSIC IN DIALOGUE
B s
éla zaBados
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014
Die Reihe wird gemeinsam von Editions Rodopi, Amsterdam - New York
und dem Verlag Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg herausgegeben.
The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO
9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents -
Requirements for permanence”.
ISBN: 978-90-420-3857-8
E-BOOK ISBN: 978-94-012-1099-7
©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2014
Printed in the Netherlands
For Heather
Musicians
I pass a bunch of musicians in the street.
It’s about 12.30, rehearsal just over, they’re
standing around outside the side door of the church.
A good rehearsal; and it’s April. They’re laughing,
horsing around, talking about shoes, or taxes, where
to go for lunch, anything
except what their heads are full of.
It’s a kind of helplessness, you can see
they are still breathing almost in unison, like people
the search light has passed over
and spared, their attention
lifts, swerves, settles; even
the gravel dust stuttering at their feet is coherent.
Jan Zwicky
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 11
Introduction 13
Chapter I. A Life in Music 19
1. An Appetite for Music 19
2. Music’s Place: Biography or Philosophy? 20
3. Young Wittgenstein Listens to Music 26
4. Later Listening 31
Chapter II. Early Views: Wittgenstein’s Vienna Revisited 39
1. Eduard Hanslick and a Tradition in Music 39
2. Was the Early Wittgenstein a Musical Formalist?
Affinities to Hanslick 44
3. Whistling the Inexpressible: Wittgenstein, Hanslick
and Schopenhauer 49
Chapter III. Wittgenstein in Transit: A Critique of the Tradition 59
1. Is Beauty All It’s Cracked Up to Be? 59
2. Do Works of Art Have an Essence? 65
3. “As If from a Great Distance”: Uncovering an
Aesthetic Attitude? 72
4. Appreciating Music Naturally 80
Chapter IV. Later Views: A New Era 87
1. Was the Later Wittgenstein a Musical Formalist?
A Shift in Perspective 87
2. Wittgenstein and Hanslick: A Kinship with
Expressive Difference 94
3. Irony in Music and Language: Face, Gesture, Tone 97
Chapter V. Wittgenstein and the Composers 117
1. Not Only Science But Art Also Teaches 117
2. Wittgenstein’s Reception of Wagner 124
3. Wagner As Hearing Aid? Wittgenstein’s Remarks
on Mendelssohn and Mahler 133
4. A Different Reading: Wittgenstein’s Self-
Understanding As Music Critic 142
5. Why Was Wagner Absent from the Silents? 151
Chapter VI. Breakdown of Tradition 155
1. Composing Music and Doing Philosophy in
a Time of Decline 155
2. The Brothers Wittgenstein and the Musical
Journey of the West 159
3. Musical Experiments: Wittgenstein, Cage
and Family Resemblance 176
4. Deterioration or Sea Change in the Culture
of the West? 191
Chapter VII. Philosophy, Music and Therapy 199
Bibliography 211
Index 219
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Andrew Lugg, Alex Rueger, Heather Hodgson and
John Lehman who read through the entire manuscript and offered valued
suggestions for improvement. I am also grateful to Steven Burns, Daniel
Steuer, Roger Shiner, Bill Perks, Tricia Bond, Eleanor Akins and Gord
Gault for helpful comments on particular chapters, as well as to Monika
Horn for discussing with me English translations of several passages
from the German text of Culture and Value. Latest but not least among
my helpers was Donna Grant, whom I thank for the preparation of the
manuscript. Ancestral versions of the sections on irony and on Mahler
were presented at meetings of the Western Canadian Philosophical
Association, with Justin Horn and Victor Rodych as respondents. A
previous version of “Wittgenstein on Musical Irony” was published
in the journal Wittgenstein-Studien and “Wittgenstein’s Reception
of Wagner” is a revised contribution to the collection Wittgenstein
Reading, edited by Sascha Bru, Wolfgang Huemer and Daniel Steuer
(De Gruyter, 2013). I am grateful to the editors for permission to reprint.
The poem Musicians by Jan Zwicky is from her collection Songs for
Relinquishing the Earth and is reprinted here with her kind permission.
Béla Szabados
Regina, Saskatchewan