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.” We study music—from Bach’s Magnificat to Duke Ellington’s “The Mooche,” from the Gregorian Chant and the music of Ghana and India to contemporary rock ‘n’ roll—in relation to lectures and works by Eli Siegel, such as “Music Tells What the World Is Like” and “Animate and Inanimate Are in Music and Conscience,” and Martha Baird’s “Separation and Junction in Prokofiev and Johnny Dodds” and “Music Is Real.”

Read: “Music Tells What the World Is Like,” by Eli Siegel and: Aesthetic Realism and Music, a 1951 lecture by Mr. Siegel, serialized in The Right of Aesthetic Realism to Be Known.

Alternate Sundays, 4:00 – 5:30 PM Eastern Time (USA)

The Winter 2021 semester of classes via video conference is now in session.

WINTER 2021

This semester we’ll be studying Eli Siegel’s mighty poem “Hymn to Jazz and the Like,” and his Note to it, as a beginning point in seeing how music—from Gregorian Chant to Beethoven, from the Spirituals to the latest in Rock—does what we hope to do: it puts together reality’s opposites.

“All beauty,” Eli Siegel stated, “is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

The poem, and its note, can be found in his book Hail, American Development: Poems.

Jan 24 — The Meaning of Sound. Does It Take a New Form in Jazz?

“Jazz is a new junction of the deep and the lightsome, the permanent and the unexpected, the continuous and the surprising.”

Feb 7 — The Expected & Unexpected: Does Jazz Show Reality Is Both?

“Something in you expected a note here, and it was there.
Something in you expected a note to be this way and it was that.”

Feb 21 — A Good Time & Respect: At Once!

That is: We meet order & rowdiness, rightness & wildness together in jazz–and the like!

“Ah, what a blessing in rowdy divinity Casey Jones is!”

Mar 7 — Bridging the Divide: Jazz and Classical Music.

What Does Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto have to do with Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood”?

Mar 21 — When Jazz Goes Wrong—What Happens?

Is it for the same reason we feel bad—because the world’s opposites are not sizzlingly made one? (And see: Rock ‘n Roll saves the day!)

Apr 4 — Jazz, Chopin, Mozart, & more!
Apr 18 — Papers from Students in the Class

To audit:

Permission must be requested by telephone at least 2 days in advance of the date of the class.
Contact Registrar at 212.777.5055, between 2-6 PM Eastern Time (USA), Monday through Friday.
Once you receive permission to audit a class, click on the “AUDIT” button to pay the fee.

Fee: $60 per semester (7 classes)

Auditing fee: $12

FACULTY BIOS: Barbara Allen, flutist; Edward Green, composer