FALL 2024

Dates of classes:

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)

This semester we’ll be studying, in relation to music, a magnificent chapter from Eli Siegel’s Self and World. It is titled “The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict,” and can be read online here.

This is a great text. With it as our foundation, we’ll study once again how—across the globe; through the centuries; and in all styles, classical, popular, and traditional—music resolves the conflicts we have. As Eli Siegel explained: “All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves.”

What a grand explanation of the relation of Art and Life. Literally, we want to be like music!  We want our desire for freedom and our desire to be organized, logical, orderly to work together truly; our desire for calm and for excitement each to be deeply satisfied; and our need—beautiful and ethical—to have a life with integrity, flexibility, warmth, and adventure.

• Sep 15   What Does the Beauty of a Musical Note, a Phrase, a Melody Teach Us about the Opposites of Here & There? Near & Far?

“We all of us start with a here, ever so snug and ever so immediate. And this here is surrounded strangely, endlessly, by a there. We are always meeting this there: in other words, we are always meeting what is not ourselves, and we have to do something about it.”

• Sep 29   Passion & Control, Excitement & Calm Form—Are They Together in a Medieval Chant, a Symphony of Mahler, & a Song by Stevie Wonder?

“These two drives have their likenesses in art; for at a time of aesthetic activity, a person wants to show his own feelings…and he also wants to see these objects without imposing narrow desires of self making for its comfort or premature complacency.”

• Oct 13   Class Cancelled 
• Oct 27   Music Is High & Low; Has Modesty & Pride, Yields & Asserts in a Way We Can Learn From!

“Look at Jamison. He is shy and he is arrogant. In fact, he is like most people….The question Jamison and other people face is: Can, in one mind, feelings represented by superiority exist with feelings represented by inferiority? Can we be both humble and bold at 3:30 P.M., Tuesday?—Only art shows that the answer is, Yes.”

• Nov 10   What Does Music Say about Freedom & Justice? —Through Respect for Something Else, Are We More Ourselves?

“Through Mozart, Rosalind sees the universe for a while come into form in the concert hall.…In proportion as she is stirred, swept, moved about by sound in great, wonderful order, she is more Rosalind Hines, not less.”

• Nov 24   The Ensemble; or, Instruments Separate & Joined—In West Africa, a Jazz Band of the 1920s, & a Symphony Orchestra!

“A drum and a clarinet were playing at once. The way they play is plainly different. If the drum tries to play exactly what the clarinet is playing, the result is not good….It is possible that, as can be seen very often where music is played, the drum can play different things at the same time…and…that the difference make for togetherness or harmony.”

• Dec 8   Freedom & Security—Do We Want Both? Is Good Music Always Both?

“Timothy Watkins is against what he sees as restrictions. But, troublesomely, Mr. Watkins find also that he wants order and routine….”

• Dec 22   Papers from Students in the Class