Podcast on music and philosophy. A series of spoken essays.
Beyond the Bony Labyrinth: because the sound that enters our ears only becomes music when we recognize it. Music appeals to our memory, emotions, imagination, and capacity for language.
Philosophy: because it deals with the connections between music and other aspects of life, with clarification and dispelling smoke screens.
Many of the topics of the blog on this website will be covered in this podcast, such as: the relation between music and language, between music and memory, and the limits of what music is or can be.
Also available on Soundcloud, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Youtube, …
(Spotify omits recital episodes.)
This is the English version of the Dutch podcast Voorbij de oren.
With 28 episodes, the series has now come to an end.
1. How durable is classical music?
A preface to the series. Thoughts on the demise of classical music in contemporary culture.
2. Darling, They’re Playing Our Tune (DTPOT)
Music has a special ability to trigger memories. DTPOT was introduced more or less as a joke in music psychology, but is now a technical term. It is also an inexhaustible dramaturgical tool in film, opera etc.
3. That wild waltz of Von Weber’s
Involuntary encounters with an obstinate tune. The tune known as ‘Weber’s last musical thought’ is not by Carl Maria von Weber, but it is a curious piece of cultural history. With visits to Kierkegaard, E.A. Poe, and Debussy, and a rendition of Erik Satie’s Avant-dernière pensée No 2.
4. Why music is not a language…
…and why people keep saying it is. The slogan ‘music is a language’ is nonsense taken literally, but points to the fact that music does have important similarities with language. That analogy rests on the relationship between speech melody and music, and on the function of harmony as a musical syntax.
5. Metamusic: Music representing music
A concert waltz is a waltz. But it is not a waltz for dancing. So is it still a waltz? It is a waltz that waltzes. It is a representation of a waltz, music that represents music, and an instance of what you might call ‘metamusic’.
6. Metamusic: Recital
Recital as a supplement to episode 5 on the theme of ‘metamusic’. With dance fantasies by Schubert-Liszt (Soirées de Vienne), Schumann (Papillons) and Ravel (Valses nobles et sentimentales).
7. Musical quotation marks (1): I’ll hum it for you
Quotation in music has much in common with quotation in language. Analytical philosophy can offer some insight here. In Bach’s Cantata BWV 158, Der Friede sei mit dir, we find an example of ‘musical quotation marks’.
8. Musical quotation marks (2): Schumann’s Fantasie op. 17
When is a musical idea simply a cliché, when a case of borrowing, and when a quotation? With Schumann’s Fantasie op. 17 as an interesting doubtful case of musical quotation.
9. Schumann’s Fantasie op. 17, Recital
Robert Schumann, Fantasie in C op. 17, first and third movements.
10. Songs with and without words
What remains of a song if you ignore the lyrics? What makes a song without words a ‘song’? And why is singing without lyrics such a rare phenomenon?
11. Music remembered – in music 1: Flashbacks and souvenirs
Music that represents music as someone remembers it, is there such a thing? Topics include the famous flashback in the film Casablanca, Schumann’s Carnaval, musical ‘souvenirs’ and ‘réminiscences’. With a complete recording of Liszt’s (somewhat musty?) etude Ricordanza. The theme relates to episodes 2 (Darling they’re playing our tune), 6 (Musical quotation) and 19 (Meta-music).
12. Music remembered – in music 2: Sentiment and soundscapes around 1900
About the irresistible effects of Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, melodies wafting in from the street, and the nostalgic modernism of Charles Ives. The subject is related to topics discussed in earlier episodes: quotation (7, 8), metamusic (5), and Darling They’re Playing Our Tune (2).
13. Bach on the piano: The Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue BWV 903
An episode dedicated to one work. A whimsical piece that has sparked many controversies about its ‘proper’ performance. With insights from Felix Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt, Ferruccio Busoni and Heinrich Schenker, among others.
14. Music that speaks: Instrumental recitative
To what extent can instrumental music ‘speak’? And what does it tell us? Examples discussed include Beethoven’s Sonata op. 110, works by Emanuel Bach and (again) J.S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia. Complete pieces can be heard in the recital of episode 15.
15. Music that speaks: Recital
A short recital as an appendix to Ep. 14 on instrumental recitative: music by J.S. Bach, C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven.
16. Music and melancholy (1): Emanuel Bach
A first exploration of the theme of ‘music and melancholy’, with three works by C.P.E. Bach. Conversation between a Sanguineus and a Melancholicus is an experiment in ‘speaking music’. Two other works can be considered melancholic ‘ego documents’: the fantasia C.P.E. Bach’s feelings (C.P. E. Bachs Empfindungen) and the Farewell to my Silbermann Clavichord.
17. Music and melancholy: Recital
Recital on the theme of ‘music and melancholy’ with two works by C.P.E. Bach, discussed in episode 16, along with J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 6 and L. Couperin’s Pavane.
18. Music and melancholy (2): Consolation and beauty
The continuation of episode 16, featuring musical ego documents by Dowland and Froberger, black bile, depression and ‘sweet melancholy’, and the 18th-century philosopher Étienne de Lacépède on the connection between melancholy, consolation and beauty.
19. The purity of polyphony
On abstract and ‘absolute’ music, Eduard Hanslick’s auditory kaleidoscope, Heinrich Schenker’s primal counterpoint, and Bach’s fugues.
20. Where does that music come from?
On music and film (1). What kind of ‘thing’ is music? To what extent do we hear music as sound, as something with a source and a cause? And how do we explain the presence of music in cinema?
21. The fine art of mickey-mousing
Mickey-mousing – the close synchronisation of music and image, as in classic animated films – has a bad reputation for being a simplistic and pointless duplication of the image. But it becomes interesting when we ask ourselves how exactly the music relates to the world of image and sound.
22. Music as fiction
On the question of whether and how music can tell a story. With music by Debussy (prélude La sérénade interrompue), Liszt (Die Loreley), and Chopin (ballades).
23. Music of the spinning wheel
The activity of spinning, and the movement and sound of the spinning wheel are common motifs in nineteenth-century music. How successful is this music as a “representation” or “depiction” of spinning? And how does it relate to the socio-cultural context of spinning as a craft, and particularly as women’s work?
24. Singing by way of speaking (1)
About the human voice, the difference between speaking and singing, speech melody and the Speech to Song Illusion, the strengths and weaknesses of operatic recitative, and emotion as a justification for the absurdity of singing by way of speaking.
25. Singing by way of speaking (2)
A closer look at a recitative from the opera Armide by Jean-Baptiste Lully, a famous dispute between Rousseau and Rameau, and Gluck’s opera Armide on the same libretto. Also the issue of operatic singing that represents not speaking, but precisely what it is: singing.
26. Speech melodies and street cries (1)
In everything we say, there is the ‘tone’ in which we say it, or ‘speech melody’. In that speech melody lies a clear, but limited, analogy with music. When we make ourselves heard over a greater distance by calling out, our speech comes closer to singing.
Calling or crying played an essential role in itinerant street trade. The peddlers’ calls were a characteristic element of the street soundscape of the major cities. We have remnants of this in the form of musical notation since the 19th century. Another source that goes back much further is the quotations of peddlers’ cries in composed music. Whether an authentic cry has been preserved in these compositions is always open to question.
This first of three episodes explores the musicality of speech melody, the cries of street vendors as cultural heritage and musical material, motets of the 13th and 14th centuries, Janequin’s Cris de Paris (1530) and the Cries of London (1600 and 1974).
27. Speech melodies and street cries (2)
Around the middle of the nineteenth century, the cris de Paris were still mainly regarded as annoying noise. Since then, however, a process was underway to regulate and reduce itinerant street trading. During this process, which takes place over several decades, the street cries are being listened to and described with increasing interest.
According to Joseph Mainzer, the cries were an elementary form of folk music; Jean-Georges Kastner saw in them music in the process of coming into being. Kastner’s artistic ambition was to give musical form to ‘the voices of Paris’. Not his own composition, but Gustave Charpentier’s opera Louise can be seen as the realsation of that ambition.
28. Speech melodies and street cries (3)
The cris de Paris according to Marcel Proust, Joseph Mainzer and Georges Kastner; folklore and music theory ca. 1900, and the peddlers’ calls of Amsterdam.
To conclude, the call of the night watchman in London, Amsterdam, and Leipzig, with a forgotten night watchman’s call in Schumann’s Symphony No. 1.
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