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This chapter interprets Stravinsky’s faith by analyzing how he composed the opening of Perséphone, and the central gesture of Demeter entrusting Persephone to the nymphs. The goal is to demonstrate how Stravinsky, in contrast to Gide, submitted his will to Christian dogma, rather than trusting in individual action. In dialogue with his Christian friends, Pyotr Suvchinsky, Charles-Albert Cingria, and Jacques Maritain (and to a lesser degree Domenico de Paoli and Ernst Ansermet), Stravinsky developed a Christian compositional approach that led to a sacred formalism based on revelation through artistic materials, mythical consciousness of music history, the promulgation of dogma through emblematic gesture, and sound as a divine force. This led him to side with Demeter as a representative of Church authority, rather than with Gide’s sensitive Persephone. Stravinsky’s approach put him diametrically at odds with André Gide.

This chapter analyzes the total work as symbol. Wagner’s Parsifal, one of the most important inspirations for the European symbolist movement, stands as the paradigm of the restoration of the symbolic function of art and of the will to the resacralization of the stage. It discusses how Wagner’s path from the festival of the revolution to a renewal of art religion takes us from the unique celebration of the revolution in a temporary theatre constructed for the occasion, as envisaged by Wagner in 1851, to the establishment and institutionalizing of a festival theatre, a temple of art, intended as a site of pilgrimage and sacred performances. It also argues that Parsifal is the pivot on which Ernst Bloch’s philosophy of music turns, forming the bridge between the history of music, which culminates in Wagner’s last work, and the theory of music, which takes the form of a speculative aesthetics.

This chapter investigates the biography of Theodor W. Adorno and assesses his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Adorno was born in Frankfurt am Main on September 11, 1903. While on vacation in Visp, Switzerland, he died of a heart attack on August 6, 1969. Aesthetic Theory, with Philosophy of New Music at its heart, subsumed the legacy of Adorno's entire philosophy; along with his Negative Dialectics and a planned work on moral philosophy that his early death prevented. Art and philosophy played a central role from his early years onward. In Philosophy of New Music, Adorno refined the theory of musical material. The discussion of Adorno's philosophy of music gradually died down, as interest increasingly turned to engagement with the posthumous Aesthetic Theory.

This chapter evaluates the biography of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and elaborates on his particular thoughts on musical philosophy. Nietzsche was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken. Three phases can be recognized in Nietzsche's philosophy, although it should be noted that the differences are much less momentous than they are sometimes considered to be. For Nietzsche, the given cultural circumstances played a decisive role in addressing the content of the artworks that were developed. The philosophy of music occupied a larger place in Nietzsche's early work. His theories of opera and of the music dramas of the future were based on his attitude toward life. The most direct relationship of Nietzsche's philosophy of music to a music philosophy of the twentieth century occurred with Martin Heidegger. His philosophy of music affected how classical philologists have understood tragedy.

This chapter examines the function of the ugly in Aesthetic Theory, with particular emphasis on the primitive and the archaic. It first considers the meaning of the ugly in relation to Theodor Adorno's understanding of classical aesthetics and his assessment of modern art. It then discusses Adorno's argument against Igor Stravinsky in The Philosophy of Modern Music, and especially his claim that the composer has regressed to classical tonality and flirted with folk art and the primitive as a means of critiquing modern culture. It also explores Adorno's distinction between two modes of the ugly: a positive formalist version utilized by Arnold Schoenberg and a negative one in Stravinsky. It argues that Adorno was more deeply involved in the interpretation of primitive, non-European art than expected, and that he admits the archaic and ugly to the realm of art as a reminder of past and present horror.

Chapter 4 is devoted to music with lyrics, with a particular focus on opera. There has been a long-standing assumption in philosophy of music that music with lyrics is fundamentally different from instrumental music. A return to the psychological literature is used to show that this is not the case. Music with lyrics arouses emotion in very much the same way that instrumental music does. The psychological literature strongly indicates that much of the emotional impact of operas and other works with lyrics is owed to the music (not the words), contrary to what has long been assumed. The chapter goes on to argue that music and words can work together to arouse and represent emotion. This leads to the dissolution of the so-called ‘problem of opera’ according to which opera cannot be both musically and dramatically successful.