MUSIC – A TRIBUTE TO BEETHOVEN (Contd.)

MUSIC – BEETHOVEN (Contd.)

An interesting observation has been made in the comment to my earlier posting on ‘A Tribute to Beethoven’, by Sotto Voce, which I guess is the name by which his blog is known. I reproduce below a relevant portion of that comment here:

“when I see a painting in my dream, do I see through my eyes? when I hear a lovely music in my dream, do I hear through my ear? Why should absence of "hearing" stop him from hearing music in all its nuances? I would have "wondered" about his composing abilities, if he had been born deaf and had no opportunity at all to hear music from birth. But that is not the case here.”

This is interesting because it raises the question of what do I dream of. I have written in a previous posting on ‘Dreams’ that I see things that I have never seen before, be it persons or places, apart from dream of people I know and places I have visited. I have wondered whether I am living in an alternate world and experiencing an alternate reality.

As far as I have experienced the only sense perception that gets activated in a dream is the sense of seeing. I have never smelt, never tasted or for that matter never heard anything. This is as far as dreams go for me. I know not whether there are those who have felt all their senses activated in a dream.

I have also wondered as to whether any person who has been deprived of the faculty of one of his senses ever experiences or perceives that part of the external world which is there in front of him. As per Empiricism and David Hume, the only knowledge of the world we have of the world is through our sense perceptions. In which case is the view of the world for such a person incomplete? Rationalism and Descartes view the world as a product of our reason alone independent of sense experience

“The dispute between rationalism and empiricism concerns the extent to which we are dependent upon sense experience in our effort to gain knowledge. Rationalists claim that there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience. Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge.”

Kant tried to resolve the issue by bringing about a synthesis between modern rationalism and empiricism

So where does this bring us to? Is a person who has been deprived of the comfort of even one of the five senses is deprived of a complete view of the world. Coming to view of the world again it is a subjective experience ‘the world as I see it’. What is the type of subjective experience does such a person have? We do not know. Can a person who is born blind create a painting? Can a person born deaf create music? What is going on in his inner world we do not know, we can only wonder. A person born deaf is able to admire a beautiful painting he could be a great painter himself, a person born blind can be a great musician.

We always say ‘look inside’ or ‘listen to your inner voice’ when we want to understand the meaning of life. The search is always inwards. The world as I see it is internalised to see the world inside and that is where we believe the reality is. How do we manifest externally what we experience internally? That is where great works of art, great music come in. Our only mode of externalisation of inner world is through one our senses. That is how I see it.

Coming to Beethoven himself I have wondered as to how he could continue  composing music, though the sense which was instrumental in helping him create great music, had failed him. Like it has been pointed out he had the comfort of internalising all the music he had created, but my only point was how could he externalise it when the mode through which he could have done that had failed him. His victory lay in the fact that he could do that despite this.

Kierkegaard in his book ‘Either/Or’ writes “Music exists only in the moment of its performance, for however skilful one may be at reading notes and however lively one’s imagination, it cannot be denied that it is only in an unreal sense that the music exists when read. It exists only when performed. This might seem to be an imperfection in this art as compared with the others, whose works constantly endure because they have their existence in the sensual. Yet that is not so. Rather it is a proof that music is a higher , a more spiritual art.”