M. J. Neves: The Dehumanization of Art.

Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music

IRASM 43 (2012) 2: 365-376

Maria Joo Neves

Quinta de Perogil, 55 8800-217 TAVIRA Portugal E-mail: filosofiamjn@gmail.com

The Dehumanization of Art. Ortega y Gassets Vision of New Music

UDC: 78.01 ORTEGA Y GASSET Original Scientific Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: October 23, 2011 Primljeno: 23. listopada 2011. Accepted: July 15, 2012 Prihvaeno: 15. srpnja 2012.

The end of the 19th century was a period of important scientific, social and cultural changes which also lead to a disruption of traditional aesthetic values. The new artistic creations provoked disorientation in a public which was left without valid frame of reference for the unconventional artistic productions which then started to appear in all disciplines, be it music, painting, theatre etc. In consequence the new art was highly unpopular. For the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955) unpopularity was an essential characteristic of the new art. While romanticism quickly conquered the people and turned into the popular style as such, very appreciated by everybody, the new art by nature was antipopular and incomprehensible to the crowd. The essay The Rebellion of the Masses (1926) refers to Mallarm, who recalls a reduced public listening to a refined musician [presumably Debussy]. Ortega comments that public underlined with its scarcity the multitudinous absence.1 The philoso1 Jos ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Rebelin de las Masas, Revista de Occidente, Madrid 1972, 65. Debussy composed his Prlude

Abstract - Rsum In the beginning of last century a wave of new artistic creations provoked disorientation in the audience which was left without a valid frame of reference for the unconventional artistic productions. In consequence the new music was highly unpopular. According to Ortega y Gasset, while the expression of personal feelings and emotions was the subject of music writing of Romanticism, the music of Debussy heralded a new era which requests the listener to acquire a spiritual distance allowing only for a minimal interference of sentiments. In this consists the desired dehumanization of art which I intend to analyse here choosing the musical innovations of Debussy as a starting point.
Keywords: Dehumanization of art Ortega y Gasset Debussy Modernism Musical aesthetics

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pher also treats the subject in his book Espaa Invertebrada (1921), in an article titled Masas (Masses) published in the newspaper El Sol in 1926, and in two conferences given in Buenos Aires (1928). The idea of a dichotomy between elites and masses and acknowledgement that new music is indicated only for limited audiences was adopted by the musicologist and critic Adolfo Salazar:
Debussy, like Mallarm, even like Rossetti, inevitably is an author for a reduced audience. For the big mass, greedy for love stories, a work like La Demoiselle lue would be too demanding for their narrow capacity to sustain attention.2

The Spanish philosopher makes an important distinction between the not liking of a specific piece of art and lack of understanding. Incomprehension implies a feeling of humiliation and, not infrequently, rage. This is the main reason for the rejection of the New Art by the large majority of the public: they do not approve because they do not understand. For Ortega, the New Art not only implies a clear break with the previous aesthetic tradition but he would also go much further and divide the population into two classes: the chosen few and the common people, putting aside the wrong assumption of equality of all men. Ortega points out some new aesthetic parameters which may cast some light on the New Art, so unaccessible to the public at large. In particular he refers to a tendency towards purification which consists in nothing less than the elimination of the human. While the expression of personal feelings and emotions was the subject of music writing from Beethoven to Wagner which basically produced only spiritual contamination, the New Music of Debussy heralded an era which requests the listener to acquire a spiritual distance which allows only for a minimal interference of sentiments. The following scene illustrates his concept: Imagine a man dying in his bedroom, his wife, the doctor, a journalist and a painter being present. In this example the painter is supposed to be the most dissociated and the least spiritually involved. He reaches the aesthetic level. It is emotional distance towards the drama taking place that allows the painter to deal with the formal elements: the contours of the humans, the play of light and shadow, the shades of colors etc. The essay Musicalia presents a similar example with Pedro, sad at his wifes death, the compassionate Paulo and the artist Juan, who maintains a
laprs-midi dun faune based on the poem of Mallarm, one of many collaborations between the composer and symbolistic poets of his time. This piece was first performed in Spain in 1905 by the Lamoureaux Concerts of Paris, who played in Barcelona La Mer and the above mentioned Prlude. One year later the Orquesta Sinfnica de Madrid, directed by Enrique Fernandz Arbs, performed the composition. In the six performances the audience was constantly divided between furious protestors and enthusiastic supporters. It was this split of opinion which Ortega had in mind when he refers to the dichotomy between elite and mass. 2 Adolfo SALAZAR, La Dmoiselle lue y el Simbolismo. Orquestra Filarmnica. Otras obras, El Sol, Madrid, 28. 02. 1929.

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spiritual distance between himself and the situation, remaining merely an observer. Only Juan is in condition to reach the aesthetic level. The majority of people, however, would react like Paulo. For them the object that induces aesthetic delight is all the same as in normal, everyday life: human passions, in this specific case, the empathy and the subsequent contagion produced by the pain of Pedro. As the aesthetic contemplation does not request a spiritual attitude any different from normally shows that we deal with a fake aesthetic judgment. Ortega goes even further, establishing parallels between aesthetic access levels and certain composers:
I cannot put into words with more clarity and emphasis the differences between the romantic music and the new music, between Schumann and Mendelssohn on one hand and Debussy and Stravinsky on the other. Pedro, the unhappy widower, is Mendelssohn, Juan could be Debussy while in Pablo the compassionate friend I recognize the public which rejoices in the compositions of the first one.3

The common people which are incapable of reaching the level of pure aesthetics which the new music requires, commit, in the understanding of the philosopher, nothing less than artistic terrorism:
To prefer Mendelssohn to Debussy is a subversive act; it promotes the weaker and violates the higher. The respectable public that applauds the wedding march and boos the Iberia of the excellent modern composer commits an act of terrorism.4

The philosopher protests against the method of pleasing the public by combining the unpopular Debussy with other, widely known works to guarantee a successful performance and a cheerful audience. Apparently, this was quite common practice, as we can see from the following critique:
The Philharmonic Orchestra presented yesterday to its public an early piece of Debussy [La Dmoiselle lue], a performance of remarkable sacrifice as both choirs and soloists had been enlarged, and even more noteworthy because it was clear that the performance would not create much acclaim. In order to balance the result, the
3 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia, El Espectador III (1921), 12, in Biblioteca Virtual de Jos Ortega y Gasset Http://idd00qaa.eresmas.net/ortega/biblio/biblio.htm Ortega reduces the aesthetics of romanticism to Gefhlssthetik due to the immediate expression of the subjectivity of the composers, although other important aesthetical currents existed at the same time. We do not know if this reduction is due to ignorance or if he only tried to make the contrast between the old art, and the new style, starting to emerge with Debussy, even more striking. 4 Ibid. Ortegas style, always very clear, has never been as aggressive as when he talks about the new art, as we can observe in the following examples: (...) what I called dehumanization and repulsion by all that is alive Ortega y Gasset, La Deshumanizatin del Arte, Revista de Occidente, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 2009, 46; () it is the essence of art to create a new objectivity born out of the previous breaking and destruction of the real objects (...) the crushing of reality. Ibid., 171-72; (...) traditional art was repulsive to them(...). With these youths you have to do one of two things: execute them or try to understand them. Ibid., 20. Emphasis added by the author.

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program included the complete series of pieces which form the theatre music composed by young Mendelssohn for The Summernights Dream. An easy and extremely sweet piece whose icing is even excessive for the taste of the regular visitor of the Price Concert Hall, who craves for sweet so much (...).5

In order to further understand the spiritual attitude artistic contemplation requests, Ortega uses the image of looking into the garden through the window. The majority of people is incapable of adapting the eye to the glass, which stands for transparency. Instead they drown in the human destinies which are represented in the artistic object. In line with this train of thought, Ortega establishes spiritual distance as his classification criterion. Aesthetic pleasure must exclusively rely on the form of the representation, independent of its content. Perhaps Aristotle was the first philosopher who dealt with that problem. His Poetics poses the question of whether it was possible to feel pleasure in the contemplation of repulsive images like cadavers.6 Viewing corpses in reality most likely will produce sentiments of horror, shock, fear, or disgust, but hardly pleasure. But even when there is no potential for pleasure in anything the aesthetic object represents, the form, the technique of presentation may be delightful. The Spanish philosopher approaches the issue from a different angle. Being confronted with a public excited about artistic works in the romantic style, he doubts that it is legitimate to qualify this delight as aesthetic.
From Beethoven to Wagner, the subject of music was the expression of personal emotions. The music artists composed big sound-buildings in order to house their autobiographies within them. Art was more or less an act of confession. Aesthetic pleasure was nothing else but contamination... From Beethoven to Wagner all music was melodramatic.7

This contamination, clarifies Ortega, is not spiritual but mechanical, is being produced automatically and confirms the human weakness in which the subject, instead of taking pleasure in an artistic object, takes delight in himself. On the other hand, art cannot consist in psychic infection as that is an unconscious process. The mechanization works unconsciously but in unconsciousness the faculty of judgment does not operate. According to Immanuel Kant,8 the feeling of aesthetic pleasure derives from an act of judgment about an object, a judgment
5 A. SALAZAR, La Dmoiselle lue y el Simbolismo. Orquestra Filarmnica. Otras obras, El Sol, Madrid, 28/02/1929. 6 ARISTOTLE, Potica, 1448 b, 9. 7 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed.cit., p. 31. 8 We found that little note on the aesthetics of Kant of interest because the Spanish philosopher continued his studies between 1905 and 1908 in Leipzig, Berlin and Marburg where he became a disciple of the Neokantian Hermann Cohen. As he states himself: The work of Kant contains the decisive secrets of modern times, both its virtues and its limitations. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Kant Reflexiones del Centenario 1724-1924, Revista de Occidente, April-May, 1924, 3.

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with feelings, but always a judgment. Any aesthetic appreciation derives from intelligence, allied with the feeling of pleasure, never from emotions alone. This is a new spiritual condition where the faculty of knowledge, in its new use, creates, aligned with a purely subjective feeling, a new quality of judgments. The satisfaction or the artistic joy appear as an effect of consciousness, which we acquire from the pure form in which aesthetic objects consist, from its organic and immanent causality; we are in front of the perception of all finalities without end or pure forms that build the object, which produces in us the specifically artistic pleasure. In a more colloquial way the Spanish philosopher says: art is contemplation, not pushing.9 Exactly that specific feature of aesthetic judgment constitutes for Kant the a priori principle and therefore the condition of possibility of that way of judging: the pure form of conformity to ends.10 All true aesthetic appreciation requires this contemplative posture but with reference to the new music there is not any meaningful access to any piece without that attitude. Either the listener is capable of realizing the necessary spiritual distance, or he simply remains outside the realm of artistic pleasure which here does not occur through human elements but exclusively and only through essentially aesthetic elements. For that reason Ortega converts Debussy and Stravinsky into the new paradigms:
The music of Debussy or Stravinsky invites us to take the contrarian view. Instead of paying attention to the sentimental echo of the music in ourselves, we direct the ear and all our attention to the sound itself and to what is happening, what is really there in the orchestra. We receive one sound after the other, we taste it, appreciating its color and we could even say, its shape. This music is something external to ourselves: it is a distant object, perfectly localized outside of ourselves and in front of it we feel like pure contemplators. We enjoy the new music concentrating towards the exterior. It is the music that interests us, not its resonance within ourselves.11

According to the Spanish philosopher, the most original of the new art, represented by Debussy, is that it has a tendency towards the form. In order to succeed, a cleaning from all human content was necessary and this tendency for elimination of the human in art was called dehumanization by the philosopher. From the moment in which the human elements diminish because they only enjoyed the content but not the form of the composition the ordinary people are incapable of aesthetic delight. The empathy with the contents disguised the incapacity which revealed itself, therefore the justified unpopularity of the new art. With the temporal distance our eyes allow, we verify that Europe registered tremendous changes at the turn of the century. Big international expositions
J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia..., 13. The 11 of Immanuel KANTs Kritik der Urteilskraft is dedicated precisely to this issue: Das Geschmacksurteil hat nichts als die Form der Zweckmigkeit eines Gegenstandes (oder der Vorstellung desselben) zum Grunde. 11 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Musicalia..., 13.
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allowed for contacts with artistic creations from far away which inspired many young artists because of their exotic character. Ortega wrote: The painter, instead of going more or less towards reality, went against it. He has proposed to himself to deform it, to break its human aspect, to dehumanize it. Traditional painting created the illusion that we could deal with the represented objects.12 The description illusive is necessary because it points to the problem discussed in the previous paragraph about wrong aesthetic enjoyment produced by human content in artistic works. With the new dehumanized painting, it becomes impossible to deal with, even in an illusory way. The subject is obliged to come out of his natural attitude and has to improvise another way13 to deal with the things. In visual arts, specially when they are figurative, it is more easy to distinguish form from content, but what happens with music? In music form and content seem inseparable. It was Hanslick14 who pointed out that the one and only object in music are the sonority forms in movement, therefore the music does not present anything outside of itself: no object, no feeling, no copying of nature, no conceptual content, etc. As the musicologist demonstrates, exactly the same sound can express opposite emotions: vitality and joy or hate and rage, it is all due to the dynamics of the sound and not to any definite emotional content that obviously does not exist. With reference to musical compositions it was also essential to purge the private feelings and equip them instead with objectivity. This was the heroic achievement of Debussy. For that reason, according to Ortega, the dehumanization of music started with Debussy. But let me pose the question if dehumanization is really the appropriate term. At the time of the prestigious Rome Award, Debussy proposed to leave the descriptive aspects of music aside and to turn to its human aspects. With reference to his piece Printemps (Spring) inspired by Botticellis painting, he wrote:
This one has the title Printemps, not anymore the Spring in its descriptive sense but the human side. I wanted to express the slow and painful genesis of beings and things in nature, increasingly unfolding and ending in incredible joy of being reborn in a new life of another kind.15

I agree with others who find the attribute dehumanization inappropriate. Apart from its appealing, attention-gathering quality, which created a lot of publicity,
12 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 27. Once again verbal aggressiveness: to go against; to deform; to break. 13 According to Ortega, passions and feelings belong to a distinct psychic environment, they are secondary emotions that provoke in our interior artist ultra-objects. These feelings are specifically aesthetic. 14 See Eduard HANSLICK, Do Belo Musical, ed. 70, Lisbon 2002. 15 Jean BARRAQU, Debussy, Seuil, Paris 1962, 64.

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the term devalues the meaning of what is precisely at stake. The philosopher got caught up in contradictions as pointed out by Ciriaco Morn: How can Ortega call art dehumanized which in his own words is a new way to feel existence?16 This new way to feel existence is refined and elegant, implies dissociation and an analysis of primary material, instead of being carried away emotionally. The new spectator is an intelligent one, who rejoices in the artistry of the object quite independent from its content and, finally, a spectator who authentically realizes the aesthetic experience. According to Ortega the new style has the following characteristics: When we analyze the new style we find in it certain tendencies which are intimately connected. They have a tendency towards 1. dehumanization of art 2. avoiding living forms 3. creating a work of art which assumes to be nothing else but art 4. considering art as a game and nothing else 5. essential irony 6. eluding all falseness and therefore leads to scrupulous realization 7. art, having no transcendency at all17 We find that the dehumanized art realizes itself through itself and not through any object outside of itself the arts artistry and that it is not transcendent. All the rest lucidness, irony etc. are the means to arrive at that goal.18 About artistry we have dealt with above, may it suffice at this point to speak about non-transcendency. In the previous century music or poetry had been elevated even above religion, being in charge of saving mankind of temporal misery while the artist was half-way between the human and the divine. Now, on the contrary, despite being dedicated to his art, the artist considers his work as non-transcendent. Art lost the seriousness and solemnity it had before. For Ortega art is essentially irrealization or even de-realization, because one of the components of an aesthetic object consists in the fragmentation of reality. The essence of art aims at the creation of a new objectivity which is achieved at the cost of the annihilation of the
16 Ciriaco MORRN ARROYO, Las dos Estticas de Ortega y Gasset, in Centro Virtual Cervantes, 439. Http://idd00qaa.eresmas.net/ortega/biblio/biblio.htm For Taruskin, French modernism endeavoured to minimize and ideally eliminate everything the Germans wanted to maximize. He expressed the view that Ortegas term dehumanization is more adequate than the the battle of frivolousness and pretension, the way musicologists and critiques normally proceed to describe French and German music in the late 19th and early 20th century. Frivolous were the French because they dared to restore decorative values, searched for pleasure and beauty instead for the sublime as well as their ironic touch; the Germans were pretentious because of the weight and transcendency they attach to works of art. See Richard TARUSKIN, Getting Rid of Glue, in Music in the Twentieth Century, The Oxford History of Western Music, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2010, 60. 17 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 20, 21. 18 Morrn reduces the seven criteria of Ortega for dehumanization to three: elimination of human forms; artistic art; lack of transcendency. See C. MORRN ARROYO, op. cit., 440.

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real objects. In consequence the term style refers to the genuine manner each artist de-realizes the things. For the Spanish philosopher the best and foremost composer to musically de-realize the reality was Debussy:
We have to remove all private feelings from music, purify it in exemplary objectivation, this was the heroic deed of Debussy. After him it is possible to listen to music serenely, without drunkenness and without crying. It is the conversion of the subjective into objective. Debussy dehumanizes the music and therefore the new era of the of sound art starts with him.19

We very much doubt that the philosopher, who was not a specialist on music, would come to this conclusion all by himself. It is more than likely that Ortega was well aware of the conference Introduction to the New Music of de Falla in the Ateneo of Madrid in 1915 where he specifically refers to Debussy as the renovator of the musical art:
From these efforts to liberate itself from old routines the new music was born: the music free from chains and strange tutelage, which exists because of itself and for itself, which strives to realize that ideal, that was unconscious / or unknown to the primitive manifestations of tone artistry (...) I referred to Claude Debussy because we can assert, without fear of being caught lying, that his work definitely achieved the movement of innovation in the art of sound20

One year later the magazine Revista Musical Hispanoamericana which was coedited by the eminent musicologist Adolfo Salazar, a defender of musical modernism and former student of Bartolom Perez Casas, Manuel de Falla e Maurice Ravel, published the conference materials. In 1915 Salazar launched the Sociedad Nacional de Msica for the promotion of contemporary chamber music, in the same year Bartolom Perez Casas created the Orquesta Filarmnica de Madrid which performed on March 18 Debussys La Mer. Under the direction of Perez Casas Debussy was performed more than 50 times between 1915 e 1936. Salazar, who was the music critic of the newspaper El Sol from 1918 to 1936, possessed a vast musical knowledge. More than once his texts assume the character of teachings. As a professed defender of the new music and great admirer of Debussy he contributed to the sensitizing of the public. He, no doubt, was the principal educator of aesthetic judgment in Spain. His reviews were not limited to the appreciation of the presentation, always very detailed about the interpretation, but went further. He analyzed the concert programs, the reactions of the audience and dared to point out the way, he believed, the orchesJ. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 34. Manuel de FALLA, Introduccin a la Musica Nueva, Revista Musical Hispanoamericana, Madrid, December 1916, 2-5.
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tras should proceed. Like the words of de Falla, the reviews of Salazar left a footprint in Ortegas thinking. Let us look at some examples:
It was Debussy who in LAprs-midi dun faune discovered the new musical continent (...)21 (...) it is impossible nowadays to compose as if Debussy did not exist.22 As I repeatedly said before Debussy for me is the most modern and the most advanced musician (...)23

Over many years the articles of Adolfo Salazar in El Sol kept Ortega y Gasset informed about the currents of modern music. The philosopher also chose El Sol for the publication of his thoughts on musical aesthetics the essay Musicalia in 1921. Without much musical background, the philosopher grasped the essence of the musicological discussion while the jury was still out24 and defended the new music against booing audiences and devastating criticism of new aesthetic expressions. On the other hand, as has been shown in the beginning of this article, his thoughts also gained influence in the musicological realm. In conformity with Ortega, Debussy himself confirms that he intends to write his compositions in total distance from himself,25 as if he could reach a pure form of contemplation free from the subject that contemplates. The composer almost strips himself of all what is his own, of everything that constitutes his biography, his private life, his fears and anxieties, his preferences, his loves, in order to be simply and exclusively a disposable instrument in the service of the contemplation of nature. From the beginning he attaches titles to his compositions which refer to the natural elements and this habit continues in his mature work like La Mer (The Sea) or Nuages (Clouds). Nevertheless, as the composer indicates, his works lack descriptive character or any program. The advocates of programatic music believe that music should describe or even imitate external objects. Its aesthetic value would be subordinate to the quality of that imitation. With Debussy, however, titles have an inspiring character but are neither descriptive nor directed to emotion, nor are they sentimental representations. They are evocations of the essential. Intuition and communion with nature transform art itself
A. SALAZAR, Russia y la Revolucin Musical, Espaa, Madrid, 21. 02. 1920. A. SALAZAR, Las conferencias del Instituto Francs, El Sol, Madrid, 21. 04. 1920, 15. 23 A. SALAZAR, Orquestas Filarmnica y de Cmara - Cuarteto Rafael. Obras Nuevas, El Sol, Madrid, 04. 04. 1933. 24 For a number of musicologists, Debussys innovations would not survive the fashion, condemned to sink into oblivion: (...) this music of Debussy is a transitional phenomenon (...).Luis VILLALBA, Debussy. La Msica Nueva, Arte Musical, n. 45, Madrid, 15. 11. 1916, 3. 25 Excelsior, 11 February 1911. Interview accorde Henri Malherbe loccasin du Martyre de Saint Sebastien; in S. JAROCINSKI, Debussy. Impressionisme et Symbolisme, 111.
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into a cognitive instrument. Through its intuitive capacity art reveals the essence of things. For the composer nature is the true school, not the conservatoire nor the textbooks of composition.26 Intuition assumes a fundamental role in the process of musical creation because music must be composed for the ears, not for paper.27 Nature is the true inspiring muse for those who contemplate her attentively. Nevertheless, the method to connect with that inexhaustible source of inspiration is not descriptive, but imaginative. It is the faculty of imagination, clearly supported by all the knowledge and techniques his owner possesses that freely organizes the elements or impressions28 it receives. Music is not only capable of expressing nature, but does that better than any other art, because its assemanticity allows for comprehension without fixation on one aspect only. It is not a question of direct imitation, but a sentimental transposition of what is invisible in nature. Despite their pretensions of official translators, the painters and sculptors cannot give us the beauty of the universe but only a random and always fragmentary interpretation. They can only grasp one of its aspects, only one at a time. Only the musicians have the privilege to capture all the poetry of night and day, of heaven and earth, rebuild the atmosphere and give rhythm with immense palpitation.29 This idea of synergies had been expressed already by Baudelaire: The perfumes, colours and sounds answer to one another.30 In my opinion, the synergies and analogies are also related to the will to clarity which Ortega so enthusiastically and frequently expressed: (...) art should be all plain clarity, midday, intellect,31 an idea Debussy subscribes to: The French forget too easily the qualities of clarity and elegance which are their own, and let themselves be influenced by German slowness and weight.32 One of the artistic elements which precisely confers clarity and elegance is the arabesque. The arabesque appears as much in music as in visual arts, it is well patent with Debussy or Gustav Klimt and establishes itself as abstract, autonomous, free from imitations because its value resides in its pure form. It is the esteem of the ornament itself, its esthetic autonomy, the form for the form, which makes sense by itself and does not represent anything outside of itself. The
Ibid. Len VALLAS, Les ides de Claude Debussy, Paris 1927, 30. Cf. S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 112. 28 Est-ce une renascense de la musique religieuse?, Excelsior, 11 February 1911. Interview accorde Henri Malherbe loccasin du Martyre de Saint Sebastien; in S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 111. 29 Claude DEBUSSY, Revue Musicale, S.I.M., November, 1913; in S. JAROCINSKI, op. cit., 111. 30 Charles BAUDELAIRE, Correspondances; in P. ROBERTS, Images, The Piano Music of Claude Debussy, Amadeus Press, Oregon 1996, 73. The connections among the arts, for Baudelaire, were the inevitable result of the connection among all things. Ibid. 31 J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 31. Philosophy also participates in the same imperious quest for clarity: Philosophy is an enormous appetite of transparency and a decided will of midday. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, Qu es Filosofia, Revista de Occidente, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1995, 45. 32 C. DEBUSSY, El Sr. Corchea y otros escritos, Alianza Editorial, Madrid 1987, 259.
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arabesque is not a spot, it is a well delineated, well defined line. Debussy melodies are extremely concise and clear, similar to Japanese prints with precise contours, refined and stylish. The abstract character of the arabesque implies a lack of defined symbolic values. This lack of definition, the absence of fixations is welcome and allows to move towards pure beauty. In visual arts the arabesque proudly assumes its ornamental role of illustration. Furthermore, it empowers the painting to live its two-dimensional character as an artistic piece on simple surface without any pretension of three dimensions. In concluding, we can confirm that there existed a happy experience of artistic affinity in the vanguards between music, painting and literature. It was this spirit which, as was well observed by Ortega, created a rupture with traditional art. One of the tools that worked this rupture was the attempt to eliminate the private feelings from the content of works of art, and the subsequent tendency for abstraction. The philosopher called this a movement towards the dehumanization of art, although the will of objectivity, stylizing or refining reality are equally ways of expression and realization of human existence. Imagination, liberated from the restrictions which the codes had imposed on her, opens to new horizons and new possibilities of configurations, and the art ploughs into new territory. Conscious of the novelty and strangeness of which he forms a part himself and aware of the cultural changes, the composer states: the century of airplanes deserves the music of its own.33 Composer and philosopher adopt a similar attitude: neither of them voices any judgments on taste.34 Only consciousness makes the radical difference and the notion that they reached a point of no return.

L. VALLAS, Les ides de Claude Debussy, Paris 1927, 39; in S. JAROCINSKI., op. cit., 123. I have been exclusively moved by the joy of trying to comprehend and neither by anger nor enthusiasm. I searched to discover the sense of the new artistic objectives. J. ORTEGA Y GASSET, La Deshumanizacin del Arte, ed. cit., 53.
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Saetak Dehumanizacija umjetnosti. Vizija nove glazbe Ortege y Gasseta

Poetkom 20. stoljea val novih umjetnikih djela izazvao je dezorijentaciju u sluateljstvu koje je ostalo bez vrstog referentnog okvira za nekonvencionalnu umjetniku produkciju. To je imalo za posljedicu injenicu da je nova glazba bila krajnje nepopularna. Prema panjolskom filozofu Josu Ortegi y Gassetu, dok je izraavanje osobnih osjeaja i emocija bilo predmetom komponiranja glazbe u razdoblju romantizma, Debussyjeva je glazba najavila novu eru koja od sluatelja zahtijeva duhovni odmak, doputajui tek minimalno uplitanje osjeaja. U tome se sastoji eljena dehumanizacija umjetnosti koju analizira ovaj lanak izabravi kao polazinu toku Debussyjeve glazbene inovacije.

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