Article
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On beauty and love in the transition from paganism to Christianity
Humberto Schubert COELHO
Original title: Sobre a beleza e o amor na transição do paganismo ao Cristianismo
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Augustine, Beauty, Love, Plato, Plotinus.
While Plato is considered an absolute grounding for aesthetics, invaluable contributions to the concept of beauty were offered by the Christian thought. Although the underestimation of such contribution as a mere reflex of Platonism is not sustainable, it is undeniable that substantial part of platonic ideas on beauty and the role of love in the connection between consciousness and the supreme transcendent metaphysics of the source of being, which is identified with the beauty, exerts the most powerful influence on the Christian conception. The aesthetics in Antiquity, thus, consists in a dialogue between the beautiful Greek form and the Christian sentiment on the light of platonic idealism. Therefore, in order to understand the introspection and sublimation of Christian aesthetics the study of the delicate transition between cultural, religious and philosophical realms, and how this transition intensifies the emphasis on the role of love in the aesthetical economy, is mandatory.
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Clement of Alexandria (c. 150-215) and the use of musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts
Eirini ARTEMI
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Clement of Alexandria, Hymns, Music, Musical metaphors, Musical myths, New Song, Protrepticus.
Clement of Alexandria or Titus Flavius Clemens was familiar with classical Greek philosophy and literature. When he converted to Christianity, he tried to draw some clear distinctions against the paganism. Many things from paganism were interpreted by a way that serve Christian theology. In Clement of Alexandria’s Protrepticus, the church father tries to explain how the well-known classical music-myths can be used to create the knowledge of a Superior “New Song”. Instead of that, Christians serve the New Song – Jesus in Church and outside the Church, they continue to “amuse themselves with impious playing, and amatory quavering, occupied with flute-playing, and dancing, and intoxication, and all kinds of trash. They who sing thus, and sing in response, are those who before hymned immortality, –found at last wicked and wickedly singing this most pernicious palinode, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die”. Clement explains that by this way christians remain christians in name so they are dead in God not tomorrow. But not tomorrow in truth, but already, are these dead to God. In this paper, we are going to show that the polemic of Clement Alexandria was not against ancient music and musical instruments, but against the way that they were used by Christians. Also, we will analyse the method that Clement employs the musical metaphors and musical myths in his texts in order to educate Christians and to manage to earn the salvation.
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Alcibiades’s silens: notes of aesthetics and philosophy in Pico (1463-1494), Erasmus (1467-1436) and Bruno (1542-1600)
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Los silenos de Alcibíades: notas de estética y filosofía en Pico (1463-1494), Erasmo (1467-1436) y Bruno (1542-1600)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Aesthetics and Philosophy, Erasmus, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Silens.
Of the multiple influences that Plato’s philosophy has had on Renaissance thought, in this paper we are interested in focusing on a specific and even minimal question, namely, that reference to the silens that appears in Sympsium (215b-c). In our work we propose, then, to trace the presence of the concept of Silenus in three authors: Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1436) and Giordano Bruno (1542-1600). We will stop, in this way, in the famous Epistle that Pico sent to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485 and that is part of the De Genere dicendi philosophorum, in the monumental Adagia of Erasmus, especially in the adage 2201, Sileni Albibiadis, and in the dialogues Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo by Giordano Bruno. The Silens, as is well known, are hollow figurines, horrible looking, disgusting and despicable, inside which are full of gems, exotic jewels and precious. Our research aims to show that, according to the selected authors, this is the philosopher’s own way of seeing himself, his aesthetics –whose most finished and original example is Socrates– and, by extension, the way of being proper to philosophy.
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Dialectic of Love: about the Far-near
Ernesto MANUEL ROMÁN
Original title: Dialéctica del amor: sobre lo Lejos-cerca
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Far-near, Hadewijch of Antwerp, Love, Margarita Porete, Mystical literature, Troubadour poetry.
In this text we seek to explore The Mirror of simple souls that are annihilated and that only dwell in wanting and wanting love focusing on the problem of the Far-near. This concept, and its particular way of rationing with the image and the word, will allow us to draw relationships between Marguerite Porete and other writers of the period. We will also seek to explore the philosophical questions that arise from Marguerite's book and her conception of love. We will begin by seeing how, for Plato, love occupied the place of the demonic, that is, of the threshold between mortals and immortals. Then we will stop to analyse the love of far from the troubadour poetry, where the relation of distance-closeness of love that will characterize the Far-near is forged. Finally we will dwell on the use of this logic made by Hadewijch of Antwerp and Marguerite to think about their annihilation. The latter is also an abandonment of the virtues and an overcoming of the Reason in Love.
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Andreas Capellanus (XII century) and The game of Love
Nicolás MARTÍNEZ SÁEZ
Original title: Andrés el Capellán (siglo XII) y el juego del Amor
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Andreas Capellanus, Court Love, Game, Segle XII.
Andreas Capellanus writes De amore at the end of the 12th century in a context of interweaving of traditions such as the Christian clerical, the feudal courtesan and the troubadour poetry. In this work, a new aesthetic sensibility is represented in love that acquires a playful dimension. The dialogues that arise between people of different social classes and the so-called Love´s Court reveal this game where men and women argue in favor of a love that does not obey social classes. De amore is composed of three books. The first two are those where seriousness and play seem to mix in a work that is both a scientific treatise and a practical manual of the rules governing worldly relations between men and women. The last book can be understood in a playful dimension where it is possible to win in only one way: by giving up.
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The difficulty in distinguishing beauty and art in some medieval expressions
Susana BEATRIZ VIOLANTE
Original title: La dificultad en la distinción de belleza y de arte en algunas expresiones medievales
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Art, Beauty, Perspective in art, Philosophical perspective, Ugliness.
To flee from common places, it would be necessary to determine what is understood as beauty, distinguishing how this concept has been modified in relation to geographical space, periods of historical time and what the different centers of power have instituted as such. Something extremely complex because, fundamentally, I consider that it cannot be defined beyond than what generates an “aesthetic” tension that drives us to say: how nice!!! How ugly!!! But this “tension” is crossed by a whole discourse that makes us distinguish the beautiful and the ugly as such. What do we think of art in the medieval period? Because classical Greek art is still “seen” in many works, especially from Renaissance, modern and even contemporary, but we do not find the different perspective with which the medieval has expressed itself, with that recognition - and it does not seem to interest too much “See” - although, its superposition of close and distant planes - I - dare to find them stylized? in some of Picasso’s, Kandinsky’s, Magritte’s works ... I know it might seem “crazy” what I say, but here go certain images.
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The medieval music: between sound number science and beautiful art
Celina A. LÉRTORA MENDOZA
Original title: La música medieval: entre ciencia del número sonoro y arte bella
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Ethics of Music, Harmony, Medieval Music, Melody, Science of Sound.
It is almost a topic both in the history of music and in the history of acoustic science, that in antiquity music was understood especially as the science of sound number, forming part of the quadrivium, and establishing a connection we would say natural between music understood as harmony and rhythm and mathematics and astronomy, discarding the concrete aspect of musical interpretation and its effects. It is also a topic to say that in the Renaissance period there are two new phenomena: the physical (and not only mathematical) consideration of the “sound number”, with the study of vibrations or acoustics, on the one hand. On the other, the incorporation of music into the world of fine arts (that is, considering its sensitive and affective aspect, as “capturing the beautiful”), which would not have happened before, neither in Antiquity nor in the Middle Ages. Without discussing the point related to Antiquity, given that the documentation on this matter is very scarce and susceptible of diverse interpretations that cannot be verified, and focusing on the Middle Ages, an attempt will be made to provide arguments in favor of the following theses. That in the Middle Ages, especially since the 12th century, a process of approach between the consideration of "the mathematical" and the "beautiful" begins, while two concepts of beauty are analyzed and discussed: as splendor of order and as splendor of form. In this way the splendor formae would be a way from which to privilege the musical beauty of the melody. That in this process, long, complex and with many inflection points, two lines can be highlighted: the monastic religious song and the court music (possibly the upper troubadour). In both cases a greater appreciation of the melody gradually appears, seeking to produce a feeling of beauty to bring the soul (that is, the spirit) closer to the superior (religious or the beautiful human) from the materiality of sound.
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Ethics and Aesthetics of Music in Ramon Llull’s Philosophy
Ricardo da COSTA
Original title: Ética e Estética da Música na filosofia de Ramon Llull (1232-1316)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Medieval Aesthetic, Medieval Music, Middle Ages, Ramon Llull.
Brief exposition of the importance of Music in Western aesthetic thought. From Plato, and later, in the Middle Ages, San Isidore of Seville, Guido of Arezzo and Ramon Llull, all thinkers who did meditations on the importance of the aesthetics of harmonic sounds for human existence. In relation to Llull, we deal with the subject from the works Doctrina pueril (c. 1274-1276), Fèlix o el Libre de meravelles (c. 1289), Arbre de Ciència (c. 1295-1296), Ars generalis ultima (c. 1305), Ars brevis (1308) and especially, the Libre de contemplació en Déu (c. 1273-1274).
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Father José Maurício Nunes’ Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790): an analysis employing Robert Gjerdingen’s Musical Schemata
Ernesto HARTMANN
Original title: A Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790) do Padre José Maurício Nunes Garcia (1767-1830): análise com o conceito de Schema Musical de Robert Gjerdingen
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia, Galant Style, Schemata, Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790).
In this work I investigate the use in Father José Maurício Nunes Garcia’s Sinfonia Fúnebre (1790) of what the American musicologist Robert Gjerdongen calls Schemata. According to Gjerdingen, Schemata are abstract structures that were part of the Galant Style, either in Central Europe as in the Colonies, as Brazil is the case. In order to do so, I make a brief overview of the editions available for analysis; review of the Schemata concept in Gjerdingen and other authoritative authors; elaborate a table that articulates form, tonality, Schemata bar by bar; and last, exemplify the use of this Schemata in musical excerpts of the work. I conclude that the systematic and very sophisticated use of the Schemata by the Brazilian composer demonstrates that he is by no means just a mere imitator of the Galant Style, but instead, a great master of this idiom and capable to organize the Schemata at his will to fulfill his expressive needs as it is the case in this Sinfonia Funebre.
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The Music in Don Quijote by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Antonia Javiera CABRERA MUÑOZ
Original title: La Música en el Don Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
Published in Music in Middle Ages and Early Modernity
Keywords: Don Quijote de la Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes, Music.
This article deals with Music in the great work Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605 and 1615), written by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1615) during the Spanish Golden Age. In this relationship between the two Arts (Literature and Music) we emphasized the protagonist character of the work, Don Quixote de la Mancha, who, in both parts, gradually evolve his musical sense to see himself as a fully musical character in the second part: Music is present in various attitudes of his in several episodes, using the recitation and singing, instrumental, general knowledge and even dance to show their musical skills. Several authors have studied this relationship in detail, so that in this work we made a brief synthesis of some contents with the purpose of introducing the Brazilian reader to this relationship in Don Quixote, since in Brazil there is nothing published on the subject, as verified in the main research databases available to the general public and specialized. We begin with a brief synthesis of the life and work of Cervantes, highlighting his literary path to understand a little of his worldview as an intellectual; then we dedicate ourselves to his relationship with Music, the musical environment of his time and how the musical expression was introduced in his works; at once, we made a cut of Don Quixote musician, by highlighting some musical aspects that character shows. The analysis of Don Quixote showed that Music is as much pastoral as in the urban or contemporary to Cervantes. In reading the work, it was also verified that Music unfolds in three ways that correspond to its three outputs: in the first, the musical elements are scarce and simple and show, crudely, the contrast between what imagined by the knight and rural reality; in the second, the same happens as in the first, but little by little the gentleman is contemplating reality as it is and are the other characters who try to convince him that everything is a product of enchantments; in the third, Don Quixote assumes the role of musician in the manner of the knight-errant.
