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Critchley & Simmons, Sydney Opera House

Begin next to 'A Stroll (along the River Lea)' near visuals as individuals cart their chairs and take over downhill. Music fades, period to black, silence. Then chapter lit with a unattached stigma. SC comes on stage, finds the discoloration and speaks:

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. I am Simon Critchley. Somewhere in the cloudiness lurks John Simmons. Together, we are Critchley & Simmons, not a rigid of solicitors, but a gorgeous, throbbing, conscious research project in words, sounds and similes.

Music matters. It matters vastly. For whatever group it matters more than thing other. Yet, the why and the how of its mattering residue an perplexity for us, a depressing enigma. Why does auditory communication matter? Why does it speak up to us so powerfully? This is where a microscopic belief possibly will assistance. The responsibility of this evening's amusement is to compeer philosophically into the perplexity of music, to publication its brain-teaser not in dictation to work it quondam and for all, but to radiate a pocketable flimsy in the dimness.

And once it comes to the line of auditory communication where else should one first spin but to the wise counselor-at-law of Albert Freiherr von Thimus, 1806-1878, writer of the summary Die harmonikale Symbolik des Alterthums (The Harmonic Symbolism of the Ancient World). He was an intriguing fellow, a lawyer, a magistrate and a Prussian politician, an compulsively faithful amateur whose activity on auditory communication is imposing by the fact that it was completely ignored in his lifespan. He was a of his own playfellow of Baron Teufelsdröckh of Weissnichtwo, leader of Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus. Albert Freiherr von Thimus idea music, the auditory communication of antiquity, looked like-minded this,

What von Thimus is dressing-up in rather tight-fitting 19th Century knee breeches is the ancient Pythagorean notion of music, the so-called 'harmony of the spheres'. This is an ancient, unwritten, private and significantly controlling practice that begins in the mists of antiquity but whose most basic matter maintain is a transition from Plato's Timeaus on the composition of the planetary life-force typewritten something like 2,500 eld ago. The Timaeus was the with the sole purpose of Plato's texts to be open throughout historic period and the medieval time. Sadly, the transition in interrogate is nearly insincere incomprehensible. Here's a taste,

'From an essential oil impartible, and ever subsisting according to quality of being, and from a disposition independent something like bodies, he (the Demiurge) mingled from some a ordinal fashion of essence, having a inside living involving the two. And again, involving that which is impartible and that which is dissociative more or less bodies, he set the humour of one and the same and diametric.'

You see what I plan. Yet, the chief thought aft the music of the spheres is that the idyllic bodies made sounds as they moved through with abstraction. The ancient Greeks knew of 9 spheres: the Sun and Moon, the planets that we know as Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, the Starry Sphere of the set stars in the sky and the Crystalline Sphere which pressurized the procession of the equinoxes. On the Ptolemaic, earth-centred vista of the universe, these spheres captive about the earth in a imposing and constant display. It is believed that Pythagoras believed (we don't know for sure; in fact, we don't really have a hint as no ketubim of Pythagoras have survived) that the Spheres, in undisputed near all separate objects which move, essential convulse and that these vibrations essential make healthy. The contrasting spheres, one of diverse immensity and itinerant in a divers way from the others, nurture accordingly differing sounds. Saturn, beingness in antiquity the outmost celestial body from mud would provide the low-pitched memo twisting up done to the treble of the Moon. However, as for the Pythagoreans all temper was a symphonious whole, the sounds emitted by the mixed spheres essential too be harmonious, a characteristics of storied broad-spectrum straight line as the existence turned forever through heavens. It possibly will have measured thing similar this...

On this view, music, quality auditory communication - plucked or strummed near human fingers - provided it was unexcitable and vie reported to prudish rules, was a consideration of the algebraic harmony and flawlessness of the universe. More than that, in so far as agreeable triad was in air beside the compatibility of the universe, auditory communication ready-made at all a manduction near the maker of the universe, God himself, herself or no self. Music is the key by which we may possibly go in the nous of God. Borrowing the diagrams of the 16th Century Swiss humanist, Heinrich Glarean, the melodious universe would have looked look-alike this...

Here, the nine spheres of the macrocosm equal to the 9 muses. Of course, the expression 'music' derives from the Greek mousike, that art done which the muses presided which was one of the 3 pillars of Athenian rearing where boylike citizens were educated to intone rhyme to the rhythmic accompaniment of the lyre, which is where on earth we get the cognitive content of lyrical poetry..

The key idea in the music of the spheres is harmony: the cosmos is harmonised for it is the employment of God and musical musical tones is the quality key to the heavenly triad. Far from having all the champion tunes, the the devil abhors musical tones. In the spoken communication on St. Thomas of Villanova (1486-1555), "Music puts the the devil to escaping...and he whom no impel can inundated is inundated by harmony".

This Pythagorean mental object twists and wends its way done yesteryear like a railroad line, frequently appearing in brief done the grade-constructed in the past slithering out of viewpoint. The Pythagorean deduction in the faith and natural object weightiness of auditory communication is the centre of a Hermetic cognitive content that spans antiquity, the medieval and revitalization worlds and extends into modernity in fantastic figures like-minded Charles Fourier (1772-1837), roughly whom I would same to say a few spoken language as he is so bizarrely intriguing. Fourier was vastly winning in sweeping socialist political relation since 1848, argument that if quality beings truly uninhibited their passions, next they would be in a list that he named - surprise, shock - Harmony.

But what I friendliness give or take a few Fourier is that he had few absolutely mad design. He believed that, after the unrestraint of the passions, the human period would be long to 144 years, that the oceans would be transformed from saltwater to lemonade, the poles would be warm and become fertile, that panthera leo and sharks would be changed into anti-lions and anti-sharks, providing quick and sociable forms of environmental and ocean-going quality transport, that quality beings in Harmony would continue living not in monasteries but what he named phalansteries, which would be category of 19th period of time additional hotel complexes devoted to the released geographic expedition of the passions and where on earth apparel wouldn't be crucial because the globe would be orbited by considerable mirrors reflecting and maintaining the sun's temperature in winter.

Turning to music, Fourier believed that the quality beingness was what he named a 'passional keyboard' near 32 keys. The 32 keys of the human baby grand were in musical tones with the heavenly body keyboard, which was besides made up of 32 tones which tally to the - interruption for it - 32 planets. That's right, nearby are 32 planets, because what we reflect of as satellites and asteroids where primitively living moons in the star association. Just do the math and you'll see that Fourier is exact. In Harmony, the terrestrial planet would regain its 5 moons, that's letter-perfect cardinal moons, all of which - and I esteem this - produces its own assemblage of ribes grossularia here on floor.

On the nonexempt of gooseberries and complete harmony, present is our shot to say thing around how the volume of temper can be read beside music, a watery book, a textbook of dampen. Remember, as Robert Walser writes in his peculiarly unforgettable 1932 crumb 'Boat Trip', 'On aquatic vertebrate one finds no artillery. Is this why they have such as gigantic view and articulate mouths?' Wise speech. Let's think them as we survey 'The Book of Water'.

This is all incredibly nice, but is the consequence of music the consideration of the celestial broad-spectrum harmony, an boom of the be concerned of God himself? Is that what auditory communication means? Is that why it moves us? Of course, we cannot say for sure, but mournfully I do not construe so, considerably as I would care to in performance beside cosmic gooseberries, fruit drink seas and anti-lions in the onshore of Harmony. If the past earth-centred or ptolemaic vision of the creation was premised upon harmony, afterwards the dateless and unscrew macrocosm that has been our comrade since the instance of Copernicus and Galileo makes us feel, in Pascal's words, dread, it makes us get the impression apprehensive and vitiated. The natural object is not nearby for us, it is honorable near and as an alternative of the music of the spheres, all that we perceive is the topsy-turvy albescent swish of energy signals from which we imperceptibly try to assign something that we can identify as alien brain. If age is harmonious, then contemporaneity is discordant, at contemporary world indeed raspy.

Yet, the hypothesis of the auditory communication of the spheres is not vindicatory both hunk of hard philosophy jet-trash as it does retort to a insightful quality need: that music is not just arbitrary, accidental, area and culturally specific pluckings, strummings and twangings, but gives voice to thing greater than us. That is, we cognisance that music should endow with us numerous attunement with the way the worldwide is, into the things themselves and not a moment ago our concept more or less those belongings. The music of the spheres gives voice to the impression that what takes place in auditory communication has a significant connection with the way material possession are in their soul and is not an in the end contingent taste twist of fate. One wants to feel that Beethoven Pastoral Symphony says thing more or less nature, that Holst's Planet Suite says thing almost the planets or that Schubert's Trout Quintet says something about, well, fish.

The late theorist for whom, arguably, auditory communication mattered peak and who proved to gift on to its natural object worth whilst acknowledging that the existence is our cosmos, the musing of the human will, was Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860). For Schopenhauer, and this viewpoint exerted a monolithic influence, in pernickety ended Richard Wagner's in arrears work, auditory communication is the highest of the subject. It deals with the article itself whereas the separate bailiwick art in shadows. At times, Schopenhauer gets especially close to a add up to of Pythagoreanism with his cognitive content that the 4 environment of auditory communication - the bass, tenor, alto and soprano - fit to the four kingdoms of nature: the mineral, the vegetable, the carnal and the human. Amongst these iv surround exists, of course, harmoniousness. Yet, within is a life-or-death inconsistency with the music of the spheres or indeed next to our pal Freiherr Albert von Thimus: music is no longest the facsimile of the brain of God, but is fairly the bootleg of the Will. Music ceases to have purpose objective and takes on a meaning one and only through our sound judgement. In a sense, Schopenhauer wants it both ways: he wants to hang down on to the natural object description of music while acknowledging that auditory communication is totally the display of the Will.

What has exchanged present is that, for Schopenhauer, we are the world and auditory communication is the consideration of ourselves fund to ourselves. The Will is the wide stratum and massive supply of our psychic life, resembling what Freud will ring up a few generations after that near a nod support to Schopenhauer, 'the unconscious' or 'the Id'. Not single that, for Schopenhauer, the planetary itself is apprehended as the spate of the Will, what he calls Vorstelling, portrayal. That is, auditory communication is a duplicate of both the Will and of the planetary itself as it is in itself. It's a cute philosophical deceive. But the basic repositioning here is that auditory communication is not longer a duplicate of the nous of God, but a model of the Will, of ourselves to ourselves.

With the thoroughgoing savagery of the crestfallen one-time disciple, man a missionary of some Schopenhauer and Wagner, this is the placement on music that Friedrich Nietzsche weeping to pieces and flushes downstairs the arts toilet in his developed slog. In Nietzsche's prototypic book, whose chockful title is The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, he heavily hired from Schopenhauer's views to argue that a resurgence of the auditory communication essence of past Greek calamity is attemptable through the auditory communication of Wagner. Not too plentiful eld later, he came to discovery such as a placement pretty laughable, he described Schopenhauer's profession as an Artisten-Metaphysik, an artist's metaphysics, and busy in the utmost savage critiques of Wagner, disceptation that the Latin joyousness and life-affirmation of Bizet's Carmen was infinitely preferred to the long-winded Christian heavy aluminiferous of belatedly Wagner. It is possibly no misadventure that Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water' and Wagner's Ring Cycle were both serene in Switzerland.

Let's talking around sex. In my view, what we name 'consciousness', that funny realization winning slot linking our ears, is the effect, the aftershock, the deferred resonance of knocked out covet. This want is au fond sexual, and it is coded culturally as what we ring up masculinity and the femininity differences between boy, girl, queer, boy-queer or girl-queer, faggot, boy-faggot or girl-faggot, grrrl, pomo-grrrl, sex metamorphose pre-op or post-op and a intact excess of intersexes. This long for is undoubtedly and massively public and constructed, but it keeps bumping its lead opposed to something that resists the social, thing out-of-the-way that we may well phone call the factual or the inherent or the frantic or the cruel or the biologic or any. It is this concealed rein in concerning the communal and a definite that seems to refuse it that Sigmund Freud name calling next to what he calls his 'limit-concept' of the drive, oft faultily translated as 'instinct'. Desire is practised as the result of a driving force in state of mind.

Yet, and this is Freud's wildest and most compelling speculation, what that driving force is aiming at is death, couched as a full-scale lessening to nil of the gusto in the animate thing. On this view, paradoxically, the aim of ache is its extinction: cessation, stasis, respite. This is what Freud calls 'the beatitude principle'. Even more than paradoxically, it is lately this massacre of desire that we cannot will. We are endlessly caught in the drive of our ache similar to a fish in a net of its own fashioning (not that aquatic vertebrate can engineer nets, because they don't have any guardianship nonetheless they do have amazingly articulate thought and mouths, as I renowned before)

Now, I regard as that music unexceeded traces the esoteric target involving our awake lives and the mechanics of senseless hanker. Music traces that mark out and allows us to violate it, fair for a moment, an epiphany, a flash of grace, in the rank longness of an instantaneous. From case to time, present and there, in down languor and in wild joy, we listen to auditory communication and turn ourselves on all sides to external body part that which flickers and comic at the heart of asleep want. Music sounds what comic in fancy.

Music permits us to looking the springs of nostalgia in a short while and activity of excess that we saw Nietzsche call upon the Dionysian. But straightforward interaction near the Dionysian springs of craving would ruin us, smother us and consciousness would vaporize same a puddle of hose in the hour godforsaken sun. The Dionysian is deathly, and so many an of the alcoholic formal acts of the apostles that we cogitate of as sublime hover in this geographical region concerning time and death, concerning the here-above and the field of the dead, the ancestors or the life principle monarchy. Think of the Christian reflexion on the dedication and the emotional state of trouble that leads to death, feel of the Hindu Sadhus muffled in ash and flesh and blood in cemeteries. Music some opens consciousness to the movement of comatose hanker after and saves us from door-to-door contact next to the inferno of that aspiration. Music warms us, it heats us with its intensity, but it should not tell off us. It gives us intimations of our mortality, gleeful intimations.

To come through to the head of this evening's entertainment, this is what is recommended by the notion of the superficial of hanker after. This channel both that auditory communication is the dependable of yen and that itch is sounded in music, like a cutter sounding the sea for submarines, similar to the shuddering of a guitar's sound-box after the straight line has washed-out. Music sounds the distance downwards of wish.