But philosophers whose views have been summarized so far weren’t speaking as philosophers of music. Music interested them in terms extrinsic to itself, in its observable results; in its connections with dance, spiritual ritual, or festive rites; because of its alliance with phrases; or for some other extramusical consideration. The only Art & Music frequent denominator to be discovered, apart from the recognition of several varieties of music, is the acknowledgment of its reference to the emotional life, and right here, to make certain, is that problematic energy of the art to move.
His task of explicit qualities to a given mode is paying homage to Plato and Confucius. In acoustics, the Greeks discovered the correspondence between the pitch of a note and the size of a string. But they did not progress to a calculation of pitch on the premise of vibrations, although an try was made to connect …