Categorial vision may seem a strange, if not erroneous way of naming the manner in which Heidegger discloses the ontological essence of art, truth and freedom. For with Heidegger, the term "categorial" pertains solely to the ontological characteristics of things present-at-hand (Heidegger, 1962a: 79); that is, things which remain categorially distinct from the temporal structures or "existentialia" of 'Dasein'. Furthermore, categorial vision is usually associated with Husserl's scientifically nuanced phenomenology concerning the intuited revelation of objective essences beyond the psychological relativism of subjectively constituted facts. Yet Heidegger's ontology of Being, despite its more poetic, hermeneutic mode of thinking, is nonetheless closely modeled on Husserl's anti-idealist attempt to overcome the intractable dualism of subject/object relations through the categorial vision of pre-reflective essences. Both are concerned with dismantling the transcendental conditions of categorical or conceptual identity. what Heidegger refers to as the metaphysics of presence dominant since Plato.

This collection presents numerous discoveries and fresh insights into music and musical practices that shaped distinctly localized individual and collective identities in pre modern and early modern Europe. Contributions by leading and emerging European music experts fall into three areas: plainchant traditions in Aquitania and the Iberian peninsula during the first 700 years of the second millennium; late medieval musical aesthetics, traditions and practices in Paris, Padua, Prague and more generally England, Germany and Spain; and local traditions in Renaissance Augsburg and Baroque Naples and Dresden. In addition to in-depth readings of anonymous musical traditions, contributors provide new details concerning the lives and music of well-known composers such as Adémar de Chabannes, Bartolino da Padova, Ciconia, Josquin, Senfl, Alessandro Scarlatti, Heinichen and Zelenka. This book will appeal to a broad range of readers, including chant scholars, medievalists, music historians, and anyone interested in music’s place in pre modern and early modern European culture.