Fundamenta Musicae

Musical philosophy begins by rigorously posing the question of the connectedness between music and philosophy. It works at the boundary where speaking about music is already itself a problem, and it insists on the attempt that speaking about music should not radically sever itself from what music itself “says” to us. Musical philosophy is concerned with the way in which the very existence of music depends on my concrete existential position toward it, and with the ways of departing from that position. In this sense, musical philosophy is a contemporary philosophy: it becomes possible only after the self-evidence of music in the European world has been shaken and music has itself become a problem.

The musical humanities bring together currents and approaches in the humanities in which music is understood not merely as an object, but as a point of departure. The musical humanities are concerned with forms of humanistic thought that investigate the musical human being, or the human being as musical — the human being overwhelmed by music. Their aim is to indicate the place of music in the post-metaphysical world and to make the results comparable and communicable within the human sciences, overcoming their usual methodological relativity with respect to the musical.