Response for 9-28-11

Schopenhauer's discussion and analysis of music in this chapter felt incredibly clinical to me. Not only that, but the topics he discusses aren't anything new. For people who are trained to compose, direct, and perform music for classic concert bands and choruses, none of his ideas on discord, reconciliation, rhythm, and intervals are earth-shatteringly new or strange. Anyone who knows a decent amount of music theory can explain to you why a certain part of a song sounds the way it does and why it might make you feel a certain way. This is the same for both instrumentalists and singers. Of course, for those who do not know music theory very well, this chapter has a good explanation for them, but still, a lot of what he talks about seems to be kind of obvious.