How to submit musical works to the collaborative list of compositions

While composers of classical music have been interested in philosophy for many centuries, it has become more common since the 1890s for such musicians to directly reference their source of philosophical inspiration in their finished compositions.  For example, while Wagner made it clear in his communications that he was deeply influenced by Arthur Schopenhauer’s ideas, works like Tristan und Isolde and the Ring Cycle are based most obviously on medieval texts and myth; Schopenhauer’s idea of the will is an undercurrent, not set “directly” to music via Schopenhauer’s own words.  In contrast, early responses to Nietzsche’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, like Gustav Mahler’s Symphony no. 3 and Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra included parts of Nietzsche’s text more overtly: in Mahler’s work a poem from the book is set as an orchestral Lied, and in Strauss’s work various sections of Nietzsche’s book are given as programmatic titles in the score.  In the context of this project, this kind of overt, direct use of philosophical material in musical composition is known as “composing philosophy.”  This kind of composing is also distinct from the personal philosophies of composition that many composers have authored over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The google sheet linked to this section of the website aims to be a collaborative spreadsheet of an array of such compositions that have appeared throughout the twentieth century and recent decades. My hope is that it will continue to grow as composers writing pieces with overt links to philosophy add their own musical works or the works that have inspired them, or as other interested musicians and readers of this website add musical works worth noting in the context of the over practice of “composing philosophy.”  While I have focused on musical works inspired by Western philosophy in getting the list started (because these cases are also the focus of my personal research), classical music based on other philosophical sources is also welcome here.  I hope that over time this will become a robust, if never comprehensive, list of such musical compositions.

To offer a composition for the list, please fill out the google form following the link below.  Please fill in, especially, the main philosopher at the heart of the musical material in the work; if there are several, please indicate that using the miscellaneous field.  More information is better than less; as I transfer your input to the formal (published) google sheet, I will edit as necessary. 

Thank you!