The importance of musical aesthetics in the formation of musical culture

Musical esthetics is an art history concept introduced into scientific circulation by the German publicist, poet and musician Christian Friedrich Schubart, who first used this term in his work Ideas for the Aesthetics of Musical Art (1784).

Musical aesthetics is an interdisciplinary scientific discipline that studies various aesthetic aspects of music precisely as a very specific form of art, which implies a very specialized analysis of the dialectical correlation of the general laws of sensory-figurative perception of reality with certain specific features and patterns of musical language as an operator of sound-meanings "

At present, “musical aesthetics” is understood as a scientific discipline, which in its general research orientation is close to the subject attributes of the philosophy of music, but differs from the latter in its methodological specifics: if the philosophy of music is one of the sections of aesthetics and is mainly concerned with solving the problems of ontological, epistemological and axiological character, then musical aesthetics is to a much greater extent designed to solve purely musicological problems, and therefore it must freely

And already because of its methodological orientation, musical aesthetics, as a specialized scientific discipline, should be attributed precisely to the field of musicology. [2]

Of course, this line of reasoning remains relevant also when comparing musical aesthetics with two other closely related interdisciplinary disciplines -the sociology of music and musical psychology.

History of origin and development [edit | edit code]

The problem of musical aesthetics as such was considered at all stages of the development of musical art, and the deep roots of musical aesthetics go back to early antiquity, where the aesthetic and value criteria of music proposed by Pythagoras, Plato and Aristotle were associated with the normative structures of intervals, modes, rhythms, etc. as a reflection of cosmic harmony and the most important ethos (ethical) qualities of a person.

Musical aesthetics found fertile ground for its development in the ideological doctrine and the aesthetic concept of the Neo-Pythagoreans based on it, as well as the Neo-Platonists, whose ideological views were shared, among other things, by one of the largest theorists of music Boethius, whose aesthetic views laid the foundation for the medieval doctrine of three interconnected music ”based on the idea of contiguity between religious symbols, states of mind and various musical elements ..

The predominance of rich numerical symbolism and various allegorical interpretations of the elements of music characteristic of the ancient period in views on musical aesthetics persists in the Middle Ages. So, for example, in the Benedictine monk Aribo Scholastic, we find a direct allegorical interpretation of the muses in terms of musical theory: one muse means the human voice, two muses - the duality of the authentic and plagal modes, or the dual division of music into heavenly and human, three muses mean three kinds sounds, four muses - four paths or four basic consonances, etc.

A great contribution to the development of musical aesthetics was made by other scholars from the monastic environment: Aurelian of Reome, Remigius of Osersky, Regino Pryumsky, Notker Zaika, Hukbald of St. from Hirschau, Magister Lambert [3], Adam Fuldsky, Martin Herbert, Dom Bedos de Sell, Dom Jumilan, Schubiger, Don Gerange, Don Potier, Don Mocchero and others.

Within the framework of the cosmo-aesthetic tradition, the FrancoFlemish music theorist of the late 13th - first half of the 14th centuries Jacob Liège, the author of the Mirror of Music (Speculum musicae, about 1330), the largest treatise in the Middle Ages, thought music. Developing the doctrine of intervals, the system of church modes and hexachords, the forms of polyphonic music, rhythm and notation, Jacob Liege endows a musical work with the status of a level in the Hierarchy of Being and a representative of the Cosmic Law. [4]

In the Renaissance, the problems of the subject embodiment of various aesthetic ideas in musical works of a particular genre (Ars nova) began to be successfully solved. In this regard, the works on the theory of music by John Tinktoris and Nikolaus Listenius are of particular value.

Of considerable interest, from the point of view of the development of musical aesthetics, is the Theory of Affects, which emerged in the Baroque Era, the main developers of which were Johannes Quantz, Maren Mersenne, Athanasius Kircher, Johann Walter, Claudio Monteverdi, Johann Matteson, Giovanni Bononcini and Christian Spies. According to the Theory of Affects, the goal of composer's creativity is to excite affects, for whose groups certain musical styles were assigned, etc.

According to the Theory of Affects, the goal of composer's creativity is to excite affects, for the groups of which certain musical styles and other means of composer writing were assigned. According to Afanasy Kircher [5], the transmission of affects was not limited to any purely artisan techniques, but was a kind of magical action to control the "sympathy" "arising between a person and music." In this regard, it should be noted that many composers of that era were specially trained in magic, including the largest of them, Claudio Monteverdi.

Special mention should be made of the 17th century French music theorist Maren Mersenne, whose treatise "Harmonie universelle" is an example of the universal science of the 17th century, organically synthesizing the concepts of musical aesthetics with the fundamental discoveries of experimental natural science. [6]

In the Age of Enlightenment, as music was freed from purely applied functions, the understanding of musical activity as a kind of "sound imitation of reality" (mimesis) [7] was replaced by the recognition of the universality and generalization of the semantic content of musical works. Beginning from the 18th century, music is increasingly freed from conformity to those rhetorical and kinesthetic formulas that were caused by its long-term "neighborhood" with word and movement.

Thus, the musical language gained complete independence and independence, although even in this “purely musical” language, the historically passed stages of the development of music were imprinted in the form of specific life associations and emotions associated with various types of musical movement, the intonational character of thematism, visual effects, phonism intervals, etc.

Subsequently, the aesthetic concept of the expressive-emotional essence of music (which distinguishes musical art from fine art) was enriched with increasing recognition of the significance and intrinsic value in musical creativity of individualized author's ingenuity and artistic fantasy.

The Austrian music critic of the 19th century, professor of theory, history and aesthetics of music at the University of Vienna, author of the treatise "On Musically Beautiful", E. Hanslik, proceeding from the idealistic philosophy of

Immanuel Kant, considered music a special form of spiritual activity, and on the basis of this ideological premise he opposed music to all other arts. Trying to combine "aesthetics of feeling" and "aesthetics of number" Hanslick set out to create "aesthetics of the sense of number". [8]

Well, in the 20th century, the criteria of the novelty of the composer's technique are brought to the fore in the musical culture of the West: to the already existing "philosophical" and "musicological" trends in musical aesthetics, the "composer" is added. This latter is in many ways close to musical criticism, which is beginning to be viewed by some musicologists as a symptom of the crisis of musical-aesthetic consciousness.