Ludmila BEJENARU 35

Ludmila BEJENARU

The Metaphysics of Music at

Schopenhauer and Cioran
Abstract
Since the first degrees of musicality of mankind, the music became a sphere of
investigation for naturalists (Darwin), economists (Karl Bücher),
philosophers (Spencer, Schopenhauer, Cioran), who tried to explain, through
their theories, the process of the beginning and settlement of this phenomenon
as well as its influence on the human being.
Schopenhauer will consider art, and especially music, as the only liberating
form from delusion and suffering, from the omnipotence will to live. Making
a strange parallelism between music and the will to live, Schopenhauer will
find between these two a report of identity: “the world is an incarnation of
music as well as an incarnation of Will: There is no art besides music that
expresses an ideal aspect of Will, the Will itself in its purest essence”.
If at Schopenhauer the music expresses the Will itself in its purest essence, at
Emil Cioran “the metaphysical madness of the musical experience…
weakens the will to live and the vital main springs”.
Through music Emil Cioran found the way to himself, to his ego and his
profound musical nature.
The moments of separating of the delusions world are for the human being
moments in which the entire existence feels like a melody and all of the
being’s sufferings assemble and melt into “a convergence of sounds, into a
musical enthusiasm and into a warm and resonant universal community”,
into a “sweet and rhythmic immateriality”.

Music is the second casting of the world.

Nietzsche
Music is a revelation beyond any wisdom and philosophy.
Beethoven
Singing saves the being
Malarmé

An artistic creation specific to man, the most immaterial of arts – music – is

an abstract fabrication, an emotional and pure movement of the soul.
Understood as a “living of the spheres”, the music assumes the pure
experience of the spirit.
36 The Metaphysics of Music on Schopenhauer and Cioran

In time, since the first degrees of musicality of mankind, the music

became a sphere of investigation for naturalists (Darwin), economists
(Karl Bücher), philosophers (Spencer, Schopenhauer, Cioran), who tried
to explain, through their theories, the process of the beginning and
settlement of this phenomenon as well as its influence on the human
being.
In the universal mentality, the philosophic meaning of music always
concerned the great spirits, who tried to decipher the nebulous
phenomenon of its origin and living, the understanding of music as art,
as an unconscious act of creation.
Appreciated since the 4th century B.C. as the most precious thing of
man (before food), according to the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzi, music
will be the most important art, an art that could influence the moving of
the stars, but it also could be influenced by it.
In the Indian civilization, music played a special part and it was
connected to the name of the goddess of arts, Sarasvati, and to the
forces of divine nature.
Within the oldest civilization of the ancient world – the Summerian
civilization – music was the most praised of arts: sacrifices were brought
to the musical instruments, the blowing instruments were sacred and in
the hierarchy of the venerated ones, the musicians followed the gods and
the kings and were not sacrificed when they became war prisoners1.
Confucius was the first to emphasize the educational role of music, and
Plutarh – its first historic – in the 1st century of our era, talked about the
connection that Babilonians made between music and the menial moves.
In an overview on the philosophic meaning of music, it is important to
emphasize that music was given a force of its own, the force of influence
on the man and his spirit. The miraculous power of music to be the great
liberator of man intrigued many philosophic spirits. Hegel said that when
we listening to music we stand face to face to the pure ego of
subjectivity, because music has not only the propriety of giving o psychic

1 See O istorie a muzicii universale (A History of Universal Music), by Ioana Stefanescu, Part I,

Romanian Cultural Foundation, Bucharest, 1995, p. 22 (“We have art not to die
because of the reality” – said Nietzsche).
 Ludmila BEJENARU 37

state, but it discovers us the profound face of our ego and the way “this
ego is moved”. Living the music, we do not feel something definite: it is a
state of unlimited tension, a pure thirst, without any object or possibility
of soothing it.
Thus, the meaning of music is essentially metaphysical. In the empire
and under the influence of music we became an antique pure state,
bearing within the joy of being in a supreme freedom. Music dissolves
forms and the materiality of the outer world inside our ego, merging with
the cosmos. With the help of music we “drown ourselves”, we sink, “we
are absorbed” in the entire universe, in the “soul of the world”. That
intense tension which Wagner called “the infinite melody” reveals the
recurrent enthusiasm of flying, the passionate tension of the human
spirit of absorption in the universe, when the most profound liberation
of the contradictions specific to the human destiny is produced.
Meditating upon the human nature, Arthur Schopenhauer, in his
fundamental work, “World as will and representation”, said that the
world is an illusory creation of the blind will of living. That irrational will
brings us sufferings which crush us or rise our being. “We have art not to
die because of the reality”, said Nietzsche. Schopenhauer will also consider
art, and especially music, as the only liberating form from delusion and
suffering, from the omnipotence will to live. Making a strange parallelism
between music and the will to live, Schopenhauer will find between these
two a report of identity: “the world is an incarnation of music as well as an
incarnation of Will: There is no art besides music that expresses an ideal aspect of
Will, the Will itself in its purest essence”.
In his musical esthetics, referring to two essential elements – the musical
emotion and the metaphysical meaning of the musical art – the German
philosopher will confer music the mission to reveal the tragic of the
existence and to express another way of liberation. Schopenhauer saw in
music an art of pure internalness, he appreciated the superiority of the
musical emotion, which helps our being to accommodate to all the
sonorities of the musical work. The melody merges with the rhythm of
our life, it sets inside us so profoundly that makes us lose the sense of
reality and to penetrate the most secret and uplifting depths of our own
conscience.
This is why the music, thinks Schopenhauer, “does not express a certain joy or
affection, […] but the joy, the affection itself”. Although, because of these
38 The Metaphysics of Music on Schopenhauer and Cioran

reasons, we consider it the most subjective of arts, the author of “The

World as Will…” finds in music “the expression of the world”, an “universal
language”, which expresses what is “metaphysical” in physics, “the essence of
every phenomenon”.
Schopenhauer did not denote only the metaphysical meaning of music2,
he also sketched a “resonant” universe, analogous to the universe of Ideas.
The bass with its low notes would represent the inorganic substance, and
the high notes would correspond to the vegetable and animal world. The
fixed intervals of the scale would correspond to the division of the living
beings into species. The melody would correspond to our inner life,
meaning an internal finality and, according to Schopenhauer, this is the
Will in its higher objectivity. This is why no artistic emotion reaches the
depth and the intimacy of the musical emotion, which expresses the
complete joy, the total and absolute suffering, it expresses just the
sorrow of the world itself.
While Kant and Schiller, Hegel and Schelling saw in art the source of
relief, the tranquilliser and the opium that reconciles the man with
himself and with life, Schopenhauer confers to it, and especially to
music, the mission of revealing the tragic of existence and the necessity
of another way of liberation. These ideas influenced profoundly the later
European mentality and especially the lyrical sensibilities of the
Romantics.
Schopenhauer’s idea that music releases us of suffering (but not from
delusion) was also enlarged by Emil Cioran. Although the Romanian
philosopher considered love to be the only spiritual force capable to
make life bearable and to give it a meaning, we found out from his
philosophic confessions that the great force which impressed him, which
helped him to separate from the spell of sensuality and the mirage of the
disappointments, helping him to raise in a space “of inner musicality, was
music”. Music pulled him out of “the common relativities of life”, from
the darkness of disappointments. “Music makes us airy – will admit Cioran – it
subtles the matter nullifying us as physical presence”. The magic of music
fascinates us and it transposes us to our ideal world, in the world we

2 Arthur Scopenhauer, Lumea ca Voinţă şi Reprezentare (World as Will and Representation),

Translated in Romanian by Emilia Dolcu, Viorel Dumitraşcu, Gheorghe Puiu, Moldova

Publishing House, Iasi, 1995, p. 346.
 Ludmila BEJENARU 39

should be living. Like it was for Schopenhauer, for Emil Cioran too the
music does not represent neither a spatial image nor an abstract though:
it is an art of pure internalness which helps the human being in its “crazy
discords”, making it to want an “angelic purity” and bringing “a new world”.
If on Schopenhauer the music expresses the Will itself in its purest
essence, on Emil Cioran “the metaphysical madness of the musical experience…
weakens the will to live and the vital main springs”.
Through music Emil Cioran found the way to himself, to his ego and his
profound musical nature.
“I will come back to the music in which worlds are talking to me, the other worlds –
said the author in The Book of Delusions – to the musical mystery that lies in me
and sends its reflexes in mysterious undulations, which tear me apart and reduce my
matter to pure communion”3.
The moments of separating of the delusions world are for the human
being moments in which the entire existence feels like a melody and all
of the being’s sufferings, all the “inner bloodiness, all the tears dropped and all
the presentiments of happiness” assemble and melt into “a convergence of sounds,
into a musical enthusiasm and into a warm and resonant universal community”, into
a “sweet and rhythmic immateriality”.
The immateriality and the sublime of the music appear to Cioran because
of the peace and seraphic light that the Mozart’s music spread into his
soul. “It saved me from what is not Mozartian in me” – answered the philo-
sopher at his own question “Why did not I collapse?”.
Cioran, in his meditations upon the music, goes further then
Schopenhauer by giving the music divine presence. The musical rapture
is for Cioran the entering gate to the mystic rapture, where another
world begins, of absolute immateriality, in which you do not look for
feelings and passions and which everything pleases you without unsettle
your biologic. It is a world in which everything “speaks about God, and God
means peace, harmony, beatitude”. Always present in the depths of Cioran’s
being, Mozart’s melody, with its light and undulations, raises the unsaved
sceptic to the purity and the transcendence of divinity.

3See Emil Cioran, Cartea amăgirilor (The Book of Delusions), Humanitas Publishing House,
Bucharest, 1991, p. 9-45.
40 The Metaphysics of Music on Schopenhauer and Cioran

Bibliography

Emil Cioran, Cartea amăgirilor (The Book of Delusions), Humanitas Publishing

House, Bucharest, 1991.
Th. Ruyssen, Schopenhauer, Translated from French by Cornel Sterian, Technical
Publishing House, Bucharest, 1995.
Arthur Scopenhauer, Lumea ca Voinţă şi Reprezentare (World as Will and
Representation), Translated in Romanian by Emilia Dolcu, Viorel
Dumitraşcu, Gheorghe Puiu, Moldova Publishing House, Iasi, 1995.
Ioana Stefanescu, O istorie a muzicii universale (A History of Universal Music), Part I,
Romanian Cultural Foundation, Bucharest, 1995.