Aesthetic Realism Foundation

Learn

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)

Fall 2021 semester now in session.

FALL SEMESTER 2021

This semester we continue our study of “The Aesthetic Method in Self-Conflict,” a magnificent chapter from Eli Siegel’s book Self and World.  It can be read online.

With this great text as our foundation, we’ll see how music—across the globe, through the centuries, and in all styles, traditional, popular, and classical—resolves the everyday conflicts we have. Literally, we want to be like art; we want to be like music!

  • Sep 26:  Does Music Have Us See Reality as It Is—Both Wild & Orderly, Strange & Definite?

“Art, Aesthetic Realism believes, shows reality as it is, deeply: straight….Is not reality confused and orderly at once? Does it not have storms and crystals?”

  • Oct 10:  Are Notes in a Beautiful Composition Close & Distant from Each Other in a Way We Can Learn from?

“Every work of art is a problem in being oneself and being other, being here and being there. … The tango [is] a guide to the problem of leaving and remaining, far and near, aloofness and huggingness, [that] there is in the self.”

  • Oct 24:  Why Does Music Stir Us, Make Us Want to Move— Is It Physics and Feeling at Once?

“One of the purposes of art is to have the intellectual felt concretely, even sensually; and to see the sensual as having possible form.”

  • Nov 7:  Does Music—the Rondo, the Waltz–Answer the Questions of Hilda Rawlins?

“How can I be a unity with detail? How can I be in motion, yet stable? How can I be perfect and imperfect? How can I be known and unknown to myself? How can I be I and other than I? How can I be a changing composition and a fixed singleness?”

  • Nov 21:  What Does Music Teach Us about Tempo, Rhythm—What Makes These Beautiful and Just?

“And then there is the problem of slowness and speed—in everything and everyone. Sometimes, Hilda talks too fast. At other times, words come painfully, draggingly…. An aspect of rhythm, or of form in time, is the feeling of speed in slowness, slowness in speed. When music is good, there is a sense of motion and of pause.”

  • Dec 5:  Simplicity & Complexity in Music—Do We Want to Be Like a Sincere Lullaby & a Great Symphony?

“It should be asked: Does the self want much diverse experience? Ah yes, in all of us can be discerned, affirmed, a desire to avoid intricacy, to make life as neat, as simple as possible. But if we don’t stop looking at ourselves, we can also find a desire for unlimited experience: ‘for life and more life and yet more life’; for subtle and delicate adventure.”

  • Dec 19:  Students in the Class Present Papers

 

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