The Research Of Music Noumenon

The research of music noumenon is a core problem of musicology and musicphilosophy. It concerns a series of questions such as what music is, Music Aesthetics,the function of music, the content and the form of music, the autonomy andheteronomy of music, the relationship between music and other forms of art, and evenrefers to the sociology of music, and the education and teaching of music. About thisissue, Mr. Huang Xiaohe made a classic comment:"Musicology is eventuallyinseparable from music itself, no matter how broad the content of musicology is orhow it is defined. Otherwise, it is no longer itself at all. Therefore, researchingmusical ontology, in any case, should always be the core point of musicology.”Therefore, the study of music noumenon is the core pathway to fundamentallymake our understanding of music itself explicit. Fundamentally speaking, about theunderstanding of materiality and immateriality, heteronomy and heteronomy of musicitself in the history, and even about the understanding of the tonality from traditionalmusic to the breakout since Wagner......, all these long argued and noconclusion-reached problems, can only be answered in a fundamental way through thestudy of music noumenon in the end. The study of music noumenon leads us tophilosophy eventually. In a larger context, we can even say that, it is people’sunderstanding about philosophy determines fundamentally their understanding aboutother things including their understanding about music itself.Therefore, we need to go back to the history of philosophy to have a look at howphilosophers understand music in the process philosophy history. To accurately grasptheir understanding about music, we must understand their view in general first, andthen discuss their esthetics thoughts, and then to the accurately position theiraesthetics thoughts of music. To do so, we went back to representative ancient Greecephilosophers in the aspect of music aesthetics thought including Pythagoras Schooland Democritus, then Plato and Aristotle, and Kant, Rousseau and Hegel in the second chapter. Through the roughly outlining and side writing their aesthetics thoughts onmusic, we can further understand problems such as the origin of music, the functionof music, the relationship between the formal and the material cause of music, thesubstance of autonomy and heteronomy of music, and its relationship with other artsetc. in a philosophical level, although we cannot just give out an answer or aconclusion explicitly about what music ontology is.Of course, we should also go back to traditional Chinese Philosophy tounderstand how our own sages understand and treat music. We inspected by pickingout representative aesthetic thoughts of music including Confucianism, Taoism,Mohism and later Confucianism-Taoism compatible Metaphysics. We found that ingeneral, the Chinese traditional thoughts hold a view of music that "Music solvesitself in Ceremony, and Music plays in Harmony with Poetry”, which indicates twodistinguishing features of Chinese traditional music theory. One of them is "Musicsolves itself in Ceremony”."Ceremony" mainly refers to the Confucian view of"Ceremony", the "Ceremony" in the later "Ceremony, Music Penalty, and Politics"level.The presentation of Ceremony is "Harmony", the external etiquette in harmonywith the orthodox politics. Its inner core is harmony in the mind, being in harmonywith the moral self-consciousness of what makes a human a human. The other is“Music plays in Harmony with Poetry” which actually includes two aspects,“Musicplays in Harmony with Poetry” and “Music exists in combination with Poetry”. In acongruent meaning, music and poetry dissolve themselves in Ceremony, they both arethe pathway to realize the Ceremony, and there are no level-differences between them.Therefore, music and poetry are in harmony in the "political" level, which means incooperation, and in collaboration. So, the core meaning of Chinese traditional music is"Ceremony". We can say that is China "Ceremony" is the original basis and ultimateobjective of music, or we can say,"Ceremony" is the root of music.Through these, we can preliminary pick out the differences Chinese and westerntraditional philosophy thoughts of music aesthetics. We always insist that music belongs to morality and Ceremony, and in the final meaning, belongs to the politics.We always put the music as a method to realize Ceremony, to change the existinghabits and customs, and to achieve better more easily ruling for the ruling class.Although we do not have so-called instrumental reason, we always treat music in atool-using way. If, then, we should find a music noumenon as what the traditionalphilosophy did, the noumenon of music can eventually be reduced to “Ceremony”, ora little further, politics. We are mainly "in use of" music, and only secondly, we enjoyit; in the western world, however, they use music and at the same time enjoy it, andonly secondly, they use it.Then we went back to modern western philosophy after Hegel. The object of ourstudy is focused on Marx(ism), Nietzsche and Heidegger, three of the most specialphilosophers for the traditional metaphysics."The Marxism aesthetics is mainly akind of theory paying attention to art and social utilitarian relationship, and is an art ofsocial utility theory." This should be our common impression on the Marxismaesthetics. For, in a long time, the Marxism aesthetics theory and art theory and its artworks closely centre on the theme of revolution and criticism. Nietzsche, however,insisted to adopt music filled with life power which reflects the Dionysian spirit offrenzy, intoxication and optimism.Through Heidegger, we no longer understand music “noumenon” in a noun sensebut a verbal one. Heidegger interprets noumenon as clarity or truth revealing.Noumenon is to illuminate the glade. The key lies in the intention to the“illuminating”. In this sense, the music "noumenon" lies in our "questioning".Because questioning is to open, to make it out, to make it jump out. What are wequestioning or manifesting? It is the being of objects. According to Heidegger, thiskind of questioning or manifesting is “poetry” itself. Then, it is nonsense to say thatthe music noumenon is autonomy or heteronomy, or to emphasize the opposition of itsmatter and form.Finally, on the background of multicultural context, based on our philosophicalbasis of Marxism, we can say that music noumenon is the creation of history, and at the same time is something self-generating. And according to Hegel, it is productionof the specific cultural dialectical synthesis, and at the same time open the newgeneration process with itself as an intermediary. For us, music noumenon can only beilluminated, or we can say, can show itself in questioning.