Abstract
Despite Heidegger’s ambiguous—sometimes even hostile—relation to music, his thinking opens itself up to the musical sphere not least through key words such as Stimmung, Fuge, and hören (‘mood’, ‘fugue’, and ‘listening’). This article suggests that if his thinking on the artwork is taken into account, especially its relation to truth and Being, then there is reason to rethink many of the conceptions that are pivotal for how we listen to, teach, and study music.
The starting point is Heidegger’s treatment of the conflict between Wagner and Nietzsche, where he rejects Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. However, since he only repudiates the emotionality of music, another position of his should come to the fore, that indicated in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes. All artworks open up a world. Truth happens in these works. This must be valid for music, too, even if Heidegger remained silent on how. It is shown in the article—with the ‘Eroica’ Symphony as principal example—how a musical world may change the conception of the world, how music may establish truth with a ‘thrust’.
This thrust can be recognized only if the listener is thoroughly attuned. In this attunement, the listener belongs to Being. Heidegger’s formulation in German clarifies the relation: Zugehörigkeit (‘belongingness’) incorporates the verb zu hören (‘to listen’ or ‘to hear’). Such a relation to the artwork is, of course, entirely at odds with how music is conceived in our education. In the concluding part of the article, it is suggested how Heidegger’s listening can not only inform but even reform the notion of music in academia.
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Notes
- 1.
The ontic Stimmung (mood) and ontological Befindlichkeit (disposition) are crucial in Sein und Zeit, but it is only later that Heidegger discusses the background of Stimmung in music.
- 2.
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (2007) has suggested that these salient features should be interpreted as being part of both Heidegger’s and Nietzsche’s notion of feminine hysteria. To counteract this state, Nietzsche suggested the große Stil, Heidegger Gestaltung, both with a ‘virile’ character. According to Lacoue-Labarthe, it is not by accident that Heidegger took such a stance during his years of political engagement (even if, nota bene, Heidegger’s intensified reading of Nietzsche’s oeuvre took place when he had begun to criticize the NS revolution).
- 3.
The publication of ‘the black notebooks’ gives further evidence of Heidegger’s extremely critical attitude regarding music during the 1930s. Here, using terms of the history of Being, he combines the emotionality of music with its mathematical traits, seeing both as aspects of manipulation (2014: 132–133, 149–150).
- 4.
At this point, we should mention Scott Burnham’s intelligent investigation of Beethoven’s heroic style (Burnham 1995). However, Brinkmann’s and Eggebrecht’s studies have the advantage of focusing on one specific theme: Brinkmann on the parallel between temporality and epochal shift and Eggebrecht on the ‘reception-constants’.
- 5.
Heidegger’s etymological investigation of logos has been cast into doubt, both on philological and political grounds. For an example of this, see Nicholas Rand (1990).
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Wallrup, E. (2015). Music, Truth and Belonging: Listening with Heidegger. In: Pio, F., Varkøy, Ø. (eds) Philosophy of Music Education Challenged: Heideggerian Inspirations. Landscapes: the Arts, Aesthetics, and Education, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9319-3_8
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