Some Thoughts on Music - Jacob Hamilton

 Both Nietzsche and Schopenhauer recognized that music was far more pure than any other art form. Music has the unique ability to capture the essence of things. Its effects are immediate and has the strange power to capture emotion in a way no other art has. This why music is utilized so often in film, theater, and television. It has the immediate power of making a person feel a certain way. As I have said before, I believe art captures the relationship between subject and object. Music appears at odds with this theory. Music does not try to depict an object, but a pure sentimentality.  

The primary way we relate to the world is through our emotions. The ability to emote allows one to act in the world. Without it, people would not be able to make decisions. All actions need to be grounded in a value structure. Certain things must be judged as desirable or undesirable for one to make any decision. Therefore, feelings about things are a crucial part of human life. Music’s ability to capture pure sentimentality can still be thought of as capturing a relationship. An emotion is a relationship between a subject and object. Music, however, is the most universal of the arts as it captures most purely the ideal relationship of subject and object.  

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