The Opposites in Music
Taught by Barbara Allen and Edward Green, Ph.D.
This class is based on the Aesthetic Realism principle “Art is that which, through an individual, shows the oneness of the permanent opposites in reality.”
Alternate Sundays, 4:00 – 5:30 PM Eastern Time (USA)
Registration for Spring-Summer 2024 classes via video conference: Mon, Apr 22 — Thu, May 2
SPRING-SUMMER 2024
This semester we will study what music tells us about Ease and Difficulty: opposites which are to be found everywhere in reality and are also intimately of our lives. We will be featuring a groundbreaking 1952 discussion by Eli Siegel on this subject, and also related texts.
The magnificent fact that music, when it is beautiful, always puts these opposites together is a guide to how we need to see reality; a guide, too, to how to be happily, fully ourselves.
Is reality at its toughest only that? Or does the thorn also have a flower with it? Do we want only to be at ease, or do we also yearn for new challenges?
From the physics of sound consisting of continuous waves which are composed of vibrations that bump against each other—to the serenity and surprise in a Haydn symphony—to the growl and lyricism of jazz, we will see ample and thrilling evidence that this statement by Eli Siegel is true: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”
- May 19 Music Has What We Want—Say Chopin, Little Richard, Beethoven!
“There are love and struggle wherever there is anything….The notes of a musical composition are at war. And if the war is not also a friendliness—that is, if the difficulty is not ease—so much, the work is not successful.”
—Eli Siegel, “The Graceful Effort; or, the
Oneness of Ease & Difficulty in Art” [TRO 1698]
- June 2 Do Ease & Difficulty Begin with Us, or with Reality Itself?—Schoenberg & the Genesis Prelude
“In this, I see a composition having to do with the origin of the world (perhaps the origin of the self, too): from dim, low oneness to…manyness, and clashings and resolutions and more clashings….The sounds Schoenberg uses are in themselves quite sweet, but they are related in ways to which one is not accustomed, and the jarringness is what one is aware of first.”
—Martha Baird, “What Is Music About?”
- June 16 Do We Need to Have in Love the Ethics Melody Has?
Eli Siegel. When two people fall in love in most novels, do they have an easy time of it?
Arthur Nevins. No. They meet a lot of impediments.
Eli Siegel. So is there anything like that in music?…Would you say there is any such thing as music or melody without resistance in it, which would correspond to the resistance we find in a work of fiction?
—Class Discussion, Aesthetic Realism Looks
at Thought: Ease & Difficulty
- June 30 Rhythm & Melody Need Each Other; or, the Elements of Music Are All about Difficulty & Ease!
“Let’s assume that a musician has a half-note after a quarter note, which happens often, wouldn’t you say he is welcoming opposition?…What a person wants is opposition, plus advance. That is related to the idea of music. Music is the adornment of the straight unimpeded line. Otherwise it would be dull….Music is always a study of advancing with opposition….All art has it, but in music it is most dramatic.”
—Eli Siegel: Aesthetic Realism Looks
at Thought: Ease & Difficulty
- July 14 Tchaikovsky, Liszt, & the Blues Tell Us Something New & Surprising about Our Emotions
“Sad and cheerful music have to do with ease and opposition….Roughly speaking, people see music in these two ways: sad and not sad—-not pleasing, because you can be pleased by sad music. The “Liebestraum” is a very popular composition, but it is as sad as anything. Do you think a sad thing implies more opposition?”
—Eli Siegel: Aesthetic Realism Looks
at Thought: Ease & Difficulty
- July 28 “Rhythm Opposes Contempt: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring”
This class begins with a powerful talk by Dr. Green in which he says:
“Without the syncopation of the original version, without its surprise and its speed, what we are most conscious of is the ugliness of that chord. But when that chord is gone at in a syncopated manner, and is therefore contradicted, the feeling we get is ever so different: it no longer seems to represent a world bogged down in pain, but, on the contrary, a world with exhilaration in it—and a feeling of release, freedom.”
- Aug 11 We Hear from You—Papers from Persons Taking the Class
Fee: $60 per semester (7 classes)
Auditing fee: $12
FACULTY BIOS: Barbara Allen, flutist; Edward Green, composer