The Dual Function of the Intellect in the Musical Cognition of Truth
Music-Creating and Music-Listening in Comparison
The Eigenfunction of Gaining Knowledge in Music
The Technique of Musical Comparison
Comparison is another means to gain knowledge of musical truth. Thus, the musical logic stimulates our inner tools of cognition to compare.
Music-Analysis and Music-Synthesis
The technique of comparison is based on the dual function of our intellect which we previously described as being on the one hand:
our intellect in its function of understanding, where our understanding, with its analytical means, examines the music for more and more comprehensive truth; and on the other hand
our intellect in its function of feeling, where our feeling expands creatively towards the multiplicity of our understanding and, in this process, carries the natural diversity of our inner, musical, creative process into our understanding.
At the same time, these two processes of musical cognition outer cognition of the music listener and inner cognition of the composer are submitted to a comparison by our self-aware-ness.
Thus, our intellect, our feeling and understanding, are integrated towards the level of pure self-awareness and are thereby raised musically into the field of the harmony; for only in this absolute musical force-field of the harmony our tools of cognition can make a perfect comparison between the unity and the diversity of music.
This comparison
between the musical insights of our feeling and of our understanding puts
our intellect, and therewith our musical process of knowing, into the state
of a self-sufficient eigenfunction.
And in terms of this twofold musical cognition of truth, our intellect swings
within itself.
© AAR EDITION INTERNATIONAL 1982