Abstract

This investigation comprises an ontological examination of electroacoustic music as represented in Karlheinz Stockhausen's composition, Gesang der Junglinge. To establish a philosophical background, it includes an extensive discussion of such entities as art, technology, language, truth, essence, being, and causality, with emphasis on ideas advanced by the twentieth-century philosopher Martin Heidegger. ;The analysis of this work is structured around the ancient Aristotelian idea that four aspects of cause are responsible for the coming into Being of an entity, namely causa materialis , causa formalis , causa finalis , and causa efficiens . The Latin names, of course, originated centuries after the time of Aristotle. The four causae are strongly interdependent, and there is extensive overlap of one with another. ;Of utmost importance in a Heideggerian analysis of an entity is an attitude that the entity be allowed to show itself for what it is. As a consequence of the adoption of this attitude in the present investigation, Gesang der Junglinge has been accorded the freedom to project symbolically the world of the composer as it existed in the onto-historical moment of his life. With the aid of the ancient Greek words poiesis and aletheia , we characterize the emergence of this symbol; namely, there is a poiesis of the essence or Being of the entity, and with this poiesis a simultaneous revealing of aletheia. The approach taken in this investigation is not limited to electroacoustic music. It is applicable to works of art and aesthetics in general, and to other entities as well