Lisa Pasch "Van der Leeuw's writing style"

While reading Van der Leeuw’s book this semester, I have often found myself frustrated with his writings. I feel the content is poorly organized and sometimes besides the point with strange and abrupt transitions. This post is not meant to be a hate blog on v.d.L, but I would like to turn your attention to the chapter on music, beginning with Holy Sound. He writes about how music is an integral part of many religious ceremonies and practices. The way in which he writes about “magical formulas” and how “wild, stimulating music grips the spirits of men everywhere in the world.” His out there descriptions of magic and sweeping generalizations about the effects of music on man makes reading and understanding his theory of art very difficult. Music has different effects on different people and cultures, and what is “wild” and “stimulating” to us may be boring or uninteresting to those of a dissimilar culture. I feel that throughout the entire book there have been instances like this where he makes general assumptions without any real life examples or he uses the examples to justify the theory rather than looking at examples and developing the theory from them. Music has special meanings for many different cultures, but I don’t feel as if Van der Leeuw is using these examples or ideas to develop a cohesive compilation, rather he is writing on his thoughts and ideas in a casual manner. Perhaps it is my nature as a college student to desire my readings to be clear and understandable or my lack of experience reading the texts of philosophers which leads me to misunderstand. Either way, when constructing my own views on the nature of art, I will probably not be referring to Van der Leeuw’s writings very often.