Fundamenta Musicae
Center for Musical Philosophy and Humanities
Horizon
AboutThe horizon of the Center is the development of a conceptual apparatus derived from fundamental intuitions about music, and procedures for crossing the border between immediate musical experience and various forms of reflective discourse. This includes work both in the field of musical philosophy and within various frameworks of the humanities and social sciences. The Center aims to provide a foundation for the development of musical-philosophical views and approaches by organizing regular meetings for sharing and discussing ideas and for collaborative editorial and peer-review work.
Recent publications
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Moritz Geiger’s Aesthetic Attitude and Its Musical-Phenomenological Dimensions
This article examines the main concept in Moritz Geiger’s aesthetics – the aesthetic attitude – which, as an extension of the phenomenological concept attitude, describes the art-oriented (art-attuned)…
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“The Whole City Must Never Cease Singing”: Plato and the Community of the Musical Nomos
This paper explores the fundamental tenets of Plato’s philosophy of education, particularly his views on a practice of great educational potential: communal musical participation. According to Plato, music can att…
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The Festive Musical Artwork and Its Topos
This paper highlights the musicological (and practical) problem of the essential difference between a festive musical artwork and a concert-festive musical artwork. The former has a festive occasion and a topos (underst…
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Methodological Foundations of Eero Tarasti's Musical Semiotics
The book is an introduction to Eero Tarasti’s works on music, as well as musical semiotics in general. It covers a wide range of sources from multiple disciplinary fields in order to familiarize the reader with th…
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Music in Ancient Greek Philosophy and the Possibility of the Question of Musical Being
The question of what Being itself is finds its roots already in Parmenides, whose theses serve as the point of departure for Plato and, in this sense, for Aristotle and a large part of subsequent ancient Greek thought. …
What is Musical Philosophy?
Musical philosophy begins with the question of the relationship between music and philosophy. It works at the liminal point where speaking about music becomes problematic, insisting on the attempt of speaking about music by maintaining the connection with what music itself “says”. It aims to articulate how the very existence of music depends on one’s existential position toward it – and on the possibilities of stepping out of that position. In this sense, musical philosophy is a contemporary philosophy: it became possible only once the self-evidence of music in the European world was lost and music itself became a problem.
Musical Humanities
The musical humanities unite disciplines and approaches within the humanities in which music is understood not merely as an object of study, but as a starting point. The musical humanities deal with forms of thinking that explore the musical person or the person as musical — the person overtaken by music. Their aim is to identify the place of music in the post-metaphysical world and to make the results comparable and communicable within the framework of the human sciences, overcoming their usual methodological relativity toward music.