Experiencing of Musical Sound

A Prelude to a Phenomenology of Music

F. J. Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781136754807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

First Published in 1979. This book represents the work done by its author to begin to lay the ground musically and philosophically for enormous tasks that still remain to be done and may require a team of researchers in various fields relating to experiential phenomena. Coming from a background of musicological studies as well as active musical performance, the author's orientation is different from that of the professional philosopher as such, who is apt to understand sound phenomena in more generalized manner rather than addressing himself to specifics in music and music theory. These essays trace the path taken by the author in the last years and are studies that were a necessary prelude to a systematic work on the philosophy of musical sound, a work that is in preparation. Most important has been the attempt to show the qualitative steps taken from Helmholtz through German and French phenomenology to the beginnings of a dialectic of musical sound.

Chapter 1

PRELUDE TO A PHENOMONOLOGY OF MUSIC

The scholarly world of today is beginning to see the need of getting away from over-specialization, and this is also true of the field of both philosophy and of musicology. It is in a spirit of openness that the author submits the following philosophical critique of musicology. As serious musicians and scholars we ought to be open to the horizons that lie beyond the historical dimension and current musicological method — beyond what Husserl would have called a “material ontology” — however important all of this may have been in the past.

We might be tempted to agree to a great extent with Carroll C. Pratt, who in Musicology and Related Disciplines states.^†1

The wide influence which philosophy has always had in the history of human thought and culture justifies a more important place than of late it has enjoyed in the American scheme of instruction. It may be owing to the current neglect of philosophy that musicologists have been far more historical than philosophical in the way they have approached their special studies.

Musicologists, in particular, if they are to fulfill their role as teachers of a great liberal art to a generation of students who have picked up on the run a formidable acquaintance with music of all kinds and descriptions, need in the classroom the wisdom of philosophy more than the facts of specialized research, however important these latter may be in their proper place.

What Pratt is talking about, of course, is in no sense a neglect of rigorous scientific training in musicological research but a putting into perspective of the vast materials of musical research and knowledge, which people actually must and do acquire. Certainly we can never have recourse to the philosophical dimension of musicology simply as an escape from the hard work that goes with the study, e.g. of the history of musical notation — against a background and analysis of the pertinent historical treatises from medieval times through the renaissance and the baroque. For such a study, however, there is required a knowledge not just of the philosophical perspective these documents often give us, but also of the several languages in which they were written. That is perhaps the fascination of the study. Otherwise, it might become sheer scientific drudgery. All of this means a serious study of music and musicology. And this seriousness of purpose can never be labeled mere “severity,” as J. Westrup has pointed out.²

I

More than ever before interdisciplinary give-and-take is required, since it may be the only way we are going to be able to effect the vast new synthesis of knowledge, which is perhaps the task and responsibility of academia today. In this new synthesis musicology will take its honored place among the arts and sciences in western culture and world culture as well. But how can this be accomplished without a philosophical dimension? H. Hilschen brought this out in his paper, “Past and present concepts of the nature and limits of music.”³

Perhaps a look at the definition of musicology is in place. W. Apel regards the main task of musicology to be constant and thorough research into the history and literature of music.⁴ All of us, who have struggled manfully through his history of musical notation together with the manuscripts and treatises that form its background, know full well what an important task that is. In his essay on musicology in American institutions of higher learning the late M. Bukofzer points to historical studies and stylistic criticism as the central occupation of musicology today. The study of musical esthetics is also regarded as a musicological approach.⁵ Yet, though this can indeed deepen and broaden our appreciation of music as an art, it is especially here that the philosophical dimension is necessary.

Can we speak of new “philosophical” horizons in musicology? If so, we must first look to a definition of musicology as we know it now. Yet, what is a definition of anything? Are things really definable at all? Or to what extent? Will we ever be able to give a closed definition of musicology and its area of competence and, if we do so, is there ever any hope of incorporating it into a “philosophy of culture”? Rather, ought we not attempt to give horizon rather than “definition” to our speciality? The ordinary definition of anything, including music, usually defines and at the same time unduly confines the subject. It thus blocks the eventual interdisciplinary fusion that must take place, in order that the various specialties and their corresponding university departments do not become compartments, but rather that they eventually open out onto one another and onto the cultural foundations of western and world civilization. As things stand, however, departments have become estranged from one another, and sometimes one dare not be interdepartmental or risk the wrath of the whole system. This is, of course, difficult to comprehend, especially when the student has been enjoined to study two minor subjects along with his major. If the student actually becomes competent in one or both of his minors, why should this be cause for alarm? And if one of his minors emerges as another major, surely this should be a cause for rejoicing. But too often the situation is otherwise. This is a typical case of rigid categorizing, which can become an effective though unconvincing attempt to escape the interdepartmental and interspecialty problem. It also proves to be psychologically useful in overcoming the anxieties that an interdepartmental challenge inevitably causes.

However that may be, a philosophical definition of anything — at least from the perspective of phenomenology⁶ — does not define and thus confine, close in, or shut off the subjects under discussion. Rather, a definition of something should open out onto horizons and into the situation of the other, however frightening this might seem to be. A definition means this also for the pre-Platonic Greeks, whose word, horizb, means not “to define,” as we have translated it, but “to give boundary to something.” This boundary was not conceived as shutting off but as a “horizon” that beckoned. Only in giving horizons to a thing and in discovering ever new horizons can we hope to merge our various perspectives of reality, academic and otherwise, into one meaningful culture.

And surely the history of music shows us this tendency to reach out for ever new horizons. Especially in music the word, new, is of particular importance. It is perhaps only in this field that the newness of an area is so emphasized, that we name a new era ars nova, nu ove musiche, or neue musik. Of course, this can be and has been overdone. The late L. Schrade complained of the extension of the term ars nova beyond the small area of fourteenth century music it actually stands for.⁷ U. Günther has brought this out again in a recent article in Die Musikforschung.⁸ A. Schoenberg actually became caustic in Style and Idea about the journalistic use of the term neue musik,⁹ just as P. Hindemith complained of the term, Gebrauchsmusik.¹⁰ But it is only the journalistic minded that abuse terms. And even a good journalist knows when to stop. Musicologists and philosophers have learned to be more cautious, because they realize the importance of the concept of newness and the meaningful competence of terms. They may be tempted to agree with Jacques de Liège, that not absolutely everything new is automatically good.¹¹ We do not want to be guilty of what A. Liess in his biography of C. Orff calls in “historicism of the present.”¹² And surely it is only a philosophico-musicological seriousness that can prevent us from becoming too rash in submitting uncritically to the dichotomy of new-old. C. Orff mentions that he makes use of old materials in his compositions not because they are old but because they are valid.¹³ A philosophical validity factor should be our musical loadstone — not archaicism or mere novelty. But this is not the validity factor of traditional value philosophies. Rather, we speak from a phenomenological perspective and outlook. This means an overcoming of traditional values. Horizons are what lend perspective to our present and past positions and musicological stance.

II

In so far as the study of musicology tends to be preoccupied with the historical aspects of music, what are the possible horizons that lie beyond this valuable historical tradition? We might say that beyond history, or rather within it, lies the musical experience and phenomenon. We might even make bold to interpret this musical phenomenon in a phenomenological manner and even come to speak of musical subject and “being.”¹⁴ Musical “being,” of course, does not connote some new form of mysticism or an esoteric ontology. It is rather a serious and concrete going within the musical phenomenon, not beyond it to some ideology or abstract world apart from this one. It is not unlike what G. Marcel calls “inwardness” as the new transcendence. But this inwardness is not introspection or introversion. It is a concrete entering within the phenomenon of music, in this case, so that the phenomenon be allowed to speak for itself, to reveal itself to us, as it is, i.e. phenomenologically, rather than as we categorize it.

What do we imply when we speak of a transcendence over tradition and history, as such? Here we apply to music the distinction between history and Geschichte. History, as we know it, is a recounting of data from the past and present. It relies heavily on scientific methodology and on the western trichotomy of time. According to this, time is projected onto metaphorical space and is divided into three segments: past, present and future. It seems natural for us not to question this established trichotomy, just as it seems natural to us (but is in reality a part of our cultural conditioning) not to question the body-soul dichotomy, or its secular version of anatomy-reason. Yet philosophers through Augustine, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, have questioned it.

Geschichte is not “historicality,” as the translators of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit tell us, or even worse, “historiology.” Perhaps a better translation is simply a happening. Phenomenologically, this means that something is or happens in time but not necessarily only according to the western trichotomy of time. Past, present and future are subsumed into “existential-ekstatic” time, with special regard for the thrust of the future. Obviously, this is also of great import for a musical composition, which seems stretched out in space (on paper!) and progresses from past into the present. Without this spatial metaphor our present concept of musical form is inconceivable. It remains to be seen what kind of “form” emerges from a consideration of a nonspatial view of time. Being, understood phenomenologically, is not static but ek-static, i.e. it is a continual becoming, in which the modalities of present, past, and future are brought together not spatially only but as the emergence (ek-sistence) of the musical phenomenon. Obviously we can only hint at all this in an introductory chapter. It is a question of new horizons — even beyond phenomenology (which can only be regarded as “transitional”). In this new understanding of history we attempt to transcend the western dichotomy of old-new and search for what is valid. This can be done, of course, from any number of philosophical perspectives. And if the writer may be allowed a phenomenological heresy it might even be possible from the viewpoint of philosophical analysis. The present writer prefers to hope with Professor Khatchadourian and others that there is a common meeting ground for both phenomenology and analysis.¹⁵ Perhaps phenomenologists need to pay more attention to the correctives of philosophical analysis. The opposite may also be true. But if one happens to be of phenomenologist leanings one can be excused for approaching problems philosophical and musical from this background.¹⁶

Phenomenology attempts to overcome the classic dichotomy of mind and body, showing that mind is bodily and that body is not just the physical. Overcoming traditions such as this does not mean destroying but rebuilding with the aid of new and perhaps radical insights into a more fundamental unfolding of musical subjectivity and being. For phenomenology is not merely a standpoint or a perspective but a radical attempt to let reality speak (or sound) for itself. When we speak of standpoints and perspectives we speak ordinarily of some individual’s view. In phenomenology it is not just a question of someone’s viewpoint. It...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Dedication
• Introduction
• 1 Prelude to a Phenomonology of Music
• 2 A Critique of Visual Metaphor in Philosophy and Music
• 3 Working Propositions in Sound: a Baroque Suite
• 4 Musical Sound, a Model for Husserlian Time-Consciousness
• 5 Cartesian Theory and Musical Science
• 6 Musicology in Need of New Horizons
• 7 A Phenomenology of Musical Esthetics: The Continuing Redefinition
• 8 Esthetic Re-Education: the Experiencing of Musical Sound
• 9 Implications of Phenomenology for Music Education
• 10 Phenomenological Theme with Dialectical Variation
• Postscript: The “End” of Philosophy: the Muser and Music-Maker
• Acknowledgments