Philosophy of Music

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Life event

Date

Topic

Era

Region/Country

  • Open Section
    • Open Section

Occupation

Availability

 1-4 of 4 Results  for:

  • Philosophy of Music x
  • Musical Concepts, Genres, and Terms x
Clear all

Article

Bacon [Baco], Roger  

Mary Berry

revised by Peter Loewen

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

(b nr Ilchester, c1214; d Oxford, c1292). English theologian and philosopher, the most immediate successor to the science of Robert Grosseteste and Adam Marsh. Bacon studied in Oxford between 1228 and 1236, then in Paris. Some time between 1245 and 1256 he entered the order of friars minor. In 1247 he gave up his official teaching in Paris, returning some three years later to Oxford. His expertise appears to have concentrated in the quadrivium in general, and geometry in particular. Later critics tended to romanticize his conflict with superiors of his order, turning him into a kind of hero of experimental science and empirical observation.

In a letter dated June 22, 1266, pope Clement IV requested a copy of Bacon's philosophical writings. Bacon’s communication about the project had begun with Raymond de Laon, clerk to Guy le Gros de Foulques, Archbishop of Narbonne and Cardinal-Bishop of St. Sabina before Guy became pope Clement IV. Although the friars had been prohibited since 1260 from publishing new works without the approbation of their superiors, Bacon responded by composing a ...

Article

Declamation  

Owen Jander

revised by Tim Carter

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

In music, the relation between verbal stress and melodic accent in the setting and delivery of a text. Clear and appropriate text setting, measured by quantity or quality, was extolled by humanist thinkers in the Renaissance on the basis of classical precedent, and it was central to the emergence of recitative and the ‘new music’ in Florence during the late 16th century. Throughout the Baroque period, the notion of the musician as orator, persuading and moving an audience, depended on proper declamation. The subject was often discussed by theorists, particularly as clear declamation became threatened by the more musical demands of the aria. J.G. Walther (WaltherML) applied to music the rationalistic concept of declamation, which originally dealt with speech, and focussed his attention on recitative. J.J. Rousseau (Dictionnaire, 1768) dealt with declamation as the relationship between musical and linguistic accent, which had been much discussed in French singing treatises, such as Bénigne de Bacilly’s ...

Article

Dynamics  

Matthias Thiemel

Publication History:

Published in print:
20 January 2001
Published online:
2001

The intensity of volume with which notes and sounds are expressed. In the 20th century dynamics came to be seen as one of the fundamental parameters of composition which function interdependently to create musical meaning and structure.

Dynamic variation is so natural to the performance of almost all styles of music that its presence can normally be assumed even when indications for it are mainly or even entirely absent from the notation. That dynamic transitions occurred in the music of ancient Greece is suggested by Plutarch’s accounts, and it is likely that the monophonic hymns of the 1st century ce displayed nuances of volume illustrating their meaning or imitating the tone of speech. Medieval musicians had no word for ‘dynamics’ per se, but it is implicit in the concepts of structura and processus. By the early Renaissance period dynamic values were reflected in changes in the number of voices and their registers. In Josquin’s ...

Article

Noise  

Paul Hegarty

Publication History:

Published in print:
26 November 2013
Published online:
25 May 2016

Traditionally, noise has been thought of as the outside of music and meaning. In systems theory, noise is disruption of the signal or message; in biological terms, it is associated with pain, in legal terms it is associated with disturbance. Noise is also that which has hitherto been excluded from being proper music, so can include radical new directions in musical form (Wagner, Coltrane) as well as noises deemed unmusical. The term noise implies a judgement about the type of sound, performance, or piece, not an inherent quality of it. This means that the idea of noise has always been historicized within music philosophy. Luigi Russolo proposed (in 1913) that noise was both an essential part of nature and a new reality of the industrialized metropolis. Purposeful use of noise, would, ironically, bring a new social harmony. John Cage expanded the definition of what could occur in the place of music, from silence (more accurately, the absence of silence) to machine sounds (turntables, radios, prepared pianos). In ...