About Me

My photo
Education: Rotterdam Conservatory, Cambridge University // Activities: composition, writing

Monday, 18 July 2022

Music and science

What is the relationship between science and art? Between science and music? When music begins to imitate science in its reductionist methods, and withdraws into a purely materialistic approach of sound, and sees its history as a lineair development defined by progress, music disappears - it is a suicide. But music, which is an art form of fluid mathematics which are used as means of expression of interior experience, has something fundamental in common with science: it has a meaning going far beyond emotional stimulation and entertainment. Ludwig Wittgenstein, probably the greatest thinker of the 20th century, expressed this as follows:

“People nowadays think scientists are there to instruct them.... Poets, musicians etc. to entertain them. That the latter have something to teach them: that never occurs to them.”

No comments:

Post a Comment