Kristina Yapova

SOUND AND ETHOS

Variations on a Theme by Boethius

 (Abridged English Version^[1])

Tres esse musicas…

Et prima quidem mundana est, secunda vero humana, tertia, quae in quibusdam constituta est instrumentis, ut in cithara vel tibiis ceterisque, quae cantilenae famulantur.

There are three kinds of music…

The first is the music of the universe, the second is the music of a human being, and the third is the one that uses some kind of instruments such as the guitar, tibias and others, which accompany the singing.

Boetii De institutione musica. I.2^[2]

INTRODUCTION

Personally, I do not know of any other object that throughout its history has been understood in so many diverse ways as has been the case with music. It is science or art, number (numerus/ ἀριθμός) or sound (sonus/ ἤχος), knowledge or pleasure; it is divine or demonic, progressive or conservative, private or public; it is meant for the chosen few or for all, for the intellect or for the heart; it expresses only itself or it can depict everything. It is no wonder then that its very history oscillates between heated disputes and fatigue causes by “the resistance of the material,” between facile statements about music and complete refusal to speak about it.

This book does not strive to choose a polar position of its own, even less so to strike a middle way between extremes. It wants to bring up again the point as to how we can speak about music without losing it in the process of speaking. It is in agreement with the view that “music is meant for listening,” but it seeks to avoid the sequel implied customarily, a sequel that says “the rest is silence.” “Music is meant for listening” means simply that everything it has got to tell man it tells it in such a way that he may understand it without needing the efforts of our speaking. However, as music does not need any other way, but its own way, i.e. the way of music, so as to reveal itself to those who are listening to it, does that mean that listeners also need no endeavours to pursue it with their thoughts and words?

Why should we begin with the relationship music/philosophy?

The ways people speak about music – if they do not reject speaking about music at all – differ depending on the different ideas about it. And indeed, if music is organized sonic matter which holds in itself its meaning, it is clear that knowledge about music will have to investigate the musical structures and the principles governing their organization. In this case musical meaning which has sensory aesthetic existence is the meaning of the life of the structure and then what is meant to be described will seek a language that corresponds to the idea about this meaning. The intellect will be able to evolve a pure categoriality by “looking at” the completeness of what the ear has heard.

In case feelings are the genuine content of music, then it is easy to accept word list linked with them. This vocabulary defines music as “sad” or “joyous.” In case music has its main target the ethical structure of the soul, then the one doing the research has the task to divide “what is moral” from “what is depraved” in it so as to approve the former and condemn the latter.

However, in all cases the defining intellect penetrates into music, which allows it access to itself only after it has already died down, and so this intellect turns it into an object. But what distinguishes music is that when it has render its service, then it is no longer there. Its life has stopped flowing, death has come. The paradox is that one can speak about it only after it has become silent. When one still hears it, when one is under its impact (and being under its impact means experiencing it, enduring it) one cannot encompass it. Then he himself is the one that is encompassed and he has no vision with regard to it.

And nevertheless we speak. Are all efforts of our speaking so wrong? Has not music foreseen the weakness of our speech and has it not treasured up in these efforts something from itself so that in them there may be something that is worth saying? Does music slip out of our hands completely or has it not provided for our very need to speak about it an opportunity, the opportunity to harmonize what we shall say with what we have heard? Where must the music listener stand so that this opportunity may become reality? When can he or she begin speaking? These are questions to which a musical philosophy must reply.

Why allegory?

Music affects the human being in a direct and immediate way. It is the sound through what it affects man. Sound is the alpha and omega of music. Music cannot be reduced to sound, but without sound it cannot exist. Sound is the thing through which music speaks. Sound is the phenomenon that reveals its essence. Sound is the presentation of and the word uttered by music, its “yes” to our request to come to know it. What does music speak about? This is the issue about music and expression.

Why ethos?

Music affects man not only as far as his sense organ, not as far as his imagination, not even as far as his reasoning faculty, but by passing through all parts of his soul and building up its entirety, by bringing him round to remain and live in it and teaching him how to do it. The place of all this passing through and affecting, the place where man chooses music and habituates his will to live in harmony with music, is the place of the musical ethos.

Why theology?

To remain at and in music, to know about it by living it is possible only when you remain attentively listening to it and when you allow it to make itself heard through you, to the end through you, turning you into its own voice. How much of itself it will reveal through you and how far it will take you along the way leading back to its beginning, to its principle of existence – this depends on your choice, character, and endurance. This principle of existence is harmony. Harmony is the link between creation and the Creator, the harmonizing of creation with Him.

The word “harmony” is the last possible word in the drawing nearer to music in a rational way along the way of cognition. Beyond it along this way is the harmony of our actual human existence, the harmonizing of our souls and our bodies, of ourselves with the world, of the being of music with knowledge of music. What can be called musical theology begins only from that already musical knowledge incarnate in man, a knowledge that is also testimony of the harmony that is from the beginning.

But if man possesses that knowledge, he will understand now that music has ceased to be his object, that in the very work of music on him the object-subject link has been risen above into a new relationship and that behind that relationship there appears another Subject, Who is the only one that wields power over the music of the universe (musica mundana), the music of a human being (musica humana) and the music that reveals Him in sound (musica instrumentalis).

In seeking the answers to these four points the present study chose Boethius’s theme “tres esse musicas.” It is superfluous to say that the one who composes the variations bears in full the responsibility for their quality and that when they stray – sometimes too much – from the theme, it is because they do not seek so much what the author of that theme wanted to say, but to draw from it hidden opportunities and… pass them on further.

The Music/Philosophy Relationship

The supreme good for the human soul is linked with philosophy; and just as the weaver when preparing to weave a multicoloured fabric first of all puts a warp to serve as the foundation, in the same way the fabric of human philosophical deliberations should begin with the foundation – the human soul.

Boethius. Commentary to Isagoge by Porphyry I

We feel some difficulty, when people ask us today to establish a relationship between the words “music” and “philosophy:” it seems these words flee away in different directions towards domains of thinking, where they cannot be linked just like that. After we have rallied, we put the one (music) as part of the other (philosophy) or as its object and we begin to ask ourselves, how does philosophy encompass, study, and explain music. But the deeper we get into the problem, the original feeling does not only stay, but also reasserts itself. And the more philosophical systems that put music somewhere in themselves we thinks of, the greater the difference between the notions of music there, and conversely, one and the same notion of music causes different, sometimes diametrically opposed interpretations and concretizations. Every time it seems to us that we have put things in order, we are overtaken by a “however.” The feeling is one of dislocation. In music such an overtaking, dislocation and stumbling is caused by a syncope: a figure when the accented and unaccented beats pass each other.

And only sometimes, when we listen to music and it helps us, we succeed in conveying to people a kind of knowledge that ceases to be certain at the moment it is uttered and that comes back, when we begin listening again. So as to describe such a moment, when music and philosophy enter into a new relationship – the relationship that turns them into a musical philosophy – we shall borrow another term from music theory. This is the term ellipsis: the “omission” of the expected Tonic chord – an omission that changes the usual sequence of chords.

The Syncope

I shall try to put the music/philosophy relationship into a coordinate system evolved around the terms syncope and ellipsis. The syncope can present such a state of the relationship that is forced upon us, when we discuss it in historical terms. What I have in mind is the observable discrepancy between the explanations of music within a broad philosophical context (the classifications of sciences, the classifications of arts as well as in the context of a given philosophical system), on the one hand, and on the other hand – within the system of knowledge, which directs the objective at music itself. There are some long-established views that have to be overcome so that the reader may not be left with the impression that the link by way of the syncope is the only possible link in the complicated relationship between music and philosophy.

The first view (what is music) is a conventional notion, which remembers very little from the history of ideas. According to it music is an art; as such it has its proper place among the other arts, and should be recognized as an art. Appealing to people to honour epochs that, if they were not more musical, at least at all events devoted greater attention to music, the present text already in the beginning must recall what the content of the concept of music was before Modern times, i.e. in the past when it meant science and not art. When authors that trace the thematic thread that links philosophy with music come across the syncope, they may think that that phenomenon has been foreordained: “If we leave aside the speculations of a mathematical or a mathematical-cosmological nature, even if they have as in the case with Leibniz also an undoubted metaphysical significance, we can assert without exaggeration that for over two thousand years in the prevailing number of cases nothing important has happened between philosophy and music and that the history of their interrelations has proved to be rather turbid. As a rule one rarely meets with the names of those philosophers that have spoken about music (in comparison with the amount of reasoning dedicated to the so-called ‘plastic’ arts, and especially to literature), and when they have done that… they have done it in an unclear way and not independently, lacking profound understanding of what ought to be said and what ought to be done with music and even where exactly to place it (Kant has presented a sufficient illustration of a similar confusion); or conversely…, they have spoken about music in an exalted manner; by the way both ways can exist side by side perfectly well as can be seen in the example of Schopenhauer. Even Hegel does not feel at home here. So music, this irritating impediment or pathos, is not on good terms with philosophy and especially today there lurks the suspicion that here we have a phenomenon that is extremely unsusceptible to a philosophical generalization, a phenomenon, which probably on account of that does not cease to testify in a silent way about the limits of philosophy, about some kind of secret handicap to its complete freedom of action… and even probably about some kind of menace.”^[3] 

Music “is not on good terms with philosophy” – the European history of knowledge comes back to this refrain from time to time without at the same time giving up the desire to make music an object of philosophical consideration.

The second view (what is musicus) can be presented with the definition by Boethius: musicus is the person who knows the laws of music; the one who composes it is driven by a natural instinct (instinctus naturalis); and the third who performs it does that through the skill of his hands. That is why both the author and the performer have been given a lower degree in the hierarchy of musicians. And because the place that musica occupies among the sciences during the Middle Ages and at least as late as the Baroque is in the quadrivium – the “four-ways teaching programme” of the mathematical disciplines of Arithmetic, Music, Geometry, and Astronomy – the musicus of Boethius is “a musicus of the mathematicians.”

The third view presents the relationships between philosophical and musical knowledge by way of another scheme that does not so much overcome the syncope as succeeds in not being interested in it. This is the scheme of Schelling in his “Lectures on the Philosophy of Art:” “The science of Nature or the science of Art are real philosophy, philosophy of Nature, philosophy of Art, only in so far as they represent in Nature and in Art the Absolute. In every other case where the degree of what is particular is treated as particular and laws are established for it as a particular degree, where therefore the talk is not at all about philosophy as philosophy (which unconditionally means general philosophy), but where the talk is about a particular knowledge of the subject, therefore about a limited goal, in every such case this science can be called theory and not philosophy and instead can be called only theory of a particular subject, for instance theory of Nature, theory of Art.”^[4] 

To put in simple words, but not by way of simplified thinking, from this formulation it follows that the theory of music seems to the philosopher to be too “particular”, while to the theoretician the philosophy seems to be too “general”. Seen from the viewpoint of the philosopher it looks that to the music theoretician music (the phenomenon that is particular) covers the entire screen and that is why the theoretician has got nothing to say to philosopher except to share what he says in his own special language used as a means of communication among musicians.

And because the theme should be thought of in terms of “the one who,” we can – and this is the fourth view – visualize the link that interests us by means of the institution musician/philosopher. Then we shall ask: if the immediate openness to a musical object enables us to obtain a kind of knowledge that is in and that comes from that object, i.e. to obtain a musical knowledge, is there not a chance then (before music has assumed the firm character of an object) that there may exist a knowing subject that has been transformed by his or her interest in this musical knowledge? And does not the very free action of the syncopating relationship conceal in itself an oscillation between the paradigms and and or (musician and/or philosopher) that manifest itself also by the need for the philosopher to be a musician? Exactly in order to answer these questions it is necessary to cover also the other coordinate for which one can introduce the term ellipsis.

The Zone of Musical Philosophy

I shall allow myself to resort to the study “The Place of Musica in Medieval Classifications of Knowledge”^[5] by Joseph Dyer in order to use wealth of facts and the precise analysis of the source material made by him. The study uses as a starting-off point a “dual vision” in knowledge about music, a vision marked out by the philosophical classifications of knowledge, on the one hand, and by music theory, on the other. As the aim of that author is to trace the impact of Aristotelian philosophy, an impact that was growing as the 13th century was drawing near, he is interested in the place that musica occupies in the division of knowledge (divisiones scientiarum) without taking into account “the music theory treatises that explain intervals, modes, psalmody, and (later) rhythm with a practical intent.”^[6] The reason for this choice is that “rarely do traces of the new philosophical learning (the author is referring to Aristotelianism – K.Y.) appear in these treatises”^[7] and also that “philosophers would not have bothered to consult works devoted to music theory: their pragmatism would have rendered them unsuitable for philosophical purposes.”^[8]

While he is in the territory of the medieval philosophical classifications that include the science of musica, Dyer focuses on the impact of the general processes in the field of knowledge onto the domain of music. Throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages Aristotelian influences brought forth disputes as to the place of music in the quadrivium in so far as that place was being justified as a result of Boethius’s adherence to the Pythagorean-Platonic traditions. While investigating the ways in which the conflicts caused by the requirements of these traditions and Aristotelianism were solved, Dyer traces in detail the dynamics in the relationships between the quadrivium and the trivium in the seven liberal arts also adducing the changing classifications, which (as late as the 14th century) entered into a dispute one another with regard to whether music was more of a mathematical than a natural science.

In itself the statement that De institutione musica by Boethius is the treatise “that most influenced the treatment of music in medieval classifications of knowledge,”^[9] becomes part of the single-minded line of the author’s interest. But it marks the emergence of an independent “voice” of musical in the polyphonic score of knowledge; only hearing its sound one will begin hearing also the syncopes in the score.

Dyer adduces the content and the volume of the concept of musica: “In the Middle Ages the term musica applied properly to the speculative science that considered proportional relationships, while cantilena and cantus referred to sounding music.”^[10] He needs that because as a branch of knowledge musica is in the same category with the other branches of knowledge in the classifications that were mentioned. I for my part also need it as the disassociations of musica from cantilena and cantus hints about a different, an internal syncope that is no longer the syncope between music theory and philosophy and not even the syncope between knowing and doing, but is the syncope between two different ways – the “outside” and the “inside” – in which musica relates to the phenomenon of the sound, to what is called “the realm of the sound,” to the very sounding music.

That is so because a new link between musica as a branch of knowledge and as a realm of the sound will become possible only under certain conditions, at a certain elliptic point, and by a new subject of knowledge. This new subject comes to know things in a way that differs from the way inherent in the speculative abstraction of the numerical laws of the sound, but also in a new way that differs from the one needed to technē. The new zone of knowledge begins with a new musicus, who will yet have to orient himself in it and develop from it a speculative ear so that he may create also a new integral system of the knowledge about music, a knowledge that will disclose itself as musical knowledge only in so far as it will bring out the very life of the musical meaning. Only now, thanks to the zone of musical philosophy, will there sound the genuine syncope between that zone and the philosophical systematizing approach (towards the sciences and the arts), but also between that zone and music theory as exact science. Indeed, Boethius makes musicus to be the one that knows through his reason (in so far as reason is “judge and master”^[11]), i.e. to be a musicus of the mathematicians; but at the same time it is Boethius who first begins turning the pages of the book of Music, opens it up as a world, peers into the zone, discovers the point of the ellipsis, and thus makes it possible for the musicus to become a musicus that is different from the one that points to the place of that book in the library of sciences (or of the arts). In the zone, whose curtain Boethius raises, it becomes possible for the philosopher to be a musician – musicus as a musical philosopher, who differs from the mathematical musicus, but differs even more from the music theoretician. As a new subject of musical knowledge this new musicus dwells in a universe of meanings that differs from the one where there dwells anyone else that speak about music. His very knowledge cannot be cut with the scissors that cuts what is general from what is particular. Because the world that what is musical discovers and keeps for the person that chooses it, is a world of completeness and wholeness, a world in which the relationships betweem reason and the senses, between science and art are determined all over again. And the fact that this world will be closed each time it is given the status of what is particular will harm as much the “general” as the “private” interest.

The Founding of the Ellipsis

First of all, the activity of Boethius is an activity related to the dividing of knowledge into practical and theoretical knowledge, which on its turn consists of physics, mathematics, and theology.^[12] Music, together with its related branches of knowledge from the quadrivium occupies the second level of theoretical philosophy. Unlike theological knowledge, which, as Boethius says, is the first, which stands highest and which contemplates forms entirely separated from matter, mathematical knowledge, which occupies this second level, investigates forms without matter, which however in so far as they are in matter, are not completely separate from it.^[13] So as to justify the place of each of the sciences in the quadrivium, Boethius defines with what kind of quantities each of these sciences deals: “Each quantity according to Pythagoras is either continuous or discrete. The continuous quantity is called magnitude (magnitudo) and the discrete quantity – multitude (multitudo).”^[14] Hence the first concretization groups the sciences in pairs in which geometry and astronomy deal with magnitudo, while arithmetic and music – with multitudo. The second concretization differentiates the sciences in each of the pairs: geometry investigates the static magnitudes (inmobilia), while astronomy investigates the mobile one (mobilia).^[15] And because some of the discrete quantities are discrete by themselves (per se)^[16] and others – in relation to another quantity (ad aliquid)^[17], arithmetic deals with the discrete quantity by itself, “while music tries to learn about one quantity compared to another.”^[18] 

Boethius presents his triad as a harmonious, logical and orderly micro- and macrocosm, linked since its inception with knowledge, enlightened and understandable. But just at the moment when he defines music as a realm of the number in relationship (ad aliquid), he stands at the threshold of this musical cosmos, which lives according to the laws of music. In order to allow in and accept into itself, this world, which seen from the outside is recognized as what is particular or as a possible world, it must turn its threshold into an elliplic point of transformation and thus turn into “the whole world.” The creation of such an elliptic point is the work of Boethius. In order to ensure a chance for transition into the zone in which there operates the principle of what is musical, he needs a new instrumentation of concept that is in agreement with this principle. In practice he needs a reformulation of fundamental available concepts, their elliptic transformation by laying them on the musical foundations. The concept of harmonica is an indicator of a similar crossing of the boundaries and transition into the territory of the world of music; and at that this concept does that not by being used, but by disclosing its content with which there begins a new configuration of musical knowledge. Harmonica – the concept of the science of music in Antiquity^[19] – discloses itself as the cognitive faculty to perceive, distinguish, compare, and define the relationships between sounds. This faculty possessed and exercised by the musicus, is “the faculty that weighs differences between high and low sounds using the sense of hearing and reason.”^[20]

De institutione musica is the treatise with which Boethius passes on to the generations after him the renowned triad according to which “there exist three kinds of music” – celestial music (mundana), human music (humana), and sounding music (instrumentalis). If, however, we remain at this triad as in the case of the triple scheme of music in accordance with which it should be studied, that would mean that we lay it within some kind of particular, specific limits and close the door before the radical prospect opened up by Boethius. With it, however, there happens something else: it goes through a point of ellipsis, a point that transforms it from a model of cognition into a world where one can live. With this it seems it repeats the path described in Plato’s dialogue Timaeus – the path of the forming of the universe after the laws of harmony. This dialogue known as “Plato’s version of Pythagorean cosmic doctrine”^[21] describes the forming of the World-Soul (Timaeus 35-36 d), which “serves as a model (παράδειγμα) for the creation of the corporeal world.”^[22] The fact that Boethius refers to the idea of the dialogue that “the soul of the world was linked with a musical link”^[23] is much more than a case of honouring tradition: having been presented to the history of music as a world that has already been created after the genuine model – harmony, the triad of Boethius turns into a world in which man lives and knows it only from here, from the inside. It is only from here that there begins the putting to use of the opportunities opened up by a musical philosophy.

Sound as an Axis of Transformation

Sonus igitur est vocis casus emmelēs,^[24] id est aptus melo, in unam intensionem (Sound is therefore the cause for the emmelitic sounding, i.e. it is a sound adapted to the melos of a particular pitch).

Boetii De institutione musica I.8

Which is the elliptic point that makes this transformation possible? What is it that lays the foundation of this new musical world, created after the genuine model? This, of course, is sound. And at that, sound not yet in its materiality and bodiliness, not as something that rings indeed, that can be detected with the senses, that can be ascertained by the ear, but as the very condition that makes this world possible – as its ontological foundation. As the cause, says Boethius, when he defines it, sound (sonus) is the thing thanks to which voice (vox) has rung musically, in accordance with harmony. It corresponds to the melos of a given pitch – the tone.

The musical sound is the basis, the elliptic point, and the constituent of the musical universe. It is the pitchfork to which this universe is tuned. The quality called emmelēs of sonus, its tonality does not in the least mark only the difference between the musical sound and noise from nature (the sound without a given acoustic pitch) as textbooks of elementary music theory teach us. Within the context of the Boethian triad this quality points also to two other directions – to the principle of harmony (mundana) and to the sound manifesting itself exactly as emmelēs, as euphonc (humana), because, where if not in “human music” can a sound be recognized as eu-phonic, as good-sounding?

That is why we should overturn textbook notions and say: it is not the tone that makes the sound – it makes only the sound perceived by the senses, the bodily acoustic cast. Instead of that, it is only with sonus that there emerges the very possibility for a musical constitution of the world. It is only with sonus that the tone can sound at its own tension (τόνος, intensione) – after it has been tuned harmonically on number, measure, and proportion.

Thus sound covers a certain distance – from being the cause of an emmelitically tuned voice, through passing into and through that voice, until it parts with it and separates into a sonic substance. And all this movement carries through itself and brings into the daylight the possibility for sonus to be heard – the acoustic capacity of the musical phenomenon.

In certain historical periods the musical sound was understood as the basis of knowledge of music, in other periods – as the material bearer of the musical meaning, but in order to be understood thus it had to be (ever since the beginning) the place, the boundary, the ontological divide separating the world of music from all other worlds. And this beginning is not under the dominion of Time and History does not provide it with any security. Each time it comes back to life and gains new territory all over again through the one that has chosen to be touched by the sound and to be created by its meaning. That is so because sound becomes musical, emmelitic, not thanks to its exact acoustic pitch and to its differentiation from the noise of nature. The sound of music becomes truly musical, which means a sound full of meaning, only when it passes through vox, through straining the brain and the senses, when it is creative in the world of man.

Reason and Sense of Hearing

Reason or sense of hearing – a commentary, which adjudges: “reason” and brings to a conclusion the discussion as to which, according to Boethius, is the ability to come to know music, stands at the threshold of musical philosophy that Boethius himself indeed did not develop, but to which he certainly opened the way. Boethius begins the elucidation of the problem about reason and sense with the words that the basis of music “depends on perception by the ear. Because if there was nothing that could be heard, then it would have been impossible to discuss sounds at all.”^[25] Does, however, the saying of Boethius that “sense is something obedient and subordinate and reason – judge and master”^[26] tells us enough about the hearing faculty as the basis of musical knowledge? Does not the very category of hearing pass through the elliptic point so as to turn into something more than a perception by one of the senses? Is not the faculty of hearing in the inhabitable universe of music now not only the instrument that passes on to reason what it has detected, but a way leading towards an integral world-view (Weltanschauung)?

Boethius gives to history one more sign that can help one discern the boundaries of the world of music: what is emmelitic, euphonic, is now absolutely inseparable from the way the soul is structured. That is why hearing is what divides music from the rest of the mathematical disciplines, it marks a significant boundary between them. If it did not exist, these other disciplines would have been sufficient to provide knowledge of mathematical forms. From the fact that the faculty of hearing has the capacity to perceive sounds and to admire them or be irritated by them^[27] it follows that though there exist four mathematical disciplines that have as their purpose to study truth, only “music is associated not only with speculation but with morality as well… What Plato rightfully said can likewise be understood: the soul of the universe was joined together according to musical concord. For when we hear what is properly and harmoniously united in sound in conjunction with that which is harmoniously coupled and joined together within us and are attracted to it, then we recognize that we ourselves are put together in its likeness. For likeness attracts, whereas unlikeness disgusts and repels.”^[28]

Harmonics turns into the ability to listen to the musically ordered universe – “by measure and number and weight” (Wis 11:20/21).^[29]

The harmonic ability affects the musical personality in its entirety; it cannot skip the level of musica humana, because it is exactly humana that is the territory to which this capability has been given. With Boethius the capacity of the ear is not only the ability of the human person to discern sounds and to admire them or to be irritated by them. This capacity affects the one that hears and does so in such a way as to make him “enter into his own self” and through what has been linked and harmonized in the sounds to discover the unity and harmonization of his own structure: “Humanam vero musicam quisquis in sese ipsum descendit intellegit…”^[30]

The link between musica humana and musica instrumentalis becomes obvious with this capacity of the ear, pointing to the involvement of the one who is hearing in what is heard. But on its part, as required by the Boethian triad, this link invariably makes clear the links between the other domains of that triad, links that have been determined by the triadic system. Thus the laws of harmony, besides through the analogy between humana and instrumentalis, manifest themselves in a direct manner in the relationship mundana/instrumentalis. One possible sequel of that is that musica humana could be bypassed, analytically isolated, or discussed as a separate “part” of music. While similar operations are justified in an investigation of that type, which is carried out by the mathematical musicus, the musicus as a musical philosopher cannot stay out of the territory of humana, if the musical philosopher is indeed the one that living in the universe made up of numbers and sounds strives after reaching its meaning.

The mathematical musicus sees music as an object; the musical philosopher hears it, which is to say that he lets himself be in a position of listening attentively to the meaning that sound (sonus) reveals to him. It is exactly this position, the position in which man gives himself up to hearing, that is in essence a musical position. Here music reveals itself to that mode of existence, which brings a knowledge that is committed.

With such a volume and content music is not simply a substance that sounds, a substance that should be investigated with the eye of the researcher. Instead, it is a specific way of arriving at a meaning based on the foundation of hearing. Hans Urs von Balthasar raises the difference between seeing and hearing to the rank of a modal difference in the revelation of reality: “The eye is the organ with which the world is possessed and dominated, the immediate reflection in the sphere of the senses of the rational intellect that comprehends. Through the eye, the world is our world, in which we are not lost; rather, it is subordinate to us as an immeasurable dwelling space with which we are familiar. The other side of this material relevance denotes distance, separateness… Hearing is a wholly different, almost opposite mode of the revelation of reality. It lacks the fundamental characteristic of material relevance. It is not objects that we hear – in the dark, when it is possible to see – but their utterances and communications. Therefore it is not we ourselves who determine on our part what is heard and place it before us as object in order to turn our attention to it when it pleases us; that which is heard comes upon us, without our being informed in advance, and it lays hold of us without our being asked… The basic relationship between the one who hears and that which is heard is thus the relationship of defenselessness on the one side and of communication on the other… The hearer belongs to the other and obeys him.”^[31]   

Consonance and Dissonance

Adhering to the algorithm used in the case of sound Boethius begins with consonance as an empirical concept and covers the entire path of the physical conditions without which it cannot come into being: “Consonance, which guides the whole harmony of music, cannot arise without sound; sound cannot be produced without any pulsation or stroke; and pulsation, just as stroke, cannot materialize if it is not preceded by movement… That is why sound is defined as a stroke of the air, a stroke that does not vanish until the very moment of listening.”^[32] But the physical sonic phenomena that last as long as “the very moment of listening” are recognized as consonant or dissonant only, when they reach the time of listening and only by the very process of hearing. That is why Boethius defines conconanse and dissonance not on the basis of what they are by themselves, but on the basis of their being perceived by the ear and of their reason-guided appraisal. In this way the very definition includes their resonance in the field of meaning: “Consonance is the combination of high and low sound that is pleasant and consistent when heard. Dissonance – these are the strokes of two joined sounds that reach the ear in a harsh and unpleasant way.”^[33] Identifying consonance as orderly and pleasant and dissonance as disorderly and unpleasant is possible because of the correspondence between sounding music and the structure of the soul. Seen outside of the link between elementa musicae and the elements of musica humana, the concepts of consonance and dissonance return to the starting position of empirical sonic material. So, while consonance and dissonance as concepts of music as a mathematical discipline can be determined objectively by means of numbers, i.e. while the mathematical musicus knows beforehand (in accordance with the universal laws of harmony) which numerical relationships “give” consonance and which – dissonance, the musicus of a musical philosophy can identify them through his ability to gain harmony “entering into his own self.”

And it is exactly thanks to the movement under which consonance and dissonance come down to the level of musica humana – level that is below their status, where they point to the physical side of music, and it is also exactly thanks to the idea that the musicus knows the laws of harmony, because he himself has been created in agreement with them, that Boethius opens up a new path before this musicus. For him, who is now a musical philosopher, the concepts of consonance and dissonance (as well as the concept of sound) develop from technical terms used to designate the empirical sonic phenomena into transcendental categories, denoting ideal essences that make the very phenomena conceivable only from now on.

The New Musicus’s Confession

In the system of the quadrivium music vindicates its existence and its exactly fixed place as a branch of learning. Here it follows arithmetics, but it has its own rules. In this way it fits comfortably in the particular/general scheme. It is still early for the drama of coming to know what is musical as the only world from which its inhabitant possesses nothing outside of it and who because of that will yet have to decide about his relationships with it. In order to come to know that world he has at his disposal not private and particular rules, but all general rules with which the world is made known. To put it in other words, the background for defining musica as a strict science is the multiplicity of the branches in the system of human knowledge. With regard to musical philosophy – its background is the unity and fullness of knowledge of music, which does not relate to the integrity of that system as something single or particular. Instead, this musical knowledge builds up its own system thanks to all the cognitive resources of the person that lives in and through music.

Musical philosophy therefore is not in its proper place either in the general philosophical systematizations of knowledge, or in the classifications of the Arts, or in the music theories that deal with the level of what is particular in music, or in the views of those authors that treat music as an illustration of some principle. Musical philosophy begins when the person that comes to know things confesses that he is dependent on, involved in, dwelling in, and able to understand within the framework of the world of what is musical and that in this world he develops his philosophical outlook. Musical philosophy investigates the being of the musical meaning, while belonging to the world in which this meaning reveals itself. It seeks the truth with the conviction that it can be attained, passed on to others, and shared with them. Depending on the historical period it gives priority to reason or to senses, to the musical act of the soul or to pure sound, never throwing into the shade that original principle, which makes this truth a musical truth.

Maybe one should stress expressly: The syncope in the study of music stands out only at an external consideration, a consideration that takes history into account. But the biography of the musicus himself as a musical philosopher does not evolve by way of some kind of movement by stages from one kind of knowledge to another. This biography begins with the sound (ἐμμελής) that has been detected and with which there also begins the very universe of music. In this biography musical philosophy is a philosophy par excellence and is not some kind of “regional philosophy” that is in a state of syncope with what is called “general philosophy.” Just as any other philosopher, the musical philosopher deserves in the long run to be defined as a philosopher, because of his striving after the truth about the world in which he exists, and in so far as is his ability to do so. Like any other philosopher, the musical philosopher will be a philosopher, because he lives in and experiences and endures this world, which reveals itself to him as meaning.

Music and Expression, or the Idea about Allegory

Even the mentioning of the word allegory (ἄλλο ἀγορεύω – to speak about something else) in a musicological text, a mentioning that draws us in a demonstrative way from what is purely musical to something else, brings up immediately the question as to what is the essence of what is called “the thing that is purely musical.” This question brings up with it a series of other questions: What kind of essence can this essence be so that it would allow at all a similar word to stand next to it? Can music speak about anything else? Can it speak at all? Can any kind of expression be denoted with the words “speak about” or only the kind that allows a verbal translation of what is said through the medium of music? When does music remain on its own ground and when does it transfer what it says on to another territory?

By the way, the problem about allegory, except in rare cases,^[34] has not been one of central importance in musicology. But it is exactly because of its strong links with the subject “music and expression” that it is always ready to be involved in disputes on it and to require from us an unambiguous “yes” or “no” with regard to speaking about “something” by means of “something else.”

Allegory in Two Traditions

Allegory in music steps on to general problem of allegory, which itself is complicated enough. This complexity stems from a fundamental difference in the use of allegory in two traditions – of Christian biblical exegesis and of rhetoric and grammar. At the same time, when one traces the historical versions of allegory, it is necessary to take note of the interaction of principles in the two traditions.^[35]

The musical Baroque takes up the idea about figures from the ancient treatises on rhetoric and develops it into a system of its own. That is why besides differentiating between the two uses of allegory a strict musicological interpretation ought to see the problem of allegory in music as a problem of musical expression; and this problem lies at a deeper level than the problem of the similarity between traditions of music and speech as far as it focuses on what is musical. Therefore the question that can be asked in all cases of concretization of the idea about expression is: is the presence of the concept of allegory in the field of music justified or, to put it by way of a popular figure of speech, is musical allegory musical?

Musical Affection

When one meets for the first time the relationship between music and rhetoric, there immediately intrudes the question: does not music betray its own nature, which is far from any kind of conceptuality and rationality, by turning to the rhetorical repertoire of speech, an act that gives rise to the concept of musical rhetoric? By passing through the algorithm of rhetoric, by seeking similarities with it, and by borrowing terms from it, does not music itself forget that rhetoric was the first to resort to it and to its two basic elements – rhythm and harmony – so as to benefit from the high effectiveness of the art of persuasion, effectiveness intrinsic only to it? “Give me the knowledge of the principles of music, which have power to excite or assuage the emotions of mankind.”^[36] Seen from here musical rhetoric goes along a roundabout way, which passes through speech. It remains for it to make a number of analytical moves until it will again summon affection, joining in, after the model of the verbal figure, but now in its own musical principle. And if rhetoric turns to the principles of music so as to tune itself to them and draw by means of them the affection from the figure, what then does music provide for itself by exerting so much efforts so as to evolve and put into operation its procedures: the theoretical de-animation of the sonic structure (the figure), its rationalization and schematization, its compositional re-animation in the new work, its addressing to the listener in whom it ought to arouse passions by means of its form as if by “induction.” This is betrayal only on the face of it. That it is so is visible enough in the treatises on music theory during the Baroque era, whose purpose was determined by the art of musical composition, which is to say by the legitimatization of the musical figures and their adjusting them so that they may be fit for work “according to the rules.”

Music remains true to its law: number and proportion are the things in the vital, beautifully ordered form that attests to this musical law. But this witnessing is effected through the mediation of the set of devices of musical rhetoric, a set that can be worked and put to use and that consists of certain models, which are available and ready for compositional “spiritualization” or, to put it on other words, models taken from a repertoire at the disposal of the creator.

The Turnabout of Musical Baroque

Academic knowledge considers the phenomenon of musical figures within the context of the idea that music should be freed from an exclusive commitment with theology and should be directed to expressing also earthly sentiments.^[37] But just as the Baroque in general so the entire structure of Baroque music – with the truly “new” quality asserted in it – cannot be understood without a theological background.^[38] Only with it can we understand the specific interaction between the principles of rhetoric and theological exegesis in music, an interaction effected in an exemplary way by the work of Bach.^[39] That is why when we speak about a freeing of music, this should be understood not as the alternative – the Arts vs. Theology – but as making use of the resources of human affection, as a concentration on suffering, on passion-bearing, on the verb “to endure” – and first of all as emancipating music into an art of work on constructing the musical affection. This is work on evolving a musical concept for feeling, while running the entire risk of contradictio in adiecto. In order to carry out its work on affections musical Baroque needs something that is indeed new – a new technology based on a new idea. This new idea will be signalized with a turning to the art of rhetoric.

Musica poetica and the Idea of Form

The affinity of musical Baroque towards Antiquity is shown by the interest in rhetoric and this is evidenced by the appearance in the 16th century of treatises entitled Musica poetica and by the growing number of such treatises from the early 17th century on. And if one can consider this to be only an outside factor, an effect of the Renaissance self-dedication to Antiquity, an effect that was activated in music during the Baroque era, then conversely the idea of form is the thing that is no longer an outside factor affecting the existence of music and the way it is understood. This idea enters into music theory exactly with the development of musica poetica, the part of music that begins to stand apart from the other two categories of music theory – musica theorica and musica practica.^[40] Musica poetica leads to a new kind of relationship, which steps into the music/man link. This is the relationship between what is immediate (or natural) and what is mediate (by means of form) in music. It is this relationship that gathers momentum thanks to the figure, thanks to the completed form, thanks to the work left behind “after the labor.”^[41] This is the reason why classifications are so important and why it is especially necessary that figures should be named. The figure personifies the idea of the man-made form worked out by the creator of music (μελοποιός) in his melopoetic work.^[42] It draws the boundary beyond which is the realm of the natural laws of music. The treatise Musica poetica by Joachim Burmeister – the author that is considered to have written the most profound classification of musical figures – has a statement of merit that points to this boundary. He warns that the deeper one goes in his analysis of a work of music, the nearer he goes to “the syntactical rules of music:” “I hope that the novice composer is not expecting here to find rules for forming musical ornaments or figures. Their variety is known to be so wide and great among composers that it is hardly possible for us to determine their number. Furthermore, even if we should attempt to define some of them, we would not come up with anything new or different from the syntactical rules of music.”^[43] The novice composer will not find rules on the elaboration of the musical figures, because they have been entrusted to him, to his melopoetic act.

Allegory and Musical Figures

In rhetorical classifications allegory as a rule belongs to the category of tropes.^[44] When Quintilian gives his definition of allegory he disagrees with those who say that allegory is every figure with which “the speaker pretends to say something other than that which he actually does say.”^[45] And adds: “I know that this view meets with common acceptance.”^[46]

A similar view in accordance with which a structure is understood to express a meaning that differs from the purely musical meaning (and thus is accompanied by the reverberations of allegory) enjoys wide approval in the domain of music as well. Used with this meaning allegory differs from the Baroque musical-rhetorical figures as anaphora, metalepsis, noema etc. And indeed, Joachim Burmeister does not include allegory as a figure in his classifications, which have gone through changes in his three consecutive treatises.^[47] But if allegory is not present among the musical figures of the Baroque era – the time of their triumph – why do then 20th century scholars like Manfred Bukofzer^[48] link it exactly with that time? It seems their reasons go deeper than they would have gone, if allegory was simply a rhetorical figure like the rest and if thus it raised the question as to its place among them. The syncope has come: the historical accent has changed and the idea about the expression has taken the place of the idea about form as the basis of the criterion used in Baroque period for determining a musical figure.

Period, Affection, Figure

Burmeister has entitled chapter 15 of his work Musica poetica like so: “The Analysis or Arrangement of a Musical Piece.” There are two words that are important in this title: both the word analysis, which immediately directs one to the way the musical piece is organized, i.e. to the form, and the word arrangement, which seeks an analogy with the rhetorical disposition.^[49] Burmeister begins the elucidation of the method of analysis with the following definition: “Musical analysis is the examination of a piece belonging to a certain mode and to a certain type of polyphony. The piece is to be divided into its affections or periods, so that the artfulness (artificium) with which each period takes shape can be studied and adopted for imitation.”^[50] I take notice of the expression “affections or periods,” which is repeated more than once in the treatise. The use of the expression “affection or period” gives Benito Rivera ground to point out in his Notes to the English edition that “Burmeister often uses the term affectio in association with periodus. At times he even treats them as synonyms.”^[51] And indeed the closeness between the concepts “affection” and “period” stems from entirely formal context in which Burmeister discusses them. At the same time the distance between them has been indicated in a clear manner: affection differs from period first of all in its exemplarity, in that it can be isolated as a model for imitation. Its artfulness, which is subject to study and imitation, is the thing that justifies musica poetica and at the same time it is the condition for opening to the outside, towards the ear and intellect of the listener, towards making an impact on his heart. “Period” is a concept on the level of form, it is the frame that keeps the entire structure together. Formally it coincides with affection, but affection is turned towards the outside, towards expression. Affection is the thing that makes it possible to recognize period on the basis of its expression. In period, however, affection is in a “stand-by” situation. It is only now that there comes the turn of the formal content of period, a content through which work on affection has been accomplished. This formal content is the figure: “A musical ornament or figure is a passage, in harmony as well as in melody, which is contained within a definite period that begins from a cadence and ends in a cadence; it departs from the simple method of composition, and with elegance (virtus) assumes and adopts a more ornate character.”^[52] It is only when the figure is drawn into the theoretical focus that one can say that “the ears and mind of the listener are rendered attentive to the song, and his good will is won over.”^[53] A figure is the smallest structural unit that has meaning, a unit that is cognizable through the senses, a unit that ensures communicativeness of affection. A figure is the gesture that is made, affection is the gesture that is felt and recognized. It is recognized through its being a model. Affection, however, is not described in terms of concrete feelings. During the Baroque times “joy” and “grief,” though they are mentioned, are not attached to affection, but they also are not attached to the figure whose role is to evoke it. What is attached to the figure is described in terms of a language that according to tradition is similar to the description of ethos and not of pathos (affection). In Burmeister the expressive aspect of the musical figure – affection or the pathos imprint on the listener – is nowhere segmented into the principal passions.^[54] What the mind becomes aware of, what the ear hears, and what the heart detects is “sweetness” and “gentleness” – that modal tuning, which is part of the armoury of the tropoi and tonoi of Antiquity and of the modi of the Middle Ages. During the Baroque era the homology between the (aesthetic) character of music and the character of the human being lies at the basis of a musical affection that cannot be explained in mere psychological terms, an affection that should have its own musical autonomy, which will assert itself again through the primary elements: rhythm and melos.

Form and Expression

According to the definition given by Burmeister a figure deviates from the simple method of composition and with elegance assumes and adopts a more ornate character. The close similarity between this definition and the one given by Quintilian in chapter 1 of book 9 of Institutio oratoria outlines in an even clearer manner the two features – artfulness and novelty: “We shall then take a figure to mean a form of expression to which a new aspect is given by art.”^[55]

First of all, a figure is a form of expression and these two words should be understood as concomitant: in order to be an expression a figure should have a clear, audibly ascertainable form; its formal properties – a) the artfulness with which it departs from the simple method of composition and b) its new character – fill the expression with meaning. A figure as “a gesture of language”^[56] is a call for communication. Through its expressive aspect turned towards the listener it seeks response from him thus actualizing the potentialities of its content. But before evoking any feeling in him, a figure should be an artfully drawn diagram of that feeling, which has thus been arrived at in an indirect way. This path leading to the immediacy of music, an immediacy, however, that has been found again, is the feature that the Baroque will bring out as its main idea. That epoch possesses the unique ability to emancipate its syntactical structures from the context within which they have been created, i.e. the opuses or the style of the author, so that they may achieve the status of figures and thus become part of a rhetorical repertory. In order to acquire the status of a figure a structure should have achieved a definite degree of formal autonomy; it should be by itself a new phenomenon that is expressive and impressive. While achieving these qualities it has retained something from the process of creation, from the “labor” of poetica; at the same time it is separable enough as a model from the uniqueness of the creative act that has brought it into being. The power of the creative achievement consists in that it can preserve and at the same time overcome the strictly individual quality of the figure so as to place it for rhetorical use. The idea of form as an idea about the formal content of a work requires the composer to solve the task caused by the tension between the permanent scheme and the need of its creative spiritualization by himself, a task that relates to figure in its capacity as allegory.

The Baroque is that phase of the self-reflection of music in the latter’s historical versions as art under which together with the triumph of the idea of form there emerges also the recognition of the phenomenon of musical representation. But what does music represent? An easy answer would be to say that it represents “something else,” something that is outside the sphere of music, an illustration of a text, a given human passion. Behind all these, however, there stands the idea of representing something that is strictly musical: to represent, through sonic norm of the figure, the very essence of music, the very thing that is “musically correct.”^[57] Thus music during the Baroque epoch, before representing words or abstract idea or feeling, represents itself: testing new opportunities, revealing its hidden recesses, and bringing to the fore the very technique of form-elaboration, while leaving in the world its musical imprints. It is exactly to these imprints or “seams”^[58] that it imparts the tension that breaks out towards the other thing and this breaking out is the call to allegory. These imprints lie at the foundation of musica poetica as a kind of creative work that “has to be ars inveniendi (inventive skill)”^[59] and in accordance with which “the idea about an artist of genius that is perfect in ars inveniendi was an idea about a person that deals with ready models in a superb manner.”^[60] In this musical form-elaboration in the world Baroque music holds its hand to the rhetorical word not so much with the view to depicting, but in order to be able, while adopting the formal order of speech, to seek communication with the reasoning faculty that orients itself by means of the forms that have been created.

Boethius and Leibniz: Double Variations

But is not the link between the body and the soul a link that is rather Baroque in its character, a link that the epoch intertwined and brought up with special love? Relying on their natural link, the Baroque will focus its work on a new musical bodiliness – sonority, which crystallizes in the rhetorical forms in a poetical way and which attacks directly the sense of hearing. This work will therefore affect that recess, “joint,” or “fold” that forms between human pathos and the musical-formal affection, i.e. between the person experiencing the affection and the bodiliness of musica instrumentalis. The musical affection, attacking the sense of hearing, expects response from the soul in agreement with the rule determined by the identity of the structures of humana and instrumentalis. The pre-established harmony of Leibniz is the thing that probably expresses in the most precise way the Baroque relationships between musical bodiliness and the human soul both of which throb with the heartbeat of one and the same musical universe.

Because of the high degree of independent development of musical theory during the Baroque epoch, such a strictly musical category like “the perfect harmony” of Zarlino looks like withdrawing into the area circumscribed by the technical rules.^[61] But in its sense it does not depart in the least from the general philosophical conception of harmony, because one and the same idea lies at the foundation of both of them.

The Baroque is an act of remembering the Pythagorean harmony of the Universe, but within the framework of a new system. The Baroque disperses in the variety of the world-here, but becomes one through the unity of its idea. That is the epoch that is able to prevent the severing of the links between the “three kinds of music” of Boethius.

Musical harmony is not a component of the concept of harmony, nor is it a special case of harmony. The principle of harmony is in its essence a musical principle. It is the same principle that lies at the foundation of the world creation and establishment in Cosmos, a principle bequeathed by the Pythagoreans and taken over and passed on further by Boethius. Musical harmony is the pre-establishment, the law governing the world, the requirement that its status quo should be this and not that one.^[62] 

When we consider Boethius’s “three kinds of music” on the background of pre-established harmony, this helps us to understand how the musical Baroque, though it has not left a unified theory on the matter, regards the way in which the link between soul and body comes into effect. Profoundly imbued with the ideas of the time, it entrusts the mechanisms of this link to the principle of pre-establishment. Such is the philosophical foundation on which the musical Baroque will manage to keep intact the links of Boethius’s triad. The pre-established harmony will lie at the basis of the idea about the musical affections as a principle in accordance to which there is agreement between the elements of the body and the soul (musica humana) and between humana and the elementae musicae (musica instrumentalis).^[63] Here, where “the soul follows its own laws and the body its own and they agree by virtue of the harmony, pre-established among all substances as all of them express one and the same universe,”^[64] the musical affection also cannot be conceived simply as a directly evoked feeling. This affection will find its place in a new, typically Baroque-style “fold” formed between the soul and the body.

The idea about the fold (le pli) is the kernel of the book by Gilles Deleuze that has also the same title.^[65] Among the many possible “folds” that one can notice in Leibniz’s Baroque,^[66] knowledge of music can detect distinctly the line that links the (musical) universe, the (music) man and the (musical) sound. The folds of this line have preserved probably more faithfully than at any other time Boethius’s principle about the analogous structures of mundana, humana, and instrumentalis and thanks to this preservation it will be possible to explain without a contradiction why and how does the soul respond when the sounds reach it “by way of the hearing faculty.” This kind of link will operate for about a century. Johann Mattheson will focus his attention^[67] on the audible music – because according to him it is available in an authentic way – and a century after him Edward Hanslick will remote ethos-and-affection stamp of music on the soul so as to proclaim the “direct work of the Spirit” in “the very sonic structures.”^[68] During the musical Baroque the principle of pre-established harmony assigns to music not simply the role of an illustrator. Adopting the old notion about harmony as the very musical order of world, the idea of pre-establishment elevates music to the degree of an ideative centre in whose thinking musical concepts not only do not have a fortuitous, i.e. metaphorical, presence, but musical realities themselves are not a reductionist illustration of a given general view.

Leibniz’s pre-established harmony is the same musical harmony, because of which the sounding music “charms us, although its beauty consist only in the agreement of numbers and in the counting, which we do not perceive but which the soul nevertheless continues to carry out, of the beats or vibrations of sounding bodies which coincide at certain intervals.”^[69] Being musical by virtue of its own nature, Harmony, which underlines the created world, passes over without a transition into the beauty of the music that sounds. Probably that is why what has been written in the letter to Christian Goldbach and what musicians have been quoting for three centuries now, assumes the character of definition: “Musica est exercitium arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi.” (“Music is a secret arithmetical exercise that the soul does without being aware of it.”)^[70]

Music undoubtedly remains with humana. And the cohesion of Boethius’s triad is consolidated thanks to the new system of Leibniz. The pre-established harmony explains the agreement between humana and instrumentalis, between the parts of humana, and between “the beats and vibrations of sounding bodies” (instrumentalis) and the cosmic order of mundana. The musical Baroque throws an unexpectedly strong light on the internal relationships between “the three kinds of music” as hypostatic relationships between these three genera having one and the same essence. There remains one more link behind – the link leading to the sufficient reason…

The Theological Foundations of the Created Triad

Leibniz presents the unity of the divine and the human orders with the view that “knowledge of the laws of Nature leads us in the long run to a higher principle of order and perfection, which shows that the Universe is the result of a universal intelligent power.”^[71] While the pre-established harmony is the principle that provides an explanation with regard to that fold towards which the Baroque is especially sensitive – the fold between humana and instrumentalis, the sufficient reason reveals the theological foundations of the musical triad. The sufficient reason “cannot be either in the order of bodies or of the notions in the soul;” it “ought to be outside the order of fortuitous things and to be part of the substance that is the cause of that order or to be a necessary being that carries within itself the reason for its existence… This ultimate cause of things is called God.”^[72]

The soul-body link viewed in terms of the horizontal arrangement of this world is made stronger, when we see the vertical direction that leads to the Founding Cause. The musical Baroque puts musica humana on this theological basis. There it also finds its guidelines for rationalizing the humana – instrumentalis link. And while owing to all its intellectual and technical operations in rhetoric it seems as if it has sunk in a world created according to human criteria with affection as a goal it never forgets, it is still always ready to come to the surface and restore the integrity of its idea.

Boethius’s triad reveals its new system of organization, when this triad is seen in the light of the pre-established harmony and of the sufficient reason. The key to achieving unity between the general philosophical idea and the musical idea of the Baroque, the reason that enables music to harmonize itself with the new philosophical ideas without deviating from its created triple structure lies in the safeguarding power of the movement towards the climes that are above. It is exactly the fact that figures and forms observe their own rules, while souls draw “the chords from their own depths,”^[73] that makes possible the purely Baroque-style mediacy of the link between the human and the musical affections, whose relationships are guided from on high, by the universal law of harmony. The core of the musical idea of the Baroque consists in the anagogical movement through the three links of the triad and upwards, towards “the sufficient reason.” The name of this movement is Harmony.

Allegory and Musical Meaning

The musical figure is allegorical: it speaks about the musical meaning that has been cast in it like in a mould and which at the same time exceeds it.^[74] But when the figure finally crystallizes into the required form, it ceases to be musical and becomes the image of the musical meaning that has passed through it and has abandoned it. The figure is in a relationship of syncopation with the meaning itself. A reverse motion is needed so that the figure may remain musical. This reverse motion is towards the genuine and “speaking” meaning as is the case before “the casting,” before the meaning has been silenced in it. It is only thus that the figure expresses the essence of music.

After the meaning has been cast in the mould of the figure, it leaves it, turns it into a fragment, into an image, i.e. deprives it of voice. That is why looking at the figure in the way one looks at objects cannot provide interpretation-expression, it can in no way detect its direction:^[75] the sonic form that has been cast in the mould has appropriated for itself the musical meaning and has put it under lock and key, it is the last stop after which no comprehension is possible; it is a stop, because in it the meaning has already retired into an object, risen-against. In order for one to understand, it is necessary for him to destroy the figure and to walk actually all the way covered by the sound that draws the figure’s image and at the same time retreats into itself one tone after another, one tone into another. The feeling for sound is a two-faced Janus, who at one and the same time, on the one hand, opens doors and accepts and, on the other, blocks the way. The unlocking, the revealing of the meaning becomes possible only with the act of hearing, which means the transformation of the subject-object relationship, i.e. when after the transformation a person lets himself become the object of the musical act that created him and that builds him up. The musical allegory goes into effect just with the work of the soul on this revealing of the meaning. By unlocking the meaning the person himself turns into an expression of the other thing, whose only goal consists in having someone to express it – the goal of doing away with the traces. The chance for the allegorical utterance to take place lies in the human being becoming accustomed to the movement that erases the traces of the fragment.

Symbol and/or Allegory

The musical rhetorical figure has a twofold nature determined by the contradictions between what is immediate and what is mediate. The dynamics of this relationship consists, on the one hand, in preserving a hardened, dried up cliché as long as it is identifiable and, on the other, in the ever novel deriving of meaning from it. The rhetorical deviation is only the technique that directs one to understanding how a new opportunity opens up for the figure in the space left by abandoning what is usual.^[76] What is more essential is the free hand that has been given to the composer to bring back to life a meaning that has already abandoned its formal dried up shell. It is exactly this ability to resuscitate that justifies the composer’s work on the figure. And only the foremost among “the great masters” will be honoured by History with names that are emblems of entire musical epochs. Just as Orlando di Lasso was such an emblem for Burmeister so the musical Baroque has left us the name of Bach.

Timebombs of expression stronger than the feebleness of the figure-cliché, a feebleness that pulls in the opposite direction, have to be laid in the “seams” of the figure, at the fringes of what has been sewn, so that this expression may be freed from the figure and after destroying it can build it anew as though for the first time.

It is well-known that the graphic of the figure is what makes it identifiable. The figure requires the eye to draw ascending and descending lines or lines that have been formed by tones that cross one another. The name of BACH refers us to the cross-figure, but through the eye and through the graphic. But when the cross-figure of BACH from a fugue is felt in its purely musical action, in the unfolding of the entire musical work; when it creates a form while we are put in the position of receiving, of people that are under the impact of the form, of people committed to the fugue as to a musical subject; when the unique property of music to draw into its immediacy affects us personally and we ourselves become the figure and begin speaking through ourselves about the meaning of the concrete fugue – when all this happens, we ourselves become an allegory. The subject-object relationship of the allegory has been turned round and the thing that we try to see through the graphic of a musical figure overtakes us and makes sounding music and ourselves means of expression. But now the problem about allegorical expression looks different, when compared with the traditional division of allegory into image and meaning (unlike the unity between a sensory and a transcendent object, a unity inherent in the symbol); now the fullness of understanding takes up in symbol-governed unity the idea and musical materiality.

In the world of music the relationships between symbol and allegory are determined all over again. When we are inside, in the position of hearers, Schelling’s view that music is allegorical, while the plastic arts are symbolical is not valid.^[77] In music there is symbol and there is allegory and at that they are not static forms of expression that have been fixed in either of them, because music is not an art among other arts that apportion their roles with it; it is itself a principle of worldness, a principle that materializes both through symbol and allegory. When the cross recognized allegorically through the sonic image of cross-figure is taken up by the soul that hears, the latter elevates it to the status of a symbol of the Cross.

The enormous ambition of Baroque music is to leave after itself something that in essence is no longer here. The musical work is a figure of tracelessness, a figure that can be interpreted only by doing away with its traces together with the traces of the one that has heard it. Baroque music is an allegory: it leaves something that is not on hand, except in the act of hearing. And the only way for this work to remain here is through hearer’s entering in it, through the actual being of musica humana, which provides its most personal, most intimate, most profound interpretation. For musica humana is the only kind of music that can attain to the truth about music as such, because it is structured in accordance with it. The idea about allegory can show us the goal of music – a teleological conception under which the figure seems to be only the last stop in the flow of expression, but in fact the work of this figure on achieving expression begins only now. The fading away, the dying down of living sound, the fact that living music ceases to be is an allegory that speaks of that goal. The musical truth has descended into the sonic figure so as to meet man, so that by drawing him towards it and involving him in it – by turning him into a figure – may induce him to reveal himself, to appear, to sound.

Sound (ἤχος) and ethos (ἤθος)

Music as a Meeting Place

Because no way towards the soul is as open for exhortation as the way of hearing.

Boetii De institutione musica. I.1

In the world of music the relationships between reason and the senses, between ethos and pathos are determined all over again. Hearing is a passive, pathos position^[78] of man in the world. As such it presupposes that there is something else or someone else that is heard. This refers to some kind of connection, some kind of meeting. This meeting takes place at a certain place. This is the place of ethos (ἤθος) – a Greek word, whose first meanings are “place of residence,” “location,” “dwelling-place,” “homeland.”^[79] Understanding ethos as “a habitual gathering place”^[80] hints at a possible interpretation of the term of musical ethos.

From the theories about musical ethos such as are presented to us by the history of music we shall learn less about the content of the concept as to what is musical ethos and what is musical about it and shall learn more about the effect music has on the human soul. According to this view, which deals directly with the function of music, each of the musical harmonies (tonoi, modi) corresponds to a certain state of the soul and because of that can call it forth. Thus the Dorian harmony is suitable for “soldierly and restrained people or men,” the Lydian one is “prone to grieving,” while the Myxolydian and the Ionian are “the source of loose morals.”^[81] The impact has effect, because of the analogy between the structure of music and the structure of the soul. Such a view is felt to allow of no questioning and to require a priori acceptance. However, while it points to what follows from the meeting between music and the soul, it evades the need to analyze the meeting itself and explain what happens then. And it is this that brings the need to look at the meeting in a musical way.

“A saying of Heraclitus that consists of only three words says something so simply that from it the essence of ethos immediately comes to light.

The saying of Heraclitus… goes: ἤθος ἀνθρώπω δαίμων. This is usually translated, “A man’s character is his daimon.” This translation thinks in a modern way, not a Greek one, ἤθος means abode, dwelling place. The word names the open region in which the human being dwells. The open region of his abode allows what pertains to the essence of the human being, and what in thus arriving resides in nearness to him, to appear. The abode of the human being contains and preserves the advent of what belongs to the human being in his essence. According to Heraclitus’s phrase this is δαίμων, the god. The fragment says: The human being dwells, insofar as he is a human being, in the nearness of god.”^[82]

What can be called musical ethos is not some kind of other ethos but the same place musically understood where man meets in reality his character, his peculiarity, his daimon. This musical ethos is the very coming, the very visiting of man by his daimon; this is the recognizing of his own thing in what is coming, the trust in it and the committing of oneself to its care; this is the very opportunity for this very coming to be heard in full and to the end. The musical ethos is the place in which man chooses hearing as the only modus that ensures his real nearness to what has been heard and conversely that allows such nearness to what has been uttered that makes it possible for it to be heard. The musical ethos is the modus of the human soul in which man comes to know the one who comes by means of his very coming – through a revelation.

Ἔθος and Ἤθος 

The word ἔθος means “habit,” “custom,” and “law.”^[83] The word ἤθος covers a range of meanings beginning with “place of residence” through “habit,” “character,” and “way of thinking” to “ethical virtue” and “moral feeling.”^[84]

Aristotle points to the kinship between the two words explaining that ethos (ἤθος) “derives from the concept of habit, which explains also its name through a slight deviation from the word ‘habit’ (ἔθος).”^[85] Ethical virtue has not been given to us by way of our nature, it is cultivated and habit is the tool with which this is done.

But if hearing is sheer pathos, a passive position in the world, submission, and giving up oneself to what one has heard, does it not follow that with it there is no place for musical ethos, which requires will, choice, and decision? It would have been so, if music were simply a part of the world of man, a part that is artistic, cultural, or whatever part that we may think of, and therefore man could do without it. Bearing in mind, however, that it is the world in its entireness, a world that is lived through, inhabited by, and cognized musically, we should accept that in it man exists with all his traits and gifts. In this world in which hearing is a way of living and a way of understanding things, this hearing wants to be ethically chosen, cherished, and upheld. Building up the musical ethos requires an act of the will, an act with which man remains in the hearing, and it also requires an effort of thinking, an effort through which he comes to understand what it means for one to remain there. Musical ethos, this is the decision to learn what your peculiar feature is, who your daimon or your god is, and the will to follow him.

Music reveals itself as a phenomenon that has been from the very beginning and permanently is pathos-like and it reveals pathos itself as a definite position in the world. Here the share of musical ethos is the share of action, a difficult share accompanied with a difficult choice – the choice of a person to submit and to endure, to be amid the openness of what opens up and to hear its sound.

Choice, Action, Expression

The world of what is musical requires people to renounce their self-centered reflection; it requires ethical readiness to sacrifice what is private and own in following what is being heard; it requires the will to give up oneself and to submit. Only in this way can one stand in front of music, which reveals its truth to him. He who has chosen musical ethos will choose what is “musically correct,” because he will choose harmony. But this can be understood only later, because harmony reveals itself only to the one that hears and only in the process of hearing.

In the world of music the energy to choose is the energy that enables you to remain an attentive hearer who has surrendered to the impact of music through his own free will; it is the same energy that makes it possible for you to find yourself as another being that differs from your individual “I,” to build up your character in the common moral law and in accordance with it and thus to achieve your genuine personal existence.

“Choice” is the fundamental key word linked with ethos. The words “act” and “action” are key words as well. “What is communal” is a composite that also functions as a key word. It means that part of the spirit of the community that is in everybody, through which everybody builds up his own ethical standards and which he builds again into what is communal in the community.

Seen from the viewpoint of music and seen as a musical phenomenon, what is ethical is oriented towards the harmony of the soul; it is an activity in the territory of musica humana, an activity with which man builds his musical character. Intention and will have begun operating here and man is no longer abandoned to the blind force of necessity so as to be pacified or led to a state of madness under the impact of a certain musical mode.^[86] Instead he perfects his ability to choose as he is left free to face the entire world of sound.

The modus of hearing is a modus that exhorts, that subjects the soul to a test and educates it; it is the modus of transformation. This is so, because the acoustic sound, the sound that is heard (ἀκούω) is not only the ultimate manifestation of music in the matter and the form of musica instrumentalis, but is also the essence of music that nobody can ever take away. And if on the level of theory, i.e. on the level of what is particular, the immanent musical structures correspond to the ethos characteristics, the inertia of that particular can be overcome only through the transformation of what is individual into what is common and conversely, of what is common into what is individual. Now man is required to stand up in front of himself, i.e. to assess his life in accordance with the criteria of what we should call musical conscience, a conscience which requires us to live ethically. This conscience would not have been a musical conscience, if it did not have to break out into the open, if it did not require of man also to stand up among the others, to express himself – this is what voice is for, voice is the confession. Through the way in which music as a macrocosm makes itself known by revealing itself through sound, it becomes the model to be followed by man as a microcosm that should take up the risk to express itself through voice.

A Variation on Kierkegaard

For Kierkegaard choice means the will for ethical existence, an existence that rejects what is aesthetic: either (what is aesthetic) or (what is ethical).^[87] According to this thinker music as an incarnation of what is sensually immediate, of what is aesthetic, deprived of choice, is outside the stage of what is ethical. But the one who has chosen to dwell in its world, a world in which the relationships between what is aesthetic, what is ethical, and what is religious are defined all over again, faces need to make, also all over again, the ethical gesture of choice. This is the gesture with which he refuses to be what he is by nature – an aesthetic man – and chooses to be what he becomes – an ethical man.^[88] Letting in rhythms and modes to reach his own soul by way of the hearing faculty, he faces the need to put into effect the infinite potentialities of his musical personality.

In Kierkegaard what is ethical and what is religious are also divided into different stages. This is the division between clothing oneself in one’s self and clothing oneself in God, i.e. putting on Christ (Gal 3:27), between taking care of oneself and entrusting the care of oneself to God. Only after one has grown stronger and has passed over to the religious stage, does one entrust the care of oneself to God. That is why the philosopher assigns Christ’s behest to us to be like the lilies of the field (Mt 6:28) to this stage, while saying that in the ethical stage we take care of ourselves with our own efforts.^[89]

In the world of music the transition from what is ethical to what is religious, from clothing oneself in one’s self to clothing oneself in God is not a transition from one stage to another. Here the work on putting one’s soul in order and consonance, on achieving euphony, is a matter of unceasing renunciation of what is one’s own and unceasing giving oneself up to harmony. The choice that is based on the musical sound, a sound that is ontologically absolute, is the choice of man to give up himself to the sound that is heard and become an instance of re-sounding (ἀπ-ήχημα). Having given himself up to harmony and having become an attentive hearer of it, having received it and having become a “re-sounding,” he discovers also the boundless potential of his own self. Having overcome the narrow confines of what is own, the new self is the thing that man is imbued with at each step of the process of his musical self-fulfilment – at one and the same time ethical and religious. In the world of absolute sound there exists no self which having overcome the bounds of what is private can differ from the will of the One from Whom harmony comes. The work of musical ethos is conscious work and it consists in the ever-going freeing of oneself from his private self and the ever-going attainment of harmony.

In this way music reveals to us its mission in the world. If there are different ways for one to build his character, then music gives him the way to use so as to mould his character in the status of pathos by learning (ἔθος) to follow the reality that is coming and to attain his new personality in a religious link with that reality.

The immediacy of musical existence consists in two concomitant processes: the constant expression through the voice and the steadfast tuning of this voice to what is being heard. Thus man builds his personality acquiring in it what has not come from him and he does that not through the cool contemplation of music, but by choosing music, not through understanding what musica humana consists of, but by stepping into its rhythm and melos, not by means of a cry from himself, but by hearing of the voice of Being.

The Musicus

If under the word “musician” we understand a person who dwells in the world of what is musical, who builds his character in that world and who knows it because of living in it, then this makes clear to us that the territory of musical praxis does not coincide with what we call today “musical practice.” This territory is not a preserve for the singer, the instrumentalist, the member of an orchestra, or, to put it in generalized and contemporary terms, “the performer,” nor does it coincide with that of the composer. The territory of musical praxis is the territory of musica humana as the microcosm, which reflects the principles of the harmony of the macrocosm. Though it is equally open to the performer, the composer, and the research scholar, it may happen that it may not be visited by anyone of them. Visiting it means agreement in accordance with the hearing faculty, agreement in the sound that can be shared and that is shared, that brings harmony and rhythm. From now on the person that appraises will be the one through whose own hearing faculty music reaches his own soul. If we deprive the musicus of praxis and grant him only the right to judge about what his ear provides to his brain, that would be fair to Boethius only on the face of it. The musicus does not only appraise what he has been given through the ear. He also makes the appraisal in the way musical truth has revealed itself to him heaving reached his soul through his ear. He appraises from the viewpoint of musica humana – from the only world that is possible, the world which, being the only one that exists, can be contemplated only from the inside.

Ἤχος  and Ἤθος 

The concept of echos (ἤχος) is used in Byzantine music theory for designating each of the eight church chant modes and thus it refers exclusively to the Octoechos system. E. Gertzman points out, however, that in Antiquity the word ἤχος was used with regard to various sourses of sound, both musical instruments and in general bodies that emit sound, and from this he draws the conclusion that the term referred not only to purely musical sounding, but also to its “pre-musical acoustic prototypes.”^[90] Of special significance is one meaning of the range of meanings alluded to by the author – the meaning which says that ἤχος expresses “some preliminary property that is necessary for the emergence of the musical sound – phthong.”^[91] Let us recall that Boethius also refers to that property, when he defines “not sound in general, but the sound that in Greek is called phthong.”^[92] Because of the analogy between the concept of echos and Boethius’s sonus, an analogy that is due to the interpretations of the term in Byzantine treatises, and because of the need to elucidate the relations between the terms echos and ethos, relations that are not always clear, it is necessary to admit a version with a wider meaning of the concept of echos and not the version that says that it means simply “mode.” For with the dynamic between echos and ethos there begins the ethical work of echos in musica humana – to strain (τείνω) the soul and the body so as to express itself in voice. So, it is only when one has the will to be musical that one understands that echos and ethos are of one and the same essence.

Without this work in humana an unfathomable chasm will divide the concept of ethos, which can be thought of only in the singular, from the eight echoi that are independent crystallizations – modes. But echos before becoming the sonic substance that has separated from the voice, i.e. before becoming pure sound or “bodiless bodiliness,” is the foundation that makes what is musical possible at all. As the place where there occurs the elliptic transformation of the universe into a musical universe, echos determines the musical citizenship of its inhabitants. This is so because before that echos itself has been subjected to the ellipsis and from being simply a sound it has turned into the sound called emmelēs – into what Boethius determined as sonus.

Just as ethos is thinkable only in the singular and each of the separate harmonies (tonoi, modi) is linked with one of its different moduses, so in the same way mode is a way (modus) in which echos exists. And so just as ethos is “the dwelling place,” so echos sets the boundaries of the musical space that yet remains to be organized as Octoechos and in which man is both musically residing and musically self-manifested. And if it is necessary to insist on using singular number when speaking of ethos and echos, this is because both words denote concepts whose content is fullness. Accepting echos, animating it with his voice and breath, man agrees that echos upbuilds and harmonizes him. Thus man accomplishes the fullness of his musical ethos.

Echos is ethos. The echos/ethos concept is a concept that expresses an ontological fullness that man achieves in his musical existence. Thus echos reveals itself as the primary musical key for the harmonious tuning of the chords of musica humana, i.e. it reveals itself as the musical ethos. Its world is inhabited by human beings that are accomplished personalities as far as music is concerned and it is a world that can be attained by them. Musical meaning dwells in the very essence of echos. The knowledge of music as a knowledge about the musical truth, a truth that man achieves in the very process of his own musical growth, keeps musical ethos with itself.

Echos is the creator (μελοποιός), who gives free play to his melopoetic activity in the place of the musical ethos. Echos rushes into the musical-ethical space, which is agog with the readiness to respond. It is musica humana that provides evidence of this ethical ability of echos.

Ἤχος  – Φωνή – Ἤχος 

“Question: What is echos?

Answer: Echos is something that is sung by a human being and heard by many…”^[93]

The concept of echos is closely linked with the concept of phonē (φωνή) and at the same time differs essentially from it.

“Question: What is voice (φωνή) and what is [its] origin?

Answer: Voice is an echo (ἀπήχημα), accumulated by breath and produced by means of some kind of harmony and a proper throat. [The word] voice comes from [the saying]: ‘Light is reason’ (φῶς εἶναι νοός) since all that reason creates guides towards light.”^[94]

Voice is the very breath of man – man himself, merged with what is musical, man that has turned into sound (echos): voice is echos imbued with human breath.^[95]

Echos is what has been sung, a pure sound that has freed itself from the breath and the bodiline’s of voice – phonē. One can put it like this: phonē minus the soul and the body, i.e. minus human breath and bodiliness. But echos does not come after phonē, because phonē is based on echos, on “some kind of harmony,” because echos is the thing what makes it possible for phonē to sound. And phonē sounds by tuning itself to echos.

Therefore echos is the very thing that has been sung by a living being and that has been heard by many as the very thing itself. What has been sung is the very thing that has been heard. It is recognized just as what it is. Thus it creates the community of living and communicating in music and also it provides musical understanding.

Echos is absolute and primary, without it there is no melos.

“Question: Does echos differ from melos?

Answer: Yes, it is different. Echos precedes melos; no one can think of a case, when they started to tune up not to echos, because without echos there would be no melos. Melos is derived from echos.”^[96]

It is only with echos that there emerges the musical position of tone, today we would say the pitch of the sound. Tone sounds with its tonal nature, with the tension that generates it (with its τόνος^[97]), with its musical harmonious tuning. It is only with echos that melos can be melos, that it can sound in the way music sounds, and that means in a harmonious, euphonic, emmelitic way.

“Question: Were there any sounds or mele (meloses) before echoi (echoses) appeared?

Answer: Mele existed, but they were dull and discordant, forcing one’s nature to cry loudly; after [their] harmonious merging with echoi, however, everything turned out to be tuned in accordance with the order, and harsh dissonances (παράφωνη) and obscene cries acquired measure and mode (μέτρον καὶ τάξιν).”^[98]

Echos is what determines what is musical in music. It is the beginning of the musical universe. In its movement its charts a definite direction: beginning as the cause for the strained voice, it passes through that voice so as to break away into a sonic substance. And all this movement carries through itself and brings into light the opportunity for the sound to be heard – the acoustic potential of the musical phenomenon.

Strained, musically tuned, echos can be heard and recognized by all such as it is itself. But just when it passes through the human voice so as to tune it to itself and at the same time to break away from the human voice into a sensory sound, and also just when it tunes to itself the ears of the multitude that listen to it so as to be acoustically shared by that multitude such as itself it is, it charts the territory of the musical universe, a territory meant for musical habitation, musical communing, and musical knowledge. This is the territory of the new musical subject (μουσικός) who does not only recognize the sound of music, i.e. the sound that has a certain pitch, but is at the same time the one for whom this sound is a source of meaning.

If we go from the system of the eight echoses one step back toward the idea of the echos in the singular and accept that it is the thing that makes melos to be melos and makes it by putting the quality emmelēs as the boundary with “dullness and discordance,” if we accept that with this it sanctifies sonic space in a musical way, then we shall now see echos no longer as an aesthetic, but as an ontological demarcating device. Melos comes as a concept that shows the awareness of the difference between echos as a principle of being and the existence of music in the world of time and in the world of sonic bodiliness.

The Living Voice

Voice leads us along its traces backwards, towards reason. Being itself the fruit of harmony, it brings into light the latter’s order. Voice is the thing through which man expresses his musical character, that is to say expresses himself as a musical being, and at the same time it is also the thing through which man by practicing it becomes musical.^[99] Voice is the praxis of character.

The place of voice is in musica humana, in so far as voice is the echos imbued with breath. Voice is the living presence: having been brought into light in the world, it creates its new bodiliness. This is the bodily trace of the voice – instrumentalis. Voice is in man and it needs his throat so as to come out. Its new bodiliness is evidence of musica humana and at the same time it (as instrumentalis) leaves musica humana. Voice never becomes pure echos, because it bears the warmth of breath, human breath, of the breath exactly of this man and of this throat. Voice is life, human song, its end is death – the end of the song. Voice is true to reason, it is created by harmony; voice is ethical, its is the will that leads to light; voice is aesthetic not because of the sonority of instrumentalis – a sonority that has attained form, but because of the coordination between soul and body (humana), a coordination that has made that form possible.

If a man wants to be musical, fully and to the end, he cannot abandon his own living voice. But he cannot abandon it short of the point to which there stretches not only his character and behaviour, but also his ability to understand. That is because the sonic substance deprived of the warmth of man’s own breath, the “instrumentalis echos” that flees away from voice, deprives it of any kind of orientation. Meaning and truth can be detected only as long as voice is still living.

The voice of man – this is man’s nearness to echos, to the sound that is absolute and primordial. With his voice man is at the place of ethos. Thanks to it he lives near his δαίμων.

Ethos and community

Voice is man himself, the very human being that can be heard because this being has been expressed. Voice is his sound generated by listening to harmony. Voice is the first incarnation of echos, the echos that requires some kind of a throat. Voice is the very predisposition to music, the tuning to the echos: φωνή is ἀπήχημα.

Echos is the very musical essence revealed to the hearing faculty – the essence grasped “by many” such as it is itself. At the same time it is the independent sonic substance, pure sonority. The link between what is uttered and what is heard materializes by way of the bridge of echos, because it is the “cause” (the sonus of Boethius) and at the same time the pure sound that has manifested itself. The sameness between “what it is” and “such as it is” brings forth community, a musical community. What is musical is non-loneliness in the world, it is communal habitation. Tuning to the echos heard such as it is – this is musical ethos, the creative work aimed at building a community that rests on the foundation of a sound that is common for all. While phonē proclaims readiness and personal involvement at the place of the musical ethos, echos provides the foundations for common life and communal living – the unity of voices. Thus it is shown that there is such a place, that communing takes place there, that it is possible to share the truth of music. This sharing is possible because of echos, because the latter can be attained musically by man and that means that it can be attained as far as voice is concerned which on its part means that it can be attained ethically. Man’s presence in the world of what is musical, i.e. the voice that is uttered and heard, the sound that is achieved and shared – this is the level of musical ethos. Voice is the announcement made for the benefit of others, it exists for the sake of the community, it is the sound that is confessed in front of that community. Euphony, emmelēs is the thing that is confessed and when it is heard by many it gives the community its centre, its harmony. The other human being is the one that hears the sound, the one before whom the sound of music is confessed, the one through whom you become what you are by dedicating yourself and leaving your own self. That is why voice is necessary: it is necessary for the sake of the will shown in self-dedication, the will that exists already in the primary predisposition to hearing, the will of the soul that listens attentively and that is turned to the outside.

It is only in the territory of musica humana that ethos and echos reveal their most intimate proximity. In the context of Boethius’s triad in which humana is the harmonious agreement between soul and body and in which voice is its will-governed fruition, the concept of echos comes to point out not only that instrumentalis is present. Keeping its proximity to humana, to its warm breath, echos is the sonic evidence that we are present. Marching in step with it, bringing ourselves in harmony with it, and presenting ourselves through voice, we radiate echos, which preserves the character of our phonē. Phonē is “the umbilical cord” between the musical intention and echos, phonē, which is the fruition of the breath. As long as humana is harmonized, it is not necessary to ask whether this breath is musical. Tuning of the voice, bringing it into agreement with echos now takes place in a fixed order – from the will for harmony and towards the generating of musical bodiliness. What is musical is incarnated and echos comes out into the light (φῶς) of the voice (φωνή). The verb “to tune” expresses exactly the idea of direction, because it denotes: tuning to, bringing into agreement with, arranging in accordance with – thus one can see the thing to which everything is tuned. Echos is this thing – primordial, genuine, absolute.

Musical Theology: The Ellipsis that is Needed

It is fitting to engage in Physics rationally [rationabiliter], in Mathematics in a disciplined manner [disciplinaliter], and in divine matters intellectually [intellectualiter]; it is also fitting not to be drawn aside towards images, but rather to contemplate that form which is truly form and not image, and which is being itself as well as that from which being is. For every being is from form.

Boethius. On the Holy Trinity. I 169^[100]

Just as the term musical philosophy denotes something different from the term philosophy of music, so musical theology should be distinguished from the theology of music. As a theological subject based on the truths of the faith, the theology of music accepts the biblical position that music has come from Jubal, the descendant of Cain, “the father of them that play upon the harp and the organs” (Gen 4:21, Douay Version). It accepts also the knowledge that the world was created by God “in measure, and number, and weight” (Wis 11:21). From this there follows the fact that music takes part in the creation of the world, a fact that creates new, informal links between music and theology, allowing the former to turn into a methodological principle concerning fundamental theological positions.

And in spite of that the theology of music still may fail to become musical theology. In order to become one, it needs step on the ellipsis, on that same ellipsis that Boethius performs, when having built his musical triad on the basis of number, passes it on to the coming generations as a home to live in, a world to exist in, a kingdom where one can be a subject, and a homeland to be loved. Music does not cease to be order and harmony, measure and number; it does not cease to be recognized as “a number in relation” (ad aliquid). This knowledge, however, still lacks what is musical itself, because it is inside the home, world, kingdom and homeland themselves, because it is the very process of living, existing, being a subject, and loving.

For a musical theology to exist it needs the phenomenon of voice – an emmelitic voice (φωνή) in which “there exists being.”^[101] The musical theologian knows not only that music “is an art (τέχνη) that springs up from numbers and harmonies and is dedicated entirely to the divine hymns,”^[102] he attains his knowledge, when his own voice is dedicated to the divine hymns. The opportunity to obtain such knowledge lies in that that the very sound (sonus, ἤχος) reveals itself in voice (φωνή). But now voice filled with being presents what has been learned in a way that differs from the way that Boethius calls disciplinaliter. The voice of the musical theologian announces the truths of the faith becoming itself their witness. A theological difference divides the science about the number with which God created the world from what has been learned about the world through the music of the soul in its own counting (Leibniz).

Sound as a Theological Principle

Sound is the stone on which there rests the world of what is musical – the kingdom of Boethius’s “three kinds of music.” Its inhabitant is musical man, who has tuned himself to sound and has brought himself out as a voice. Its law is a law of harmony, of the order that has been established by the Logos. The person that knows this world knows also that its mathematics “is not of the usual kind,”^[103] that it “comes forth from a deep-going cause – the creative spirit,”^[104] that “it comes from the Logos in the so-called prefigured image of the order that keeps the world together.”^[105] The Logos is the deep-going foundation cause of music and at the same time the thing that gives it its measure.

The world of music built on harmony is a theocratic world. The creation of musica humana, the joining and co-ordination of the parts of the soul, its consonance require ethos activity – the gesture of the will. Musical man dedicated completely and listening attentively to what he hears; the person that endures in a pathos-like way the discordance of the world declares his presence in the world and builds his musical character through the will of φωνή – through the effort, the straining (τόνος), and the intensity in achieving the musical character, which “manifests itself, I do not know how, in voice.”^[106] 

Musical Exhortation

And for raiment why are you solicitious? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they labour not, neither do they spin. But I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as one of these

(Mt 6:28-29, similarly in Lk 12:27).

For us to be like the lilies of the field is a gospel exhortation to a way of life, an exhortation that in its deep meaning is a musical one. This is so, because what is musical is the principle of dwelling that makes man’s existence transparent to a degree at which he can be filled with personal being. Music has been given to man as a model for existence, it proceeds from sound, it pierces soul and body so as to return together with man to its source – the Logos. The role of music, what it has got to do with us and for us – its work on our unceasing self-denial, on our movement towards God and our return to Him – is hinted by its tracelessness, by its dying down one tone after another and its ascending towards the beginning.

The voice that sings “Holy, Holy, Holy” (Is 6:3) testifies to the choice, the choice that is at one and the same time (musically) aesthetic, (musically) ethical, and (musically) logical.^[107] This is the voice that expresses, but also the voice that has chosen, and also the voice that with the very fact of the choice to tune itself to what is given to it by way of musical revelation certifies man’s readiness to understand, defend, and bring meaning into this choice. The voice of the soul that blesses – “Bless the Lord, O my soul” (psalms 102 and 103/ alias 103 and 104) – confirms the ethos “meeting place” as a place of a most intimate, prayerful meeting with God. The tracelessness of music is now not an aesthetic tracelessness as it is in the view of Kierkegaard,^[108] it is the theological tracelessness of an overcoming of oneself, of an unceasing renunciation of oneself, and a never-ending journey in the process of achieving personhood, a journey to which music teaches us.

To Choose Hearing

When we rebuke someone that he is listening, but does not hear, we want to note that while letting what he is listening to reach his ear, he does not get to the heart of the meaning. Hearing means bringing together meaning and the sensory detection of sound. This obvious difference between listening and hearing should not escape our notice, when we speak of hearing as a musical position in the world, because this difference will recall to us not only the interference by reason, but also the will-governed part played by the man that has chosen to open up himself to what he hears.

When philosophers speak of music, they usually think of it as a personification of some kind of principle. In this case the efforts aimed at understanding music are directed at discovering the principle that music expresses – such are the cases with Kierkegaard (the principle of immediacy) or Schopenhauer (the will). It is not, however, one and the same thing, if music is understood as a means, milieu, way of expressing a principle, or as the principle itself. Every philosophy of music that has transformed itself into musical philosophy because of its sensitivity to the life of what is musical, because of its ability to sustain it with care and to preserve it from getting dry through reflecting and from getting fettered by the limitations caused by concepts – every such philosophy ceases to be musical, when it leaves the very world of what is musical. And it will inevitably leave it, if music is not its centre or, to put it in other words, if music is not the very centre of the meaning of the philosophical system that wants to express “the entire world” of the philosopher.

To remain with and in music, to know it by living it, is possible only when you remain listening attentively to what comes by way of music and thus allow it to manifest itself through you – to the end through you. For a knowledge about music to be musical, it needs to come at one and the same time with the implementation of the very musical principle by the person that comes to know – through his soul and body. This means that this knowledge will be interested in the way of existence of the man that has entrusted music to take care of him, that has allowed it to build him as a musical man. The territory of knowing in of music is, again, musica humana, and this is the territory of inclination and of will, the factors that guide man’s acts and that determine his choice.

Harmony as an Attribute of the Logos

According to Hans Urs von Balthasar at the foundation of theology there should lie only such a logos, i.e. such a principle of understanding that has its beginning in the very “Logos of the divine love in the flesh.”^[109] The essence of Trinitarian love turned by Christ into life itself, a love that rules over all spheres of being, consists in an unceasing self-dedication under which “the constitution of being as such comes to light, in the sense that it ‘is’ in no way other than by ‘not clinging to itself’, in expropriating itself to itself, into finite concretion.”^[110] Hence finite essences in the world have been derived by analogia entis from the Being itself as Trinitarian love. These finite essences can “receive and grasp being as it is in itself only if they do not try to protect themselves, but are trained by being in the love that gives away…”^[111]

Commenting on the idea about what Balthasar calls “love alone,” Adrian Walker stresses that for this thinker Trinitarian love, which is revealed in Jesus, “is not just an object of theological reflection, but is the very principle of theological intelligence itself as intelligence.”^[112] Because of that principle of being and at the same time of understanding theology “is not just a matter of discourse, but also of the enfleshed display of what that discourse is about.”^[113] Thus the person that comes to know becomes a theologically “enfleshed person.”^[114]   

The idea adduced here stands near two basic requirements of musical theology. In the first place, the relationship between theology and music can be meaningful, when there is harmony between its two constituent parts: when musical knowledge and theological knowledge have one and the same goal. And hence, and this is the second point, musical theology can show the theologically constructive role of music only when it speaks personally, only when it is a kind of knowledge obtained along the musical way traversed by man in his effort to achieve fulfillment of his personality. This theological person is a person of hearing, of attentive listening to what comes and of understanding it as something that gives access to itself from itself, i.e. by revealing itself. Musical theology is an incarnated, “enfleshed” theology. It is lived by that musicus whose musical being – musica humana – follows the laws revealed by the Logos itself. His knowledge about euphony is a guideline for his own euphonic existence. Music is not only an object of knowledge, but it is also knowledge as to how we can be emmelitic;^[115] it is education, it is habituation (ἔθος), building of character (ἤθος). It is the art of achieving proper rhythm and harmony – the art to be a person.

Music sounds, but it is not something that is separate from the world, it is not simply its sounding part, it is not something that the world needs and uses for its own ends; it is a principle on which the world and man are structured. This principle is harmony. With it music reveals its logos foundation: harmony is the principle, the logos through which the Logos reveals itself, i.e. opens the opportunity to be grasped and comprehended.

“Number was the principal exemplar in the mind of the Creator”^[116]

Boethius makes two decisive strides enabling us to understand what music is. First, he determines the place of the knowledge-music as a place on the second level of philosophia speculativa, the level of mathematics, and second, outlining the three kinds (genera) of this knowledge and linking them soundly into certain relationships, he in a demiurgical way breathes into them the breath that will enable them to begin living their own lives. From now on history will have in front of itself not only an outlined way of cognition; it will have in itself an entire world that exists in accordance with the laws of music. Only from now on will the philosophically competent person, i.e. the musicus that knows the rules, have a chance for a new horizon – the horizon of musical philosophy. The musicus as a musical philosopher will not be an outside observer of music as an object in the world; he will be an inhabitant in the whole world, a world that exists in agreement with the laws of music. For him “the three kinds of music” of Boethius are not an allegory or a metaphor of the world. They do not speak about and do not refer to any other world, because this other world is deaf, discordant, and non-euphonic. These “three kinds of music” are a world that can be heard, that can be understood, because it bears within itself its own logos.

Musical theology is the discipline that meets its subject and object on the territory of harmony as being and knowledge. On the territory of harmony that according to Leibniz is in the Supreme Reason, the reason “that determines all relations from all time.”^[117] Perfecting knowledge means acquiring, winning harmony; it means covering a road in the process of comprehending the order of the Universe.^[118]

Therefore musical theology is not the theology that says that music is a divine art or that its origin is celestial – from the angelic singing; it is the theology that reaches the theological truths in a musical way. Both for Boethius and Leibniz this road is a musical one, not only because number is the main pattern on which God has created the world (Boethius) or because harmony is in the mind of God (Leibniz), but also because of the opportunity opened for man to get near the mind of God and see “what he cannot perceive in himself”^[119] in the very process of working with the view of becoming perfect, harmonious. Musical theology, because it is theology, requires human reason to submit to the mind of God; as incarnated theology it should pass through the personal witness of the one that attains that knowledge; and as musical theology it should turn musica humana into such a witness. But if musica humana is the concept that denotes harmony in man put in him by God and having in God its goal – perfect harmony – do we not reach the conviction that theology being incarnated does not mean anything different from theology being musical?

Harmony as Knowledge

Stressing that the concept of harmony in Leibniz is studied mainly as an ontological idea, Laurence Carlin^[120] directs his attention to the epistemological side of this concept. This side is rather important as “whether or not a set of entities is harmonious depends on how those entities are capable of being related in thought.”^[121] Carlin moves from the position of our understanding of these things towards the things themselves so as to ask which things that are linked with one another are harmonious. As they depend on our ability for distinctive cognition, we can say whether they are harmonious or not on the basis of whether we can arrange them in such a way so that we may be able to differentiate one from the other.

The world is an ordered whole (κόσμος),^[122] the world is perfect harmony, but as such it exists only in the Supreme Reason. That is why Boethius writes, turning to Symmachus in the beginning of De Trinitate, that “it is right for us to investigate as far as the gaze of human reason has the strength to ascend the high places of divinity.”^[123] Thus the very cognitive efforts of man aimed at attaining harmony, both among things and between the very human understanding and the mind of God, are always made for the sake of harmony, for the sake of the ascent of human reason towards the divine heights. In trying to reach the principles of harmony, man at the same time begins to understand fully his own human music. And it is exactly this understanding that gives him freedom of choice – the freedom to put in order his own musica humana and to offer it in such a way that can enable him to call himself a musical theologian. This musicus is not only aware of his musical make-up. Remaining listening attentively to the secret arithmetical exercise (Leibniz) taking place in his soul, he makes his own musica humana available as evidence of a musical way of existence, of a harmonious way of life dedicated to God.

The difference between the sounds of music that are in a state of harmony, a state in which they have the potential to be cognized, is a difference by nature. It is this difference that makes music to be music. Thus music exists at a given degree in the world of sounds, at the degree at which this world is ordered, harmonious. This means – at the degree at which it exudes its harmonious relations. Therefore music, by its own nature, is cognizable. But the fact that music is where it has exuded its harmony means that it has already got into contact, that it has affected the person that is beginning to cognize it. Drawing man onto the territory of music takes place from the side of music itself. Now he cognizes through his musical existence and through it he ascends towards the perfect harmony, which being perfect remains only in the mind of God. Thus harmony becomes the elliptic point where knowledge of music turns into musical knowledge.

Theology of the Musical Person

The relationship between music and man as a theologically cognitive relationship becomes ever more unavoidable when there emerges the question about personhood. I shall recall only one fundamental position: attaining personhood means overcoming the individualistic, finite “self” and opening oneself towards the infinity of divine nature. When one achieves a new self understood as involvement with God, becoming “one’s own self means striving towards the fullness of the ‘absolute scale’ of Christ so as to attain with the help of the Holy Spirit the property to be a “hypostasis” of mankind.”^[124]

Hans Urs von Balthasar traces the development of the concept of person within a Trinitarian and Christological context from where the “human person” idea has been derived – from “the connection of the I, which is open to the Thou and the We and which realizes itself only in self-giving, with the image of man in Scripture, and above all in the New Testament.”^[125] In the process of creating a person in a Trinitarian sense, cardinal Ratzinger writes, “the first person does not generate in the sense that to the complete person the act of generating a son is added, but the person is the act of generating, of offering oneself and flowing out… the pure actuality.”^[126] Just as the divine persons of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are constituted “in nothing other than pure love or selflessness,”^[127] so too the human person will be formed through the process in which “the I” draws back “for the sake of something that is inexpressible, that one can describe paradoxically as the selfless self.”^[128] The human person is the very process of self-renunciation, self-abandonment, fading away of self, it is the very act of self-giving and at the same time of acquiring a “self” that is always new.

The idea pointed out suggests much about the musical way of achieving personhood. The process of self-abnegation, the act of self-giving in which the human person attains its full stature – an act, which is an implementation of the Trinitarian love revealed by Christ^[129] – is by its own nature theologically traceless and at the same time musically traceless. It is such, because the sound that becomes manifest, the sound as a manifestation, or the sound-manifestation opens and closes, reveals and conceals music in such a way that it may never become available. The music that has been caught is not music, because music is revealed from within the very thing that vanishes; but by affecting man and creating him in sound, it leaves it to him to comprehend its meaning. Thus the musical person of man is more than himself: it is the very same man but open in the at-the-same-timeliness of enduring and self-giving.

And if music is the way of tuning and harmonizing man in his striving towards theosis, then the act of his wholehearted self-giving is by its nature a musical act: man gives himself up to music unceasingly trusting that it will lead him along the way of attaining personhood, will take him along the process of abandonment of his “deaf to Being”^[130] and discordant self. And because music in its meaning exists only through man, who gives it purpose and entirety by hearing it until it fades away one sound after another, his religious existence itself is the process where there is this mutual belonging to one another and mutual self-dedication to one another. By means of music man exceeds himself, his self becomes traceless, because the potential of his personality comes from where there comes music itself.

So the tracelessness of music is not the aesthetic tracelessness of the sound that fades away: through the renunciation by man of his own private, individualistic self, through his stripping of this self and through his putting on a new self that comes from divine nature,^[131] it materializes as theological tracelessness. That is why hearing is a radically different way of attaining reality. By disclosing his potential of submission and passivity man hears harmony itself and attaining the musical essence of his nature comes back to God. With this implementation of the principle of music, which is the very act of self-giving, the very movement and coming out of himself, man can give up all possessions and fulfill the exhortation not to seek his own (see 1 Cor. 13:5). Thus music itself is theology, when manifesting its principle, or its logos – harmony – through man, it makes it possible for him to come to know this principle only when he turns it into a principle that guides his own life.

Musico(theo)logy

In its capacity of a branch of learning musicology has the task to accumulate and multiply its stock of ideas, concepts, methods, and terms. As a rule they develop in a language that is outside the language of music and this is the first observation (a sufficiently discussed one) that one notices when speaking about the research approach to music. Obviously, the difficulty stemming from here should be overcome and different methods have been developed to that end as well. What links these methods is direction, a direction that comes from the outside and that uses the technique of bringing nearer to music. And because the value of methodological and linguistic objectivization, of the accumulation and transmission for the benefit of learning remains on hand, Achilles goes on chasing the tortoise reconciling himself with the “objective” impossibility to catch up with it.

Musical theology listens attentively to the voice of music and becomes similar to its tracelessness – its most intimate property. Such a theology accepts the practicing of musicology as a personal, creative act of the soul and refuses to accept any kind of accumulation of observable findings that have not been lived through, but have been made available as ready models for someone to rely on. It accepts as possible only the statement that is personal and that exists only at the moment, when it is expressed, that bears the breath of the voice in which there has come the gift of the Spirit – a transmission further on in which just as the echos is brought into light by phonē and after that flies away in its bodiless bodiliness so also the statement will exude only a “voice” meaning, which will remain in the world only as a meaning that has been heard. And it will not be possible to borrow or repeat this meaning until it has passed through someone’s own hearing and through someone’s own voice.

Musical theology, or musico(theo)logy, accepts the exhortation to leave care of itself to God as a musical exhortation. It renounces its possessions and its traces in the world; at one and the same time it discloses and erases, proclaims and retires into itself knowing what its work is dedicated to and how short the life of a theological statement is.

Musico(theo)logy. 2  

Music requires in an imperative way involvement on the part of man, who imbues with life its sound-vanishing substance. Without its actualization through man, without its performance in the widest sense of the word, it cannot become music that can be heard, i.e. that can be meaningful. Being the substance of music the acoustic sound – the one that can be heard – actualizes just in the world of man its potentialities in that it is heard. And now no longer in a physical, nor in a psychological sense, but in an ontological sense, music is acoustic (ἀκούω), that is to say, by its essence it reveals and proclaims. And the passive, pathos, or passion-bearing position does not in the least mean any kind of amorphousness. On the contrary, the incessant overcoming of the self and the battle against its resistance requires will, straining (τόνος), it requires what Boethius calls intensione vocis. The very harmony takes upon itself to care for the musical soul, for its arithmetical exercise (Leibniz), which continues further in the forms in the world.

With his ethical choice of hearing man gives himself up completely to music. This position cannot be abandoned, when man steps towards knowledge, but in fact knowledge should in the process of knowing incessantly “abandon itself” and its available structures, letting itself to be involved in the sonic principle. The new knowledge brought by this principle, a principle created, logos-given, is a kind of knowledge that is musical in its essence; it is the knowledge coming from what is heard, and brought only by way of hearing. The principle of the emmelitic sound (or the sound emmelēs) is the principle that puts you in order, but not in accordance with your wishes. The sound that has not been heard yet – the sonus as a potentiality – expects you to hear it so as to become emmelēs, eu-phonic, good-sounding, and in this way to bring its principle into the human world.

If music is the sonic revealing of the Logos, and if this revealing is achieved in hearing, then musical knowledge will be musical only when it is theological. That is why philosophy, which understands music only in terms of its aesthetic tracelessness, only as an isolated principle, and not as a logos-given principle of religious existence of man, aiming at the introduction into divine nature, will leave early or late the territory of what is musical so as to set out in search of another principle, of another way. And conversely, philosophy may remain in and with music, when it understands it as this veracious principle, as the harmony that comes from the Logos. But the knowledge that comes from what is musical turns philosophy into musical theology. The latter comprehends music basing itself on the faith in and on the knowledge of this harmony; it investigates the way of man until he grows into a person hearing this man as a voice, as a witness. Musical is the theology that understands music as a way of putting on Christ, a musical anagogy, which elevates man above him, which watches over the euphony of his soul, which induces him to lay aside all earthly cares and entrust himself to God – to be like the lilies of the field.

Thus the one that comes to know musically is the one that witnesses to the truth with his musical person, with that core of himself that is not from him. Being a full-fledged person the musical person has its own statements – part of the witness. These statements do not operate with static concepts; their categoriality cannot be subject to any kind of “inventory making,” because out of the actuality of living breath and living meaning this categoriality is erased and no trace is left of it. But while these statements are completely personal and completely unique, they are by no means subjective. Their objectivity is guaranteed by sound (ἤχος) that is heard by many such as it is. If musical theological knowledge wants to respond to the sonic event and to recognize it as an event, as the “again and again new” in which the beginning becomes manifest, it should be watchful just with regard to that “again and again new.” Thus music will reveal itself and will retire into itself, will give free access to itself and at the same time will refuse such access each time the ear that has dedicated itself to hearing decides to take a rest.

Code

The music that sounds, the music that has been heard is a case of habituation (ἔθος). When you listen to it, it leads you by the hand along its way and this way is the way of harmonious, rhythmic, and emmelitic existence. It teaches you the practice of hearing as the only way of such existence, the way of submitting and of giving oneself up. But it leaves no traces, it passes away leaving you to your own choice. You are able to make this choice, because music has built up your character (ἤθος), it has induced you to listen attentively – to what is outside, to what comes and rushes on you, and also to what is inside you so that now you may be able to find music yourself amid the noise, your own noise and that of the world. Music reveals itself in sound so that you may hear it even when sound is gone. The sound that has been heard is your beginning. Having been tuned up to the sound and having been habituated to follow it, you yourself become this sound through which music reveals itself. You are the discoverer and the guardian. You are the one that hears and that gives himself up. Having given yourself up to music, you make it sound. You are the musical link of the world. You are the consonance. You are the lily of the field that has left itself to the care of God. You are the evidence.

The author wishes to express her thanks to Mr. Alexander Gospodinov for the English translation of the present study.