Attuned to Being: Heideggerian Music in Technological Society

The art and philosophy of a culture capture more than just the most developed consciousness of a people. Particularly in their structural forms as well as in their emphases, selection, and transformation of material cultural artifacts reproduce essential elements of the social context, bringing out the prevailing suppositions and conditioning forces and displaying them prominently. According to Martin Heidegger, the work of art is characterized by its ability to present in an obtrusive fashion its own Being, which it shares with the less dramatic beings around it. Our world, which provides the material of art, is, quite clearly, technological, both in terms of its Heideggerian Being and its Marxian productive powers.