Music lore: Historical reflections and philosophic perspectives

01 August, 2014 – 01 August, 2017

Author: Prof. Christina Yapova, DSc, Music Department

Unlike the said study, the planned project sets a radically different goal. In the history of Europe, music theory has evolved into a subject in its own right very early, detached from the general problematics of philosophical writings, which presented overall systematisations of knowledge, explicating which subject to what level of knowledge belongs. Over time, the gap between the former and the latter widened to such an extent that the ‘general’ philosophical writings lost track of the content of music theoretical works. Which does not mean that there was no such content, but that it failed to generate continuity and hence, had no influence. Continuity was maintained in the line of theoretical contribution, ideas and notions. That is why unearthing philosophical resources contained in specializes music literature is essential to a possible reconstruction of the general cognitive context, where the sources of knowledge are positioned.
Goals: To follow the dominating trends in the views of music; to explore their philosophical contents; to search for philosophical perspectives for musicology now. The project seeks not comprehensiveness, but would try and range over as many sources as possible (for the time being I am aware off several compendia by Oliver Strunk, на Carl Dahlhaus, etc., containing works or excerpts from Antiquity to the twentieth century).
There is a noticeable trend towards broadening the philosophical horizon among musicologists both at the Institute of Art Studies and other institutions, dealing with musicology. The trend is especially marked among the researchers on twentieth-century composers’ work (Milena Bozhikova, Tsenka Yordanova, Angelina Petrova), but shows itself in other areas as well (significant in this respect is the title of Goritsa Naidenova’s book on Stoian Djudjev, From Philosophy towards Folk Studies). Several authors from the National Academy of Music are now developing musicological problematics philosophically (in my opinion, Ilia Yonchev’s books The Meaning in Music (2007) and Music Ontology (2011) are the best in this regard).