The Listener as Philosopher – as Lover of Truth
The Philosophical Act of Classical Music
Knowing the Object in Music
Resounding Spaces of Cognition in Music
The
Wayless Way
of Gaining Knowledge in Music
The listener loves truth; this is why he strives for it. And when, eventually, he reaches and perceives the truth – or in other words: when truth unfolds before his mental eye in more and more glorious musical forms – the listener attracts truth closer and closer to himself and finally unites with it without having to take a single step outside.
Thus, true classical music not only confirms the listener as a seeker of truth, but first of all it systematically enables and encourages him to actually attract truth.
While the scientific system of philosophy supports the gaining of knowledge only indirectly – because it only paraphrases and differentiates the objects of knowledge – music directly depicts these objects and relates them to our intuitive faculty of comprehending reality.
Through his musical statement the classical composer succes-sively stimulates in the listener very distinct spaces of cogni-tion to resound; he determines the proportions between them in such a way that they vibrate harmoniously towards each other and together.
When he created the musical work the composer, too, had set these inner sounding spaces of cognition vibrating within him-self, and therefore he knows their effect on the individual personality: on the individual soul.