Music and the Idea of a World explores
the bond between music and world by reflecting on great musical compositions
and works by great thinkers from antiquity to the present. World, here, has
several meanings. It is the natural world or cosmos, the inner world of feeling
and thought, world history, and the world of tones (the musical universe). The
book is intended for philosophic-minded readers who are fascinated by music and
music lovers who enjoy thinking about the philosophic questions that music
raises. It takes the reader on a seven-chapter journey that begins with a contrast
between the cosmologies of Plato and Schopenhauer (followed by a discussion of Palestrina’s
music and the world of the Bible). It then proceeds to chapters on music and nature
in Victor Zuckerkandl’s Sound and Symbol, a love song from Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion, a love song from Mozart’s Magic Flute, Wagner’s Tristan
and Isolde in relation to Schopenhauer’s cosmology of the will, twelve-tone
music as the image of totalitarianism in Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus,
and the world of the inner life in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites.
