[Smt-talk] Origin of "Semper idem…"

[John Covach]

This interpretation is consistent with the kinds of mystical views of music
often found in pre-WWI Vienna.  The idea of God, or some spiritual world or
entity, residing behind the physical world would not have seemed the least
bit strange to Schoenberg, Hauer, Berg, or Webern (or Mahler).  As I have
argued elsewhere, Rudolph Steiner's interpretation of Goethe's scientific
writings is a central source of the mystical readings on music in Germany
and Austria at this time, mixed with a general knowledge of Schopenhauer
(mostly the essays) and his elevation of music to the top of the arts.
Adding a bit of Augustine seems quite natural in this context (even if some
of these thinkers' ideas are not completely compatible).

John Covach
University of Rochester

On Thu, Nov 15, 2012 at 8:42 AM, William Pastille <william.pastille at sjca.edu
> wrote:

> I was able to find the following passage from Augustine's Confessions,
> Book 8, Chap. 3:
>
> *nam tu semper idem, quia ea quae non semper nec eodem modo sunt eodem
> modo semper nosti omnia.*
>
> That is,
>
> *For you [are] always the same thing, because you know in the same way
> all those things that are not the same nor in the same way.*
>
> The meaning is, I think, that God must be in one and the same state
> eternally, because his omniscient knowledge has to comprehend *in one
> selfsame act* (both all that is eternal and) all that is mutable.
>
> One can argue with the metaphysics, but let's think about what this means
> for the world we live in: if God is to be immanent in this mutable world,
> then there must be a connection between His eternal unchangeability (semper
> idem) and the worlds continual change (non semper nec eodem modo). In *Meisterwerk,
> *Schenker implies, I think, that God may be the "background" of our
> phenomenal world. Transference of this notion to his analytical levels is
> obvious, with the difference that Schenker is able to show the connections
> visually so that they may be grasped by the mind's eye and ear, whereas
> finding the "prolongations" that connect God to the world of phenomena has
> not yet been made visible in so graphic a form.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Smt-talk mailing list
> Smt-talk at lists.societymusictheory.org
>
> http://lists.societymusictheory.org/listinfo.cgi/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org
>
>


-- 
John Covach
Professor of Music and Chair, College Music Department, University of
Rochester
Director, Popular Music Institute, University of Rochester
Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Rochester
Professor of Theory, Eastman School of Music
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.societymusictheory.org/pipermail/smt-talk-societymusictheory.org/attachments/20121115/56cd174b/attachment-0004.htm>