MUS115 music, art & ideas

Greek through Early Christian, Ch 1, 3-5.

Image list – recognize the listed info; know the PERIOD/STYLE for all.  Whenever you can, connect each image with a feeling and an IDEA

 

for example:
3.13 title: Kritios Boy
à calm, placid? à IDEALISM à Classical Greek

 

There will be 10-15 images on the exam.

3.1, 3.16, name, construction (post & lintel)  à BEAUTY IN NUMBERS

3.10 name of type of object: kouros.  Know period à early interest in human form; HUMANISM

3.36 title, style/period (Hellenistic) à EXPRESSION, REALISM, DRAMA

4.1 arches à PRACTICAL INNOVATION; PLEASURE & POLITICS

4.6 subject (Augustus) à ART AS PROPAGANDA.  DATE: around 0 CE

4.18-4.20 name, place, arches & concrete à PRACTICAL INNOVATION

4.25 medium, REALISM, PLEASURE

4.24 name, place, medium, PLEASURE

5.8 catacomb à “underground” origins of Christianity, secret symbols

5.25 subject, date, medium, place, DATE: 547

5.22, name, place, DATE: 547

5.15-5.18 name, place

5.29 name (same as type of image) à ICONS, SYMBOLS (also know the opposite: iconoclasm)

5.34 name, place à FAST SPREAD OF ISLAM after 622

 

Idealism – in philosophy, Plato’s notion that Truth & Reality reside behind the world of appearances and our senses; these Platonic ideals, perfect and unchanging, exist apart from the forms that we encounter in our experiences.  In the arts, the notion that there is an ideal idea or form that an artwork tries to suggest or become or embody, striving towards perfection . . . COMPARE TO REALISM/NATURALISM  (see glossary)

 

CLASSICISM – 1. [culturally inclusive] Definitive (defining) and enduring.  2. [narrow sense] art & architecture of Greek & Roman antiquity.  3. [another general sense] ‘art which aspires to emotional and physical equilibrium, rationally rather than intuitively constructed’

 

[GREEK] Plato on music, from The Republic

“[A ruler] must beware of changing to a new kind of music, for the change always involves far-reaching danger.  Any alteration in the modes of music is always followed by alteration in the most fundamental laws of the state.”

 

Plato wrote that particular modes, particular instruments (flute & oboe), and makers of those instruments should be banned from his ideal community. 

 

“Which are the soft and convivial modes?”

“There are Ionian and Lydian modes which are called slack.”

“Then, my friend, shall we use those for men who are warriors?” 

“By no means.  You seem to have the Dorian and Phrygian modes left.”

 

[EARLY CHRISTIAN] Three kinds of music according to Boethius, early 6th c.

musica mundana (cosmic music, the music of the spheres)

musica humana (harmonious relationships within the human soul)

musica instrumentalis (audible music)

Music is "the skill of examining carefully the diversity of high and low sounds by means of reason and the senses"

 

St. Augustine’s doubts about music (c. 400)

“ . . . when it happens to me to be more moved by the singing than what is sung, I confess myself to have sinned criminally . . . ”

Sep 2007 DC Meckler