Quotes Of The Day (27/03/08)

The esthetics of music is not popular. Musicians suspect it of being abstract talk far removed from musical reality; the musical public fears philosophical reflections of the kind one ought to leave to the initiated, rather than plaguing one`s own mind with unnecessary philosophical difficulties.

Understandable as this mistrustful irritation with the sundry chatter of self-proclaimed music esthetics might be, it would be erroneous to imagine that esthetic problems in music are located in the hazy distance beyond everday musical matters. In fact, when viewed dispassionately, they are thoroughly tangible and immediate.

Carl Dahlhaus; The Idea of Absolute Music.

'...an undogmatic theory of art must recognise that the criterion of audibility, of complete realisation by perception, is not a natural law of aesthetics but a postulate of historically limited scope. By rigorously restricting the concept of music or of "music proper" to the perceptible, one curtails historic reality for the sake of dogma not older than the eighteenth century'.

Carl Dahlhaus: 'Analysis and Value Judgement'..., quoted in 'Music, Imagination and Culture': Nicholas Cook

Quote of The Day (18/03/08)

'Abstraction...is the instinctive or conscious reaction of art to ideas which have sunk to the level of ideology........Abstract art is not art without content, but art which protests, by withdrawing itself, against content which has sunk to the level of ideology. It performs its socio-critical function, whether or not the individual artist creating abstract works of art is aware of this, or whether he feels himself to be solely an artist'

Alfred Andersch; Quoted by Carl Dahlhaus in 'Schoenberg and the New Music'.