Label

“Lecture notes and commentary compiled by Brianni Lee” comprises lecture notes from three different classes at Harvard College: “Understanding Beethoven,” “Understanding Wagner’s Ring” and “Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory.” This text was created by Brianni Lee, who was a student studying German and Philosophy from 2016 to 2020 at Harvard. The notes were initially created at Harvard for Brianni’s own purpose of studying for her classes. It has not been displayed or published for the public. The text will be divided into four sections with the introduction and the table of content. Each section will have lecture notes for each of the four courses with the addition of Brianni’s commentaries and excerpts of texts that she read for the class.

The overall theme of this text is the interdisciplinary study of German philosophy, literature, history, and music. Brianni took “Understanding Beethoven” her freshman year, “Understanding Wagner’s Ring” and “Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory” her junior year. There are three goals with this project. First, present Brianni's academic journey throughout college. Second, show the intersections between philosophy, literature, and music in the context of German intellectual history. Third, present different features of how study of arts can be done by faithfully presenting lectures given by different professors. This text has a potential for giving a historical account of how a college student picked her courses studied throughout her college years as well as creating documents that can be used in studying the professors’ thoughts and reception from the perspective of a student. This text could be particularly interesting and helpful to scholars interested in the reception history of philosophers, students studying German culture and philosophy, and historians and sociologists interested in the lives of individual college students.