“Musical Delight”
Ronda, 2011
“Its aim is to delight.”
René Descartes, Compendium Musicae
One of the things most often said about “cultured” contemporary music is that it has renounced the aim to elicit emotional and musical delight in the listener. This would suppose a rupture with a certain concept of musical fact according to which the attainment of (more or less sublimated) pleasurable emotion would be an essential feature of musical fact. However, is it really like this? On the one hand, it seems problematic to defend the theory that since the beginning, the main aim of music has been the search for delight. On the other hand, it is at the very least abuse to attempt to reduce contemporary musical creation to a kind of ascetic exercise in which pathos would be a minor variable. The music philosophy conference held in the city of Ronda will debate this and other related questions.
Participants/Lectures:
Tomás Marco – What Do We Call Delight in Music?
Javier Echeverría – Musica Without Sound: The Delight of Humming
Pilar Jurado – The Delight of Singing
Gotzon Arrizabalaga – The Delight of Re-Creation
José Antonio Sainz – The Delight of Conducting Music
Francis Wolff – The Singular Alchemy of Musical Delight
Mauricio Sotelo – The Internal Flame, the Delight of Sound Rafael Argullol – Visual Delight, Musical Delight
Víctor Gómez Pin – Ludus and Lexis in Music
José María Sánchez-Verdú – Nostalgia in Sound: Delight Versus Adventure in Music?