In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to David Carr, “The Significance of Music for the Promotion of Moral and Spiritual Value”Iris M. YobDavid Carr has addressed a question that has been lurking in philosophical literature for centuries and, I might add, in our collective intuition as well: Just what is the connection between music and the moral and spiritual life? And as we have come to expect from his work, he brings a (...) new perspective to this perennial question in his answer. First he traces a line of thinking since Plato about music and the ordering of the soul, he touches on the role of music and the other arts in exploring the complexities of the moral imperative as it is lived out in human lives, and returns at the end to give a new take on the old Platonic idea of ordering of the soul. Just maybe, he suggests, the detachment, however temporary, "from the trials and tribulations that beset us in the day to day rough and tumble of human practical affairs" "in the interests of some more balanced perspective" on spiritual and moral matters "might be easier to achieve in the contemplation and appreciation of great works of 'music alone.'"This conclusion does not lay claim to more than what is perfectly reasonable. Allowing oneself to be immersed in a great work of music or art or architecture or dance may very well provide that distance from every day life where one might [End Page 209] re-center and refocus, refresh and renew one's outlook on the world. Such an engagement with an artwork can interrupt the patterns of thinking and acting that might have become increasingly thoughtless and ego-centric. It can be a re-creation in the true sense of the word. Paul Tillich, one of the great twentieth century religious philosophers, tells of an experience he had during the First World War where he served as a chaplain in the German army. On a brief leave from the front he visited Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin and stood entranced before Botticelli's "Madonna and Child with Singing Angels." The moment was spiritually transformative, he tells us, lifting his spirits beyond the mud and grime of the battlefield to contemplate life and meaning on a different plane altogether. The experience enabled him to return to duty with renewed inner strength and calm.1 I believe this is a rather powerful and compelling example of what Carr is talking about.In coming to his conclusion, Carr is relying on the particularly difficult case of "music alone," that is, music that does not have words, title, or any other kind of representative function. In other words his argument does not depend on any didactic nature or morally or spiritually directive intent of the music. Rather, it is centered on music that ostensibly is not about anything. This is musical sound composed and performed for the appreciation of what it is in itself. And yet, in providing distance from the every day world, according to Carr, it can give expression to "realms of spiritual experience that lie beyond the sensual and empirical." Here we enter the world of the metaphorical and symbolic, what Rudolf Otto would call the "irrational" or "superrational," or the realm of the Holy. While Carr does not state this explicitly I would go so far as to say that this realm of the wordless and sacred is where the spiritual and the moral are grounded and from where they draw their power.Against this background, I would like to ask how does "music alone," in the sense intended by Carr and Peter Kivy from whom he borrowed the term bring about this effect? We are unable now to ask Tillich what it was that gave the Botticelli its impact for him, but it is curious that what it did for him it most likely did not do for all the other soldiers from the front who happened upon it the way he did. Tillich would most likely explain its effect by resorting to his theory of symbols, because after all this painting does have a literal meaning that might very well have inspired him. But... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Tony Palmer, “Music Education and Spirituality: A Philosophical Exploration II”Lenia SerghiMy response to Anthony Palmer's paper on "Music Education and Spirituality" consists of certain thoughts and relevant literature aiming to support the ideas presented in the paper from a different perspective.Exploring spirituality and music education Palmer examines (a) the Santiago Theory of Cognition, which acts as a connection between cognition and the process of life, (b) why (...) music education can benefit from ideas of spirituality, and (c) music education and the paths that might be traveled to bring a higher level of consciousness to students, including special attention to process and product.My comments and thoughts derive from ancient Greek Philosophy and mainly the ideas of Aristotle on organic nature and the living being, as well as the ideas of more recent philosophers and educationists like Robert Ulich on self-transcendence. These ideas, I believe, support Palmer's paper in relation to music education processes.The Structure of the Living BeingAccording to Huberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, the theoretical biologists who originated the Santiago Theory of Cognition,The perturbation of the environment does not determine what happens to the living being; rather it is the structure of the living being that determines what change occurs in it. This interaction is not instructive, for it does not determine what its effects are going to be.... The changes that result from the interaction between the living being and its environment are brought about by the disturbing agent but determined by the structure of the disturbed system.1The structure of the living being, Soul, Mind, Emotions, and Body are terms that have occupied philosophical thought for centuries.Soul, psyche in philosophical writings of the Greeks such as Aristotle, is a [End Page 216] general term for all those powers which plants and animals possess, but lifeless elements do not. Psyche is therefore of wider range than life (zoe), which is the power of self-maintenance common to plant and animal and is merely the foundation upon which higher physical capacities can be imposed.2Plato in Phaedrus relates soul, Psyche-anima, with motion, kineses. Inanimate objects only move if motion is imparted to them by an outside force. Anything that can move itself on its own initiative we regard it as animate, that is having psyche. This power of moving itself is, indeed, in Plato's words "the essence and definition (ousia kai logos) of soul."3Mind in Greek vocabulary is the word Nous which had been variously used. Anaxagoras and Empedokles had used it to cover all conscious processes. Later philosophers restricted Nous to that intellectual power which, as far as our certain knowledge extends, men alone display.4In the course of time two problems were bound to arise for philosophers: the relation between the soul (psyche) and the body (soma) and the relation between nous in rational beings and psyche. Aristotle's central proposition is that soul and body are aspects of a single substance, standing to one another in relation of form to matter.5Basic matters of Aristotle's psychology are (a) his account of sense- perception, (b) his account of the initiation of movement, and (c) his theory of the operation of Nous in human knowledge.6Aristotle outlines a general theory for the functioning of the senses. Aesthesis (sense) is what we perceive through the senses and these could be images, sounds, flavors, or things touched. Aesthesis consists of the imprints on the mind of the particulars of the world in a variety of ways, whereas Noesis grasps the world of universals.7Emotions and feelings and their relation to the mind were also problems that concerned philosophers. The Greek mystical philosopher, Plotinos, considers feelings of happiness or unhappiness reactions of the soul to its own states of perfection and imperfection. Herbart, one of the founders of modern learning, believes that our emotions and desires result from modifications occurring in our conceptual representations. In other words, feeling is a kind of pre-intellectual or post-intellectual state of mental life. Kant too considers emotion to be related to cognition, although he recognizes the sensuous origin of the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 80-83 [Access article in PDF] Response to Yiannis Miralis, "Manos Hadjidakis: The Story of an Anarchic Youth and a 'Magnus Eroticus'" Lenia Serghi Ionian University, Corfu Manos Hadjidakis and his work are like his song, "O Mythos," for they take you from reality to fantasy and bring you back again. For my generation Hadjidakis was a myth with substance, since he was (...) a real person and his work represented our reality.The first time I heard of Hadjidakis was in relation to his song, "The Children of Pireas," that won him an Oscar for Best Song in 1960-61 as the main theme of his music for the film, Never on Sunday. The first record, a 45-single in the early 1960s, aroused a strong emotional response in the youth of the time.My next and most important experience with Hadjidakis' music was in London during the International Theatre Festival in the Spring of 1964. The Art Theatre of Greece under the Direction of the acclaimed Karolos Koun gave its first performances outside Greece. They presented Aristophanes' comedy, The Birds, and the Aeschylean tragedy, The Persaes. After forty years these performances are still topics of discussion in theater and musical circles. The performance of The Birds took the audience by surprise. The strong, vivid rhythm with the superb [End Page 80] melodies and the chorus filling the stage with its movements and dance gave a new perspective to the production of ancient comedy and drama. The audience was exuberant and the clapping went on without end. It was the unveiling of a new world of music for the theater, a music which could create strong emotions.Perhaps one of the most important works of Hadjidakis is the cycle of songs, The Megalos Eroticos-Magnus Eroticus, composed in 1972 for two voices, choir, and twelve instruments. The song cycle consists of eleven songs based on the lyrics of Greek poets from antiquity till the present time, like Sappho, Euripides, Solomos, Sepheris, Gatsos, Elytis, and Kavafis. Included in the collection is the famous poem, "S'agapo" [I love you], by Myrtiotissa, one of the important women poets of the twentieth century, which according to Hadjidakis was his inspiration for writing Magnus Eroticus. As he says: I think I succeeded [in creating] a beautiful piece of work, and deeply, it belongs to her as a whole. If Magnus Eroticus belongs to somebody it belongs to the memory of Myrtiotissa.1In Magnus Eroticus the combination of lyrics and music is at the highest level of sensibility and the musical style of each song is superb. Music follows the verse to express its deepest meaning while maintaining its uniqueness. In 1973, Pantelis Voulgaris made Magnus Eroticus into a film of the same title.Without doubt Hadjidakis was one of the troubadours of love; in fact he considered himself as a tragoudopoios. Etymologically tragoudopoios comes from the words tragoudi (song) and the verb poio (make, create), and is the root of the word poieses (poetry). A tragoudopoios could be a follower of the rhapsodoi of Homer's time, or the troubadours of medieval times who created songs.In my view, the comparison made by some critics of Hadjidakis' songs with those of Schubert and Brahms is not so successful, especially for the songs written in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, songs that were very popular and represented the reality of Greek life of that period. Similarities to these composers may exist in his later work of the 80s, when his style of art song had become more sophisticated.As a person and composer, Hadjidakis himself could be considered a Magnus Eroticus. I am not sure, though, that he could be considered an anarchist, as Miralis suggests. As Hadjidakis used to say, "[P]erhaps I would have been an anarchist if I didn't have my mother." I would say he was more a lover of democracy in its wider sense.One could say, perhaps, that Hadjidakis was an anarchist in spirit... (shrink)