Biography

Research

Publications

• Article / 2016

  The Idea of Musical Philosophy

  Рива, София

  Abstract

  While taking into account the millenia-old intuitions about the relationship between music and philosophy, the present text aims at rethinking music as an uncompromising and resolute point of departure for a philosophy of human existence. The underlying position of this philosophy is one that eludes the tyrannical ubiquity of language and is not subject to linguistic speculations or manipulations. Its explicit orienting point is the decisive role of the immediate musical experience in its self-evident (for the musician) validity. The possibility to think about music freely and legitimately is sought in the primordial musical-philosophical advantage of the music-maker - taken in himself, and at the same time doubtlessly inseparable from the musical act. In view of its stated aims, the text addresses mainly questions about the boundaries of the musical, about every legitimate "residence" within its sphere and about every "illegitimate" approach to music - such as talking about music from the vantage point of a research field, a specific discipline or method. Musical philosophy strives to highlight music before any theoretical constructs have been superimposed on it (e.g. musicological, philosophical-historical, psychological, culturological, etc.). That is why musical philosophy always takes into consideration its own underlying foundations and incessantly tests whether they remain musical in a non-musical millieu. It views music primarily as a mode of "residing" which cannot be described and approached by means of contingent premises, and which unequivocally imposes its own ways of self-evident sensing; this mode presupposes an unique and in-the-music-act personal position - participation, which, however, does not vanish in other modes of existence, but sets a horizon pointing to the arche principles of human contact (encounter) with the world.

• Monograph / 2009

  Тhe Musical Meaning

  Рива, София

  Abstract

  By rejecting reflective observation as an expression of futile musicological “epistemological optimism” (futile because it operates with a “fully observable,” “petrified” object), fundamental musicology in Ilya Yonchev’s understanding points to another way of grasping musical utterance, the musical work, and musical interpretation as modes of musical being. Thus, the object of fundamental musicology becomes the description of the musical apprehension of being.

  This description or investigation of musical meaning is possible only as transcendental and ontological, because it is carried out from the only possible meaning-constituting position—“my position as subject of the musical event itself,” that is, my being drawn into the musical. And only when this existential musical situatedness is apprehended ontologically can discourse arise. But not in a “positivistically scientific manner,” i.e., from an external standpoint; rather, it must arise “through a truth-constituting holding-within the musical meaning and through its own conceptuality, whose elaboration requires effort in order to bring it to the scale of the problem.”

  In undertaking the task of proposing such a conceptuality, Ilya Yonchev maintains that amid the predominantly surrounding musical inauthenticity, the musical-philosophical uncovering of musical meaning is today the only position capable of serving musical practice and pedagogy.

  Из рецензия на Розмари Стателова