Can music, poetry and art be true?

[Mandryka]

According to Aristotle, to say of what is that it is, and to say of what is not that it is not, it to say the truth.  This sounds like a good first shot at a definition to me, but maybe you disagree.

If Aristotle was right, then I guess neither poetry, nor music nor art can be true -- except in a very boring way e.g. if a poem says something like "grass is green" or a painting by Holbein is a good likeness of Anne of Cleves.

[Spotted Horses]

It seems clear to me that music can't be true in a literal sense (i.e., not contrary to fact). It can be true in a figurative sense (true to the artists feelings or artistic conception). Can considering this question in any way enhance enjoyment or appreciation of music?

[Mandryka]

It seems clear to me that music can't be true in a literal sense (i.e., not contrary to fact).

Why not? Think of the claim that the trills in op 111 are transcendent. That seems to mean something like: those trills express something true which transcends ordinary language (or if not, what can it mean?)

Some people think that Abstract Expressionist art -- the Rothko Chapel etc -- expresses a transcendent truth. That's what Rothko thought, and his sponsors, the De Menils. And although no one can say what Parsifal is about in words, it's quite common for Wagnerians to claim that it encapsulates a truth.

[Spotted Horses]

Why not? Think of the claim that the trills in op 111 are transcendent. That seems to mean something like: those trills express something true which transcends ordinary language (or if not, what can it mean?)

Some people think that Abstract Expressionist art -- the Rothko Chapel etc -- expresses a transcendent truth. That's what Rothko thought, and his sponsors, the De Menils. And although no one can say what Parsifal is about in words, it's quite common for Wagnerians to claim that it encapsulates a truth.

I wouldn't necessarily disagree with any of that, but it seems to me it falls under my second definition of figurative truth.

I got my idea of truth from a dictionary, rather than a philosophical treatise. It has been decades since my interest in proper philosophy fizzled, but I recall that in any reputable philosophical treatise three quarters of the book consists of definitions of words.

Who is to say if the trills in Op 111 are transcendent, or if they are necessary because the piano can't sustain long enough? Two truths, how to pick?

[Mandryka]

One question which arises is this. If music, and art and poetry cannot be  ways of expressing truths otherwise inexpressible, what are music, art and poetry for?

@Spotted Horses Maybe you don't have to pick, that's to say, maybe something is true if and only if one is justified in asserting it. And both transcendent trills and non transcendent trills in op 111 are justifiably assertable. 

There's no way of avoiding philosophy with this sort of question, with all the hard work that that entails.

[AnotherSpin]

One question which arises is this. If music, and art and poetry cannot be  ways of expressing truths otherwise inexpressible, what are music, art and poetry for?

[..]

Could it be that the very fact of their existence is the truth? What is, is.

[Spotted Horses]

One question which arises is this. If music, and art and poetry cannot be  ways of expressing truths otherwise inexpressible, what are music, art and poetry for?

For the consumer, fun, entertainment, meditation, etc. Increasingly sophisticated music give sophisticated pleasure, from the Beatles' Saw You Standing There, to Beethoven's Grosse Fuge.

For the composer or performer, personal satisfaction and paying the bills.

[Florestan]

If music, and art and poetry cannot be  ways of expressing truths otherwise inexpressible, what are music, art and poetry for?

Truth (however it might be defined) is not the only expressible (in whatever way it might be expressed) thing in the world. There's also feeling, emotion, belief --- and I think they are much more suitable to artistic expression than truth, which is more a matter of philosophy and science.

This is not to say that truth have no place in art. Consider this verse:

Cette obscure clarté qui tombe des étoiles

Anyone who has ever gazed a starry sky in the fields or in the mountains will know that it expresses a truth.

[Mandryka]

Truth (however it might be defined) is not the only expressible (in whatever way it might be expressed) thing in the world. There's also feeling, emotion, <snip> --- and I think they are much more suitable to artistic expression than truth, which is more a matter of philosophy and science.

(Note the snip I made. Belief is a matter of truth/falsity. Maybe you mean something else. )

This is like saying that music is music is an emotion producing machine. Like a drug which produces changed emotional states. Siren song.

[Florestan]

Belief is a matter of truth/falsity. Maybe you mean something else.

What I actually mean is the Merriam-Webster definition 2b(1) of faith:

firm belief in something for which there is no proof

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

This is like saying that music is music is an emotion producing machine. Like a drug which produces changed emotional states. Siren song.

As good a definition as any and probably closer to truth (pun) than most.

[Mandryka]

What I actually mean is the Merriam-Webster definition 2b(1) of faith:

firm belief in something for which there is no proof

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faith

As good a definition as any and probably closer to truth (pun) than most.

I thought you might have meant faith!  I don't understand the concept really.

[DaveF]

If music, poetry and art can be true, they must also be capable of being false - just a thought.

Unless you agree with Auden in his Composer sonnet: "You, alone, alone, O imaginary song / Are unable to say an existence is wrong".

[Florestan]

I thought you might have meant faith!  I don't understand the concept really.

It's splendidly illustrated by a famous scene in Don Quijote. The hero asks some peasants in a inn to acknowledge that Dulcinea of Toboso is the most beautiful woman in the world. "Show us this Dulcinea of yours and if that is indeed the case, we will!", they reply. To which the Knight of the Sad Countenance gives a magnificent reply, quoted here from memory: "If I showed her to you, what merit would you have in acknowledging the obvious?"

On a more prosaic tone, the firm belief in something for which there was no proof was what made Columbus and Schliemann act the way they did.

[Cato]

"Quid est Veritas?" 


A religious person would say: God is Truth. 


If Music and its friends want to express Truth, they therefore could be echoes of the original Fiat Lux: the creative impulse itself being a reflection of Divinity's impulse to want - or to need - existence rather than nothingness.

(I should mention that the Latin word fio, used for "become," stems not from esse, "to be," but from facio, "to make."  One could translate the phrase "Let light be made."  The Ancient Greek of the Septuagint uses the verb "geinomai," "to be born," for the creation of light, the verb used in The Odyssey by Homer to describe the creation of Humanity by Zeus (God).)

And what would our hard-headed, practical man say to the idea of "inexpressible" or "transcendent" Truth?

Arnold Schoenberg's text for Die Jakobsleiter, which is an epitome of Humanity's struggles to understand the Divine, has a character called "The Wrestler" (i.e. wrestling with his ideas about God and Existence), who laments:

Warum ward uns kein Sinn gegeben,
ungesagte Gesetze zu ahnen,
kein Auge, da zu sehn,
kein Ohr, da zu hören?

Why was no sense given to us
For being aware of unspoken laws,
No eye (given), for seeing them,
No ear (given), for hearing them?

i.e. The character suspects the struggle for understanding God - for understanding the Truth - is doomed without this extra sense.

The answer may be in the cantata itself: the creative impulse is that Sinn, which the Wrestler wants, but does not realize that he already possesses it!

As Alma Mahler commented, Schoenberg reveled in contradictions! 

 
For those who know German, see:


https://schönberg150.at/images/stories/pdf/jakobsleiter-text.pdf

On a more prosaic tone, the firm belief in something for which there was no proof was what made Columbus and Schliemann act the way they did.

Excellent examples!

Columbus had faith in a book (Ptolemy's), whose calculations about the circumference of the earth were wrong.

Schliemann had faith in a book (Homer's), which most everyone believed did not describe reality, and was only a fantasy.

[San Antone]

I find more truth about human behavior and phycology in the novels of Faulkner than in the writings of Freud or the pharmo-(faux)science of mental health.

It is harder to make the case for music containing truth since there is no overt meaning.  But for me it is akin to the idea of artistic aspiration and any great human endeavor ennobling all of us by the achievement.

By this definition, climbing Everest, Beethoven's 9th symphony, Guernica, all contain truth about humanity.

[Cato]

I find more truth about human behavior and psychology in the novels of Faulkner than in the writings of Freud or the pharmo-(faux)science of mental health.

It is harder to make the case for music containing truth since there is no overt meaning.  But for me it is akin to the idea of artistic aspiration and any great human endeavor ennobling all of us by the achievement.

By this definition, climbing Everest, Beethoven's 9th symphony, Guernica, all contain truth about humanity.

You remind me of my first days in a Psychology course over 55 years ago, when the professor, who had - apparently! - worked with almost everyone in early 20th-century Psychology except Freud (e.g. Bruno Bettelheim, Harry Harlow, B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, et al.), sweated for two days in trying to convince us that Psychology was a "true science."

Sorry, but...no: Psychology is not Physics, but is a description of human behavior, about which one can make generalizations, but such descriptions are not 100% repeatable.  Somebody will break the pattern for some unpredictable reason.

Even Skinner's pigeons turned out to be somewhat unpredictable: and making assumptions about human behavior from animal studies was always fraught with peril!

The irony is that Physics has discovered that unpredictability is a major part of Physics (e.g. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, Chaos Theory, etc.).

[Florestan]

You remind me of my first days in a Psychology course over 55 years ago, when the professor, who had - apparently! - worked with almost everyone in early 20th-century Psychology except Freud (e.g. Bruno Bettelheim, Harry Harlow, B.F. Skinner, Carl Rogers, et al.), sweated for two days in trying to convince us that Psychology was a "true science."

Sorry, but...no: Psychology is not Physics, but is a description of human behavior, about which one can make generalizations, but such descriptions are not 100% repeatable.  Somebody will break the pattern for some unpredictable reason.

Well, "true science" is not the same as "exact science". Psychology is a true science but not an exact one.

[Mandryka]

Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o'clock in the morning.
 
    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
                                    For Thine is the Kingdom
 
    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
                                    Life is very long
 
    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
                                    For Thine is the Kingdom
 
    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the
 
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.


Eliot's Hollow Men. I wonder if anyone would care to argue that there's something true here which only poetry can express.

[Cato]

Well, "true science" is not the same as "exact science". Psychology is a true science but not an exact one.

Well, this professor used all three terms "science," "true science," and "exact science," and claimed Psychology was on the same level of mathematically exact sciences, which it demonstrably can never be.

Nevertheless, a friend from high school also in the course agreed with me: we found that the good man did protest too much.

Psychology courses were part of the training to become a teacher: even worse were the "Educational Psychology" courses, most of which I was able to avoid, thanks to my Classics professors.

Even back then, "Professors of Education" were despised as poseurs, mainly because most of them had spent very little time teaching in grade or high schools, and so in most cases they had very little real experience in Education at all!

As a result, some of the worst teachers in college back then were the Education professors! 

Fortunately, that has changed somewhat.  Any "Professor of Education" who has not spent at least 20 years teaching successfully should never have been given a doctorate.

[Spotted Horses]

Well, "true science" is not the same as "exact science". Psychology is a true science but not an exact one.

I'm not sure what an exact science is. There are subfield of physics which deal with absolutely deterministic laws, classical mechanics, general relativity, although there are always measurement uncertainties. There are other subfield which deal with statistical descriptions of phenomena, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, non-equilibrium physics, and there are subfields of physics that have no relation to reality, string theory and other cults of theoretical particle physics. Psychology could be thought of as an extreme case of complex system physics.