Music always ultimately confronts man with the meaning of human existence that cannot be expressed in ordinary words, but sung, also through words, albeit full words that ‘revive’ man from profound vital afflictions. Nothing could be more foreign to the traditional temporality of music than an aesthetic that attaches chief importance to the present moment, favors discontinuity, and denies the teleological view of music, thereby severing the moment perception from both its past and its future. The predominant philosophical mode of this time is acknowledged to be existentialism, a view of life that the present moment is the nodal point of existence. It is in the present that existence is actual, most vital. The way to sense one’s existence is to charge each present moment with content and meaning.
