TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT 3

RESUMÉ (DANISH ABSTRACT) 4

INTRODUCTION 5

WHY MUSIC? 9

REFLECTIONS ON METHOD 14

ENACTMENT AND MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 16

The phenomenological listening experience 16

Active perception 22

Aesthetic perception 23

Enaction & Mindfulness 26

Embodiment 32

ON THE SCENT OF MUSIC 39

Music and emotions 40

Moodagent - A study case 45

MUSIC AS AN ACTIVE DOING 47

Musical Affordances 51

A Sonic World 54

INTERLUDE; DANCING –ILLUSTRATING THE FORCE OF EMBODIMENT 56

MUSIC AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON 63

MUSIC AND TIME 66

2

SITUATEDNESS OF MUSICAL EXPERIENCE 73

Intentional Arc 74

Scheme of Reference 75

Habitus of Listening 77

Situated Musical Actions 79

SOCIAL AFFORDANCES 81

Mutual tuning-in Relationship 83

Joint Attention 85

SETTING THE SCENE 88

MUSICAL IDENTITIES 92

LISTENING TO MUSIC – A PARTAKING OF THE MUSICAL WORLD. 96

CONCLUSION 100

REFERENCES 103

3

Abstract

How do we experience music? I argue that music is an active doing, essentially situated

within the current of our everyday lives. Through a phenomenological approach, I

investigate the character of our musical experience, in particular the experience of listening

to music. The specific mode of listening of interest here is framed by the notion of deep

listening, which is combined with the character of aesthetic perception and in addition the

state of attention achieved by mindfulness. An expansion of the active component of

perception is called for, in order to justify my claim of music as an active doing. The

enactive approach to perception, combined with the crucial aspects of embodiment, in

particular those demonstrated by Merleau-Ponty, will establish a theoretical frame in

which the experience of music is illuminated as an active doing. But music is a multi

facetted entity, facilitating a whole range of potential usage – we do things to and with

music. An illustration of the multi facetted nature of our musical experience is initiated by

examining the emotive aspects – a complex field, suggesting music as ranging beyond the

subject. Investigating this mutual availability, I draw on Gibson’s theory of affordances,

applying this specifically to the musical domain by conceptualizing musical affordances.

Music offers different affordances dependent on the perceiver, the use and the context.

Applying the theoretical elucidations of enactment, embodiment and musical affordances

to the area of dance, is not merely an exemplification of the theoretical foundation, but

equally a reminder of the missing inquiry into the social aspects of our musical experience.

The investigation of the social dimension is initiated by the temporal facets of music,

assisting along with the theory of social affordances, the claim of music as a shareable

entity. The mutual sharable character of the musical experience is examined through

mutual-tuning-in relationships and joint attention, demonstrating how the musical

experience is dramatically altered, when shared with others. The social investigation will

find its closure in an illustration of the physical surrounding’s impact on the musical

experience and an examination of the identity material within music. Finally, I will discuss

my conception of the experience of listening to music as a partaking in the musical world,

theoretically speaking.

4

Resumé (Danish Abstract)

Hvordan oplever vi music? Jeg vil positionere musikoplevelsen som en aktiv handling

funderet i vores sociale omverden. Gennem en fænomenologisk tilgang ønsker jeg at

afdække i særdelelshed, hvorledes vi lytter til musik. Den særlige oplevelse, jeg sigter imod,

er karakteriseret ved, at det lyttende subjekt er dybt involveret i den respektive musik. En

analyse af æsthetisk perception og det buddistiske begreb om mindfulness understøtter

det dybe engagement. For at illustrere det aktive perspektiv af musikoplevelsen giver jeg

en teoretisk udredning af den aktive tilgang til perception generelt betragtet, der sammen

med Merleau-Ponty’s begreb om kropslighed, supplerer det teoretiske fundament for min

argumentation. Jeg vender mig efterfølgenede til at applicerere disse teoretiske

betragtninger på en analyse af musikoplevelsen, hvor musikkens følelsesmæssige aspekter

åbner mod en forståelse af oplevelsen af musik som en intersubjektiv entitet. Dette

forfølges nærmere ved at specificere de strukturer, musikken tilbyder forskellige

perceptioner, en strategi der bygger videre på Gibson’s teori om affordances. Musik er en

mangfoldig entitet, der tilbyder sig og udnyttes i mangfoldige scenarier i vores sociale liv.

De teoretiske pointer vedrørende aktiv perception, kropslighed og de intersubjektive

potentialer eksemplificeres ved at se nærmere på dansen. Dans er desuden en uundgåelig

påmindelse om den sociale dimension af vores musikoplevelse. De sociale konnotationer

danner grundlag for den anden del af undersøgelsen, effektueret af en analyse af de

temporale aspekter ved oplevelsen af musik. Musik er en stor del af vores hverdag og dybt

integreret i vores omverden. Den intersubjektive tilgængelighed af musikoplevelsen

undersøges gennem deres kontekstualisering, og hvorledes musik tilbyder sig socialt.

Karakteren af musikoplevelsens sociale tilgængelighed illustres via mutual-tuning-in

relationship og joint attention. Endelig påvises de fysiske opgivelsers indflydelse og

musikkens sociale identitetspotentiale. Jeg konkluderer med teoretisk at konceptualisere

musikoplevelsen som deltagelse i den musiske verden – en verden der er uadskillelig fra

vores hverdagsverden. At opleve musik er en aktiv handling, dybt forankret i vores sociale

omverden.

5

Introduction

Music is a ubiquitous form of art – we are surrounded by music in our everyday lives. Music

is of great importance to people across the world and it is used in a variety of different

scenarios. Music is not just something that happens to us, something that we are exposed

to. On the contrary, music is something we do, or rather; we do things to and with music.

Music is an active doing essentially embedded within our social lives. I wish to examine the

character of our musical experience – I wish to gain an understanding of how we

experience music in our everyday lives.

Choosing music as the object of my investigation is an obvious choice, considering my

personal appreciation of music in general. Music is a significant part of my life. I myself use

music in various ways – i.e. relaxation, mood regulation, concentration, as a social

gathering point –just to mention a few. But I feel committed to expose that I am not a

practicing musician. I am simply an enthusiastic listener. In other words, I have no

technical background knowledge of the phenomenon music, besides my own

autobiographical history of innumerous listening episodes. But as we will later determine,

such technical knowledge of music is by no means a necessary ingredient in my approach

to the musical phenomenon1. On the contrary, I will argue that music is a multi-available

entity, one that is accessible to anyone who is willing to openly engage with the

phenomenon. This calls for an extensive examination of the particular mode of listening to

music, I embrace. The particular mode of listening will be illuminated by investigating the

nature of aesthetic perception, combined with notions such as deep listening and

mindfulness.

My focus on music must be conceived in general concerns. Put differently, I do not intend to

describe specific technical aspects of music; neither will I engage in a definition of the kind

of music at stake. I will simply focus on music in general and in particular our experience of

it. But I must refer to a wide-ranging consensus within recent philosophical treatment of

1 Though it certainly might be in other kinds of approaches, especially within musical science.

6

music, which is the tendency to focus on instrumental music, also called pure or absolute

music2. Focus on instrumental music leaves out the complicating representational aspects

of lyrics and vocals potentially conveying their own philosophical problems. For the sake of

simplicity, I therefore embrace this strategy.

Historically conceived, music has indulged in a varied acceptance, scattered amongst the

recognition of the highest member of the fine art to the degradation, and nearly exclusion,

from the artistic forum3. Regardless of the status however, music has always played an

important role in different societies and to different people. Music is a philosophically

difficult form of art, which is why the focus tends to be that of the visual arts. Recently

music has received renewed interest, and within the area of philosophy (among others)

this interest has resulted in various examinations of music .Traditionally, the area of

musical experience has been approached within an examination of the solitary experience.

The focus has been on the individual experience of music4. My approach to the

phenomenon is of a different character, as I wish to emphasize the social dimension of our

musical experience. I do not intend to neglect the gains of the solitary experience-devotee,

but I do believe that focusing on the social dimension of the experience of music will serve

as illumination of important aspects, aspects that the common conception of the musical

experience hopefully can profit from. Music is essentially founded within the current of our

everyday lives, and I find it impossible to disregard the social aspects of music in general.

This places me in a difficult situation. I simultaneously seek a clarification of the active

component of our musical experience and equally of the social foundation. In overcoming

the obstacles of such a twofold strategy, I have chosen to separate the treatment of the two

statements. This means that my investigation of the nature of the musical experience falls

in two parts; the first part will be focusing on illustrating the active character of the musical

experience. This will form the theoretical fundament of my thesis and in order to establish

this, I have postponed the analysis of music to the second half of the first part. I will in other

2 Kivy (2002), pp. 24ff and Krueger (2009), p. 99

3 Kivy (2002), p. 9 4 Ex. Kivy (2002), Fiske (1990, 1993, 2008)

7

words seek a theoretical frame, in which I can develop my view on the musical experience. I

will in particular be focusing on the experience of listening to music. I will claim that

listening to music is an active doing essentially embodied and embedded within our world.

But listening to music is not a solitary affair – a pure subjective experience restricted

within the limits of the perceiving individual. Music inescapably is a part of our social

worlds – music inevitably summons the presence of the other5. Not merely is music

produced within this social world, it is equally maintained and to some extend created

within social contexts as well. Listening to music with others dramatically alters the

listening experience, as well as the social surroundings will have an impact on the

character of the musical experience. The social foundation of our musical experience will

form the second part of my investigation. In the social dimension of the musical experience

I will focus more broadly on the experience of music in general, in order to illustrate the

multifaceted character of music. This will be initiated by the intermediary section of the

two parts, which will be focusing on dancing. I will nevertheless continuously throughout

the second part be exemplifying the listening experience in relation to my theoretical

elucidations and I thereby hope to preserve a permanence in my findings.

But I must emphasize that the separation of music as an active doing and the social

dimension of the musical experience is an artificial, conceptual distinction. In real life they

are inseparably linked. The challenge has been to develop a frame in which each of the

claims could be described, and it is in this respect that I have sought a separate treatment

of the two. However, these difficulties have haunted me throughout my investigation. It has

been extremely difficult to isolate theoretical concepts in order to examine them

separately. I have nevertheless maintained this strategy as I believe that a separate

treatment of each of the notions at stake is necessary, not merely for the understanding of

the particular notions, but equally to grasp the unity of the notions. Besides, such a strategy

enables me to thoroughly describe my conception of a specific notion.

5 Cumming (2000), p. 71. This claim will be thoroughly elaborated in the section “Social Affordances”.

8

The difficulties regarding the separation of particular notions are partly due to the nature

of the musical experience. Musical experience is an elusive phenomenon in many ways, and

music is a complex entity, communicating a whole range of relationships6. But in order to

grasp these, I will be confined in a different mode of articulation than the experience itself.

The experience of music is the only way to understand the phenomenon, whereas my

description of the musical experience merely will be an attempt to articulate ways in which

we can begin to understand elements of this elusive phenomenon. I have sought to

illustrate some of the aspects of our musical experience, both through my theoretical

groundwork, the analysis of music, and in particular by exemplifying my claims. But I am

aware that I raise far more questions, than I answer. In delimiting my field of research, I

have intentionally excluded certain areas. This exclusion has solely been executed on behalf

of philosophical economy. I simply have not found the necessary space for developing these

thoughts further7, but have occasionally drawn attention to the eliminated areas.

Thus, summarizing my intentions in the present work; I wish to explore the character of

our musical experience. I will do this by first of all investigating the active aspects of our

perception in general and our essential embodiment. This will supply the theoretical

groundwork for establishing the analysis of our musical experience, which will be

characterized by a specific mode of listening to music, namely deep listening. The second

part will focus on the essential social foundation of music in general by investigating the

shareable potential within the musical domain. The second part will be concluding music as

offering a shareable sonic world – a world of music, so to speak – a world in which we

actively engage and participate when experiencing music. The two parts will be connected

by an intermediary exploration of dancing. But initially, I will now move towards a

clarification of my motivation for choosing music as the object of my investigation and

illustrate why an elaboration of the nature of our musical experience is philosophically

interesting.

6 Small (1998), p. 137

7 I specifically have the field of communicative musicality in mind here. This field concentrates, among other things, on our innate musical abilities and such research is of great importance to my claims.

9

Why music?

It seems highly relevant to give an account of my reasons for choosing music as an object

for my investigation. Music does not possess any self evident character, which would

explain its relevancy in the respective context. Rather, it seems plausible that any given

form of art would perfectly well do the job. I must admit, though, that music has a special

interest to me, an interest I not only share with lots of people around the world, but also

one that forms the very basic circumstances for my choice. But there seems to be more to it.

Music is not just some enjoyable hobby I share with a large number of other people. If that

was the case, music would thereby be justified as the investigation object because of its self

sufficiency. I will in the following work to show my reasons for choosing music as the

object of my investigation by differentiating music from the visual arts. This maneuver will

equally result in an illustration of a number of the problematic issues attached to any

approach to the philosophical puzzling phenomenon of music. Some of these problematic

issues will be the center of focus of my investigation of the phenomenon, but again, I raise

more questions than I can possibly answer.

Music appears to me to be a very complex entity, one that besides my private appreciation

consists in difficulties regarding the very definition of its being. Language itself seems

insufficient to describe the essence of music. It may prove very useful in respect of notation

of a given musical work, which can ensure the accessibility for the posterity8. But even

concerning the musical score, we find a tension within language. Not only is the musical

work, through the notation, given an autonomous existence, but at the same time, the use of

language opens up for interpretation9. Nevertheless, music in general will be my main focus

and I will therefore not engage in a discussion of the constituting elements of a given

musical piece. Neither am I interested in clarifying the ontological foundation of music in

general. I wish to characterize and explore our musical experience. But even in this overall

8 Some philosophers, ex. Nelson Goodman, argue that the musical score is identical with the score and thus any deviation of the former from the latter compromises the “essence” of the work, Kivy (2000), pp. 206ff. I find this view pretty implausible and I will therefore not engage in a further discussion of this position. 9 Benson (2003), pp. 77-79

10

approach to the phenomenon music, we discover the very same tension within language.

Music is somehow both an autonomous entity and at the same time it opens to

interpretation. Music is a part of our everyday life, an object we can approach, speak of and

share. But simultaneously, music creates a world of its own, a world we can explore, engage

with and manipulate. The following will be an attempt to encapsulate this musical world, or

perhaps more accurately; my understanding of the musical world.

It is as if we just do not have the adequate vocabulary suitable for our experience of music.

But that is exactly what music is –An experience. A common visual sense-perception such

as perceiving the redness of an apple might be illustrative of the issues at stake here. The

redness of the apple is a part of the visual content, but in everyday perceiving we merely

conceive the redness as a property of the given experience. We presume that we have a

mutual understanding of what the redness refers to, namely the color of the apple in front

of us, but faced with the challenge of explaining this experience, for example to a color-

blind person, we run into trouble. In other words, the irreducibility of the concept red

makes it impossible to reduce it to something simpler10. I believe that the same difficulties

apply to the area of music. We have a common understanding or agreement of what music

is – a sort of a mutual frame of reference, which allows us to speak of music. But essentially,

music is an experience, an active doing that reveals itself to the subject perceiving it. And

faced with the challenge of explaining this musical experience to a deaf person for example,

we stand before the very same difficulties, as in regard to the example with the color-blind

person. I must emphasize though that my aim is to expose the general “structures” of music

perception, which is common to all instances of musical experience. I will by no means

claim that music is a private, subjective experience precluded from everything else than the

subject. On the contrary, I wish to position the experience of music as a multi-available

entity by exposing the common structures of our musical experience. I am, in other words,

10 Bastian (1987/1995), p. 19

11

interested in engaging in a phenomenological analysis of the musical experience in

general11.

Music can in this respect be conceived as an analogue to the problems concerning the

senses. We seem to be dealing with the same obstacles in explaining colors to a color-blind

versus music to a deaf (many other examples can substantiate the two given). This

analogue can in fact be dispersed to entail the variety of different forms of art in general.

But music differs from the visual arts, not merely because of the medium by which it is

perceived, but seemingly also because of the above mentioned difficulties regarding the

very fundamental aspects of the being of music12. It is apparently exceedingly difficult to

approach the phenomenon music, without appealing to some degree of mysticism. ”We fall

out of the realm of real life”13 is not an uncommon conception of the experience of music

and presumably one that all of us to some degree embraces. Peter Kivy gives a more

profound description of the musical experience;

[…] listening to absolute music is, among other things, the experience of going from our world, with all of

its trials, tribulations, and ambiguities, to another world, a world of pure sonic structure, that, because it

need not be interpreted as a representation or description of our world, but can be appreciated on its

own terms alone, gives us the sense of liberation that I have found appropriate to analogize with the

pleasurable experience we get in the process of going from a state of intense pain to its cessation.14

Music is valuable in its own right; it has its own legitimization. Music seems to be

intrinsically valuable because the pleasures it offers are unique to the medium of music, e.g.

we cannot get them anywhere else. Besides, these pleasures are essential to an

aesthetically sophisticated flourishing human life. Concerning the liberating effect, it is a

matter of great importance to clarify the implications of such an effect. The emotional and

11 Another plausible interpretation of the analogy between music and redness of the apple is to argue that music essentially is a collection of sounds, which is ontologically distinct from the experience of this collection of sounds as music by a particular hearer. But this will, as mentioned, not be my approach to the field of investigation. 12 I certainly do not aim at a patronizing of the visual arts, rather, my goal is to emphasize that music appears to be of a different character and therefore deserves separate attention. 13 Bastian (1987/1995), p. 15, my translation. 14 Kivy (2002), p. 260

12

liberating aspects of music will be thoroughly examined later15. First of all it is important to

establish an understanding of the scope of the musical world. Kivy seems to approach the

phenomenon from a platonic perspective, claiming that the musical experience belongs to

another world. I find it quite illustrative to use the metaphor “another world” in trying to

make the musical experience comprehensible. Literally speaking though, it appears to be a

misleading conception. I find music deeply rooted in our everyday life. Basically, music is,

like any other kind of art, the results of man’s efforts on earth and in this sense; art in

general is prefigured in the very process of living16. Instead of approaching music from an

object-based description17, I suggest approaching music from a merely phenomenological

perspective18. I find it insufficient merely to describe the structural elements of music.

Music differs from the visual art in respect of its tangibility. Both music and the visual arts

seem to exist by virtue of a perceiving subject. To determine whether or not this existence

is verified independent of the perceiving subject, is a complex matter beyond the scope of

this examination. It is relevant though, to consider the fact that any given form of art seems

to demand an active engagement from the perceiving subject. Merely recognizing the

existence of the artworks is insufficient in order to appreciate its artistic qualities. Thus,

appreciating art apparently require an active involvement in the perception of the given

piece of art on behold of the perceiver. Experiencing art will always involve some sort of

temporal frame, in which the perception of the art is unfolded. The temporal frame in

which the visual art involves the perceiver seems to be an inferior aspect of the perception

of the given piece of art. On the contrary, music appears to be of a different nature. The

temporal dimension is crucial for the existence of music – it is the very medium through

which it reveals itself. In this sense, a musical piece is unfolded through time. We

experience a piece of music as it reveals itself and only through an act of reflection will we

be able to bring the musical flux to a standstill. Music is a temporal form of art – it

manifests itself in the topicality.

15 This will be done in the section “Music and Emotions”. 16

Dewy (1934/2005), pp. 22-25 17 We will examine Kivy’s formalism later in the section “Music and Emotions”.40 18 Fiske (2008), p. 28

13

Perhaps this topicality is the key to an understanding of the difference between the visual

art and music. They each seem to have their own time span. Visual art is perceivable in

outer time. It is an object that reveals itself in the time we all share, the time we all

participate in. Once accomplished, any work of art exists autonomously19. In the case of the

visual art this autonomous existence opens for the possibility of returning to the

perception of the given visual work of art. It is possible to recreate the given perception.

Music, on the contrary, is beyond the control of the perceiver20. Whereas a perception of

the visual art object entails the perceiver’s ability to captivate the given object, music

reveals itself through time. Perceiving music is thereby a matter of participation in the time

given, the time that the respective musical piece unfolds21. Many seem to endorse a

conception of the musical time span as a kind of inner time (durée), which is independent

of outer clock-time;

There is no doubt that the dimension of time in which the work of music exists in the inner time of our

stream of consciousness – in Bergson’s terminology, the durée.22

In fact, this inner time forms the very conditions of existence of music23. The time span

dominated by music is a matter of complexity and it will be given separate attention later24.

For the time being it will do to recognize the fact that there seems to be a difference in the

time spans involved in perceiving respectively visual art and music. Engaging in the

musical inner time seemingly involves an active doing from the perceiving subject25, a

participation in the unfolding of the musical elements, a part-taking in the musical world.

19

Schutz (1964), p. 169 20

Except of course the perceiver’s possibility to ignore the music, to turn it off, go somewhere else, etc. 21

Nevertheless, we can control how we perceive the music, e.g. selectively attending to and focusing on certain aspects of a piece while ignoring others, pausing, rewinding and re-listening to certain parts of a piece, etc. When examining the musical time, we will also have a closer look at how we anticipate future events within the music. Cf. “Music and Time”. 22 Schutz (1996), p. 249 23 Schutz (1964) p. 170 24

Cf. “Music and Time”. 25 The active role that the listener plays in constructing her musical experience will be examined thoroughly in “Music as an Active Doing”.

14

Reflections on Method

Before turning towards the investigation of the nature of our musical experience, I find it

appropriate to mention my methodological approach to the phenomenon. As indicated, I

wish to advance the musical experience from a phenomenological perspective. This gives

me the advantage of investigating the musical experience from a first person-perspective. I

will, in other words, be able to thematize my musical experience, instead of being obliged

to give an ontological account of the musical experience. Obviously, I do not intend to

establish a solitary conceptual frame of exclusively my own experience of music. Rather, I

wish to investigate the common “structures” of our musical experience. Though, I must

emphasize that my intention is not to digress into the history of phenomenology but to do

phenomenology. I will not commit myself to a thorough elaboration of the

phenomenological method but rather turn my focus towards the object of my investigation,

namely music.

Obviously such a strategy calls for a profound theoretical groundwork. This will primarily

be developed in the first part of the thesis, where the elaboration of my claim of perception

as an active, embodied doing is to be found. But I do not confine my theoretical premises

strictly within the area of phenomenology. On the contrary, I believe that the object of

investigation – music – motivates a larger frame of survey, mainly due to its complexity.

Music is not just one thing, but can be many different things in different scenarios

(sometimes it can even within the same scenario be a multifaceted entity). I have therefore

chosen to approach the phenomenon music from an interdisciplinary point of view in order

to illustrate this complexity. In doing so, I hope to achieve a broader picture of the

phenomenon and hopefully a more nuanced one as well. This brings me far around the

scientific landscape stretching from psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology,

Buddhism and, obviously, philosophy. Whenever I have encountered a workable theory, I

have implemented it in my overall elaboration. The profitable perspective of such an

interdisciplinary approach is its potential of illustrating different aspects of the

phenomenon music. By moving transversely between different fields of research it

15

becomes possible not merely to illuminate the phenomenon from different points of views

(on different levels of abstraction) but equally to shift between diverse analyzing-tools.

The disadvantage of choosing an interdisciplinary approach is first of all due to the scope of

the present work. Restrictions concerning the length of the work naturally set a limit with

regard to the space available for elaborating the different views, which is why I sometimes

find it necessary to abolish introductory comments on the respective fields of research.

This obviously will infect the reading process, but I have tried to develop an

understandable portrait of each theory/notion at stake with respect to the overall scope of

the work. This is one of the reasons why I occasionally have a considerable amount of

footnotes. Another disadvantage worth calling attention to is the difficulties regarding the

different areas conceptual frameworks. Each tradition maneuvers within its own agenda

and when isolating a part of a theory or a notion from its context, this inevitably causes

disturbance regarding the clarity of the specific part of theory or notion at stake. The

different traditions often operate with different conceptual clarifications and I have

therefore carefully sought to thoroughly describe every applied notion - yet another reason

for my extensive use of footnotes.

One last reservation must be made concerning my methodological approach. By choosing a

phenomenological perspective I hope to gain insight into a widespread phenomenon that is

so commonly manifested that we seldom call it into question. We often do music without

giving it any thoughts. Music is a deeply integrated part of our lives – it is something we

often take for granted. When illuminating music as an object of my investigation I

thematize mundaneity - I wish to challenge commonsense by calling it into question.

Obviously I aim at an extensive illustration of the musical experience, but I must emphasize

that my investigation inevitably is influenced by my own experience of music. I have, both

in my method and choice of theory, been guided by my own conception of the

phenomenon, and though I have sought to illustrate the general structures of our musical

experience and include conflicting views, I must nevertheless admit that my elaboration of

the thesis is the result of a normative account of the phenomenon.

16

Enactment and musical experience

My intention in the following sections is to develop a conceptual frame in which I can

position my claim of the musical experience as an active doing. I therefore feel obliged to

turn away from the musical domain for a while and focus on some general perspectives on

perception and embodiment. This strategy will supply me with the necessary theoretical

foundation for developing my views on the musical experience, and will equally serve as a

justification of these views. Initially, my center of attention will be on the

phenomenological listening experience, clarifying my view on a phenomenological

approach to the experience of listening to music and some of the philosophical issues in

this context. Afterwards I will move on to illuminate some aspects of the active component

of perception, in particular the aspects of aesthetic perception. Focusing on aesthetic

perception enables me to validate my conception of the specific mode of deep listening,

characterizing the kind of listening experience that I am interested in pursuing. Finally, I

will examine the character of enaction and embodiment, which will complete the

theoretical groundwork. I will thereby be theoretical prepared to congregate the analysis of

the musical experience and this will form the basis of the second half of the first part.

The phenomenological listening experience

In examining our musical experience I have chosen to emphasize the experience of

listening to music. I therefore feel obliged to initially clarify why it is philosophical

interesting to focus on the listening experience and to elucidate what sort of listening

experience I have in mind. I will in this section elaborate my conception of the term

“listening experience” by first of all approaching the phenomenon from a very large scale

perspective, illustrating the problematic issues regarding the aural dimension and the

listening experience. I will be sketching out some of the traditional philosophical

assumptions about music, in order to position my own advance to the phenomenon.

Finally, I will mention some problems related to a phenomenological approach to the

17

experience of listening to music and narrow down to my conceptual understanding of the

listening experience.

During my motivational account for choosing music as an object for my thesis, I described

the difficulties concerning the differentiation between visual art and music. We perceive

respectively visual art and music through different mediums; they reveal themselves

through different senses. Traditionally there has been a presupposed and dominant

visualism to our understanding of experience26. A visualistic position regards vision as the

superior sense, in other words, vision is considered as the most reliable source of collecting

sense data. Due to this visualism, we may expound the reasons for the lack of philosophical

interest within the field of music as caused by the assumed superiority of vision, or at least

an inclination to focus on vision. But why should we ascribe more value to a tangible visual

object? The question is if not the dominance of visualism is on retreat, especially in view of

the increasingly importance of music in our society. Perhaps the coast is now clear for a

more equal distribution of the senses… Nevertheless, I find it important not to neglect the

gains of the visualism, and to recognize the fact that we presumably still, on a more or less

unconscious level, carry a great part of the legacy from visualism with us27. The task is

therefore to acknowledge some sort of sense-equality and at the same time recognize the

unity of the senses. My focus is on the musical experience as such, the experience of

listening to music and though the auditory dimension is an apparent concern in this

context, I nevertheless do not aim to highlight this dimension solitarily. Such a strategy

would fail to acknowledge the unity of the senses.28

Apparently we face great difficulties when focusing on the listening experience. Listening to

a piece of music, for example, involves an invisible process, which easily can degrade the

26

Ihde (2007), pp. 6-7 27 I especially have the verbal legacy in mind here. Think of the connotations of vision entailed in words like “enlightenment”, “insight”, even “perception” is implicitly combined with the visual area, but more of this later. See besides Ihde (2007), p. 8 for more examples. I have on several occasions encountered a propensity to focus on visual perception, despite a declared focus on musical perception, see ex. Cochrane (2009), p. 64, where he speaks of the task of seeing, but summarizes that it is perception in general, without justifying this shift of focus. 28 This unity will be crucial in developing my position. In particular Gibson has advocated the unity of the senses. Gibson (1979/1986), p. 205

18

listening experience compared to a visual experience. But again, why should a visual object

be more tangible than an auditory? I think one of the difficulties consists in the fact, that

music (or some other complicated sound structure for that matter) presents itself over

time. It is as if we can only establish an understanding29 of a given musical piece after it

presented its entirety30. Music appears to consist within its own time span, but much more

about this later31. Another complicating matter is due to the ubiquitous character of music.

Music is so easily taken for granted that we often “do music” without giving it any thoughts

whatsoever. In fact, many consumers use music as a distraction from thinking32, as a kind

of refuge.

Listening to music from a phenomenological perspective demands more than an intense

and concentrated attention to the sound structure and the listening experience in itself. It

also involves a careful awareness in the process of pervading beliefs that might intrude the

attempt to listen to the things themselves33. Elizabeth A. Behnke gives an interesting

perspective on the matter, when describing her own experiences of supplying a

phenomenological angle on her violin playing;

A phenomenological approach to playing the violin might begin sketching out the network of inherited

assumptions that we usually bring to our studies. What is “taking for granted” before I even start to

play?34

I find this approach applicable to the listening experience as well. We need to uncover the

hidden assumptions that accompany us, when we listen to music. I will return to a

thorough elaboration of these assumptions, conceptually enveloping them under the notion

of situated musical actions35. Revisiting the visualistic tendency to divide the senses

29

”Understanding” is in these settings meant to disclose the recovering of an organization of certain sound patterns as music. 30 Fiske (2008), p. 24 31 Cf. “Music and Time”. 32 Fiske (2008), pp. 1-2 33

Ihde (2007), p. 49 34 Behnke (1989/1990), p. 23 35 Cf. “Situated Musical Actions”.

19

hierarchic, in favor of sight, I find within this general approach challenging obstacles in my

attempt to describe the phenomenology of the listening experience. How is it even possible

to speak of perception of the invisible? Vision has its sense object represented in the world

(unless of course we speak of illusions or imagination, but for the sake of simplicity let us

disregard the complicating matters). But as Don Ihde determines, “Material objects is the

realm of mute objects”36. The muteness of the material objects can work as a splendid

analogue of the solidarity of the senses (in this context it is in particular sight and hearing

that obtains our attention). Silence –the muteness- is at the horizon of sound, as is the

invisible at the horizon of sight, and despite the mute objects presence in the visual world,

this perspective supply us with the possibility to gain an understanding of the interwoven

structures of the senses37;

Listening makes the invisible present in a way similar to the presence of the mute in vision.38

The invisible is made present through music. However, this presence of the invisible is not

to be defined in terms of palpable elements, but perhaps another fertile analogue can

clarify the issues at stake here. We construct a thought experiment, in where we place

ourselves walking in a dark forest at nightfall. The howling sounds from an owl might give

us the shivers, but nonetheless we are confident in our beliefs about hearing an owl. In

other words, the presence of the owl is justified from a conclusion due to its sounds. The

very same conclusion can apply to the experience of music. We listen to music in respect of

the effects that it leaves behind. But at the same time we anticipate actively within the

given piece of music39. We not only perceive the parts of the melody that are immediately

present in a given moment of perception, but we also in some sense perceive, or at least

predict, future parts of the melody40. The different sound elements form a unity, which

presents itself to us. If we try to divide the parts into single elements, the time span is

36 Ihde (2007), p. 50 37 Gibson argues throughout his work for this unity of the senses, see ex. Gibson (1979/1986), p. 205 38 Ihde (2007), pp. 50-51 39 Only through motion is the sounding accomplished, see Friedson (1996), p. 165 40

This anticipation is by Husserl called protention (ex. Husserl (1964), p. 76) and will later be examined in the section “Music and Time”. This point is contrasted by Fiske, who describes musical perception as limited to the information available to us in the “now”, Fiske (2008), p. 59

20

broken and the musical experience is lost. The musical experience is more than just the

sum of the elements. In various scenarios, though, the dissection may be the means. Musical

theory for example is occupied with the different elements in music;

Indeed, the way in which the relationship between music perception and music theory has generally been

conceived is that whereas music perception and cognition studies what listeners hear, music theory

persuades the listener of what they might or could hear.41

But acoustic descriptors as well as notational elements are insufficient to describe our

listening experience42;

It is erroneous to think that a symphony exists only in the score or in its performance by an orchestra.

Both the score and the performance have the same relation to the work of music as the printed book or

lecture has to the existence of a philosophical thought or a mathematical theory.43

They fail to capture, for example, the listener’s profound emotional response to a particular

piece of music. They might be useful tools in regard of establishing an understanding of the

musical elements in order to grasp the artistic effects. But we need to acknowledge that the

understanding of musical structure not is a matter of simply receiving it. The perceiver

plays an active and crucial role in establishing the listening experience. I will work to show

that music invites to a dynamic engagement, one that encourages perceptual composing.

Traditionally many have framed music as a non-representational art form44. Unlike

literature, sculpture, painting, etc., music cannot represent moods, states of affairs or

events the way other art forms can. And yet music nevertheless elicits profound emotional

41 Dibben (2003), p. 194 42 Fiske (2008), p. 26. Fiske determines the acoustic descriptors as necessary but insufficient to explain musical understanding. 43 Schutz (1996), p. 247 44 See ex. Schutz (1996), p. 244

21

responses within listeners. Somehow something appears to be going on in music, even if

it’s not formally represented. This has caused great puzzles about the nature of music45.

Over and all music is something that happens in the world. And so does music perception.

And even though music perception to some degree involves hidden processes, e.g. things

happening in our brain and auditory system, it does not follow that all parts of the process

of music perception are equally as “invisible”. Music perception is more than sub personal

physiological processes. It also involves using music, doing things with it in the world;

organizing our environments, establishing social relationships, constructing our emotional

response to music by listening in different contexts, etc. I will return to the elaboration of

these claims later.

I will first of all sum up the phenomenological listening experience. I have worked to show

some (but certainly not all) of the difficulties related to focusing on the listening

experience. Listening to music within the frames of phenomenology ascribes the listener

the task of sensitively engagement in a given piece of music. Music can be perceived in

various instances, and it is likewise used in various settings. We are in many ways

surrounded by music; we hear music when we buy groceries, when we watch a movie, at

social gatherings, etc. We often move in and out of our everyday listening experiences,

giving music more or less attention. But the listening experience that is in focus here is the

kind of deeply engagement with the music. I will here on use the term “deep listening”46 to

frame this concentrated engagement in a given piece of music. We will shortly investigate

the character of such deep listening episodes by scrutinizing aesthetic perception. I must

first of all emphasize that the mode of deep listening not is to be confused with the

traditional conception of music as belonging to a privileged crowd, an elite activity

reserved for the few. On the contrary, deep listening is a sort of listening mode attainable to

people cross culturally and independent of status. It will now be necessary to verify the

45

In the section “Music and Emotions”, I will elaborate the complexity of emotional responding to music by outlining two different positions within the field, besides my own. 46 Becker (2004), p. 2

22

claim of engagement in the musical experience. This will be done by taking a closer look at

the concept of perception that I embrace.

Active perception

Listening to music is a dynamic process involving the active subject. This claim appears to

be trivial, but a closer look reveals a different perspective. Many authorities within the area

of philosophy of music represent another view on the listening experience, namely that of

conceiving the listener as a passive recipient of the musical elements. Besides, there seems

to be tendencies towards placing this passive listening experience in the frames of a

privileged situation, for example a concert hall or a solitary musical reception in the

armchair at home47. Music, in this view, is a matter of careful intake of the musical

structures, reserved for the privileged. I find this view on the listening experience

phenomenological inaccurate and suggest a diverging point of view that both disclaims the

passivity and the privileged status as characteristics of the listening experience. The first

step in such a renouncement is the acceptance of the fact that music is everywhere. Music is

not reserved to a certain group of people but surrounds us in our everyday life. In fact,

music’s ubiquity demands great efforts to establish a space out of reach of musical

intrusion. Thus, a thorough examination of the social structures of music will be vital. The

social dimension will be put aside, though, and instead I will concentrate on the next step,

which is a closer look at the notion of perception. Please note that the term “perception”

often implicitly is restricted to reveal visual meaning48. It is important to be aware of the

concepts connotations regarding the primacy of vision, and to emphasize that my use of

“perception” is founded on the broad sense of the term, meaning “perception” as becoming

aware of something via the senses49. Perception embraces our openness to the world and

in this sense perception is a capacity to be aware of and track things happening in the

world. My goal is illuminate the active aspect of perception and thereby implement this on

47 Christopher Small disagree with this passive listening-position, but nevertheless gives a good description of the issues at stake in his discussion of concert hall culture, see Small (1998), pp. 39ff. 48

Ihde (2007), p. 8 49 See Webster’s definition of “Perception”. On further elaboration on the notion of perception; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

23

the active role the listener plays in constructing her musical experience. After the

justification of a dynamic perception concept, I will turn my focus towards the body and

take a closer look at its influences on active perception.

Aesthetic perception

First of all I will give attention to the notion of perception. I do not aim at a thorough

examination of the perception concept. Such a project reaches far beyond the scope of this

thesis. Rather, I seek an understanding of perception in relation to my overall project,

namely to clarify those implications perception holds in context of the experience of

listening to music. I will therefore primarily be concerned with aesthetic perception, which

is uniquely reserved to aesthetic objects. In contrast, “normal” or brute perception covers

our ordinary everyday encounter with sensory objects50. The distinction between aesthetic

and brute perception finds its origin in an attempt to narrow my focus and must therefore

not be conceived of as any kind of value attribution in favor of either of the two areas of

perception. Neither must the focus on aesthetic perception be put together with the above

mentioned idea of a separation between the crowd and the privileged. In my point of view,

aesthetic perception encapsulates the aesthetic object, but these are deeply rooted and

inseparable of our surrounding world and our lives. Music, the present area of interest, is

such an integrated part of our lives that one could argue that it is meaningless to separate

the perception of music from our other everyday encountering objects. My response to

such an objection would partly be of theoretical concerns. Using the term “aesthetic

perception” enables me to distinguish between the two kinds of perception. It allows me to

center on the specific mode of the deep listening – to illustrate the particular listening

episodes that I wish to investigate. But this leads me to the other part of my response,

namely that of the necessity of such a division. Generally speaking, every object including

natural objects and works of art can be conceived as an object existing for a

50 Edward S. Casey: Translator’s foreword in Dufrenne (1953/1973), p. xxv.

24

consciousness51. The difference between the natural object and a work of art is that a work

of art both can be considered as ordinary things existing among other things, and at the

same time it can be the object of an aesthetic perception;

[…] the work of art can be considered as an ordinary thing, that is, as the object of a perception and a

thought which distinguish it from other things without according it special treatment. But the work of art

can, in addition, be the object of an aesthetic perception, the only kind of perception which does it

justice.52

The aesthetic perception differs from ordinary perception in terms of the object that is

being perceived. The aesthetic object has a twofold character. At one hand it exists

autonomously among other objects, as an object in-it-self. But at the other hand, the

aesthetic object necessarily depends upon fulfillment within the sphere of a perceiving

subject;

[…] it is essential to an aesthetic object that it embody its own norm – not a norm which our thinking or

taste imposes on it, but one which it imposes on itself or which its creator has imposed on it […] The

norm of the aesthetic object is its will to the absolute. And to the extent that the aesthetic object

proclaims and attains this norm, the object itself becomes in turn a norm for aesthetic perception. Thus

the aesthetic object assigns to aesthetic perception the task of approaching the work of art without any

prejudice, of giving it as much credit as possible, of placing it in a position to furnish the proof of its

being.53

It is thereby only the perceiving subject that can complete the aesthetic objects being. But it

is not sufficient merely to perceive the given aesthetic object. The emphasis on aesthetic

perception is crucial for such a fulfillment. One can imagine a non-aesthetic perception of

an aesthetic object that surely recognizes the existence of the aesthetic object without truly

51 Dufrenne (1953/1973); “Nothing enjoys an existence which would free it from the obligation to be present to a consciousness (even if only a virtual one) in order to be recognized as a thing”, p. lxv. 52 Dufrenne (1953/1973), p. lxv. 53 Dufrenne (1953/1973), p. lxii.

25

apprehending or appreciating it54. But in order to furnish the proof of the aesthetic objects

being, as Dufrenne puts it, the perceiver need to assume a dedicated attitude towards the

given aesthetic object, in order to attain the beneficial outcome of the aesthetic

experience55. The perceiver must, in other words, not merely recognize the existence of the

aesthetic object, but rather, the perceiver must engage actively in the perception of the

aesthetic object. It is due to these conditions that the differentiation between perception

and aesthetic perception is called for.

Another objection must be noted. By speaking of respectively work of art and aesthetic

object, I do not thereby mean to implement a platonic approach the phenomenon of art. Put

differently, I do not conceive either the work of art or the aesthetic object as an ideal entity

that is manifested through a real appearance of any kind. In so far I agree with Dufrenne,

who seems to be aware of the problems concerning such a division, when he says;

Aesthetic object and work of art are distinct in that aesthetic perception must be joined to the work of

art in order for the aesthetic object to appear. However, this does not mean that the work of art is real

and the aesthetic object ideal, as if the former existed as a thing in the world and the latter as a

representation or signification in consciousness.56

All objects can, as mentioned, be considered as objects existing for a consciousness. This

also applies to both the work of art and the aesthetic object, they both exists as objects for a

consciousness. The difference consists in the fact that whereas the work of art possesses

the possibility of existence at the level of other things in the world, the aesthetic object is

on the other hand truly dependent on the dedicated perceiving subject. But this

dependency must not be misunderstood. To some extent, all objects are dependent on

perceiving subjects. If we engage in a discussion about dependent and independent objects,

we fall back into the arms of idealism. I will therefore approach the differentiation between

work of art and aesthetic object from another angle, and determine that the difference

54 Dufrenne (1953/1973), p. lxvi 55

It is precisely this dedicated attitude that is characteristic of the above mentioned notion of deep listening. I will return to this in the section “Music as an Active Doing”. 56 Dufrenne (1953/1973), p. lxv

26

consists in the perception of the two. Whereas the perception of a work of art can result

merely in the perceivers paying attention to the given product, it can also implement what

we characterized as an aesthetic perception, if the perceiving subject is willing to approach

the phenomenon openly and dedicated. Thus, work of art and aesthetic object do not differ

from an outer perspective, but it is on the contrary the perceiver’s engagement that

determines the difference.

It is precisely because of the engaging role of the perceiving subject that I found the

distinction between work of art and aesthetic object useful. I will now elaborate the claim

that the aesthetic perception calls for a dynamic and engaging attitude from the perceiving

subject. But I must point out that both aesthetic and brute perception deserves equal

attention, but for the sake of clarity, mine will be centered on aesthetic perception.

Enaction & Mindfulness

In order to establish an understanding of perception as a dynamic and active process, I will

need a more general approach to the notion of perception, before narrowing down to the

implications this has in the case of aesthetic perception, in particular with respect to music.

As indicated, perception in a broad sense is an overwhelming field of investigation and far

too ambitious for my project. I will therefore in the following only focus on fragments

within this enormous area, fragments that require special attention due to my overall

project. Initially I do feel, though, that it is necessary to give a somewhat superficial outline

of the traditional concept of perception. This outline will serve as a context in which I will

differentiate another concept of perception, namely that of enaction.

The classical way of approaching perception is characterized by the opinion that the

external, objective world somehow imprints representations of the things existing within

27

this world onto the subject through perception57. These traditional approaches do, in other

words, conceive perception as a passive reception of outer existing objects. These objects

are received by the subject either through a representational scheme or through some kind

of interpretation or (re-)construction somewhere in the brain58. The idea that perception in

this way reveals the external world is strongly dependent on the assumption that the

existence of the objective world is independent of the perceiving subject. This will be the

typical objectivist claim, mainly belonging to the scientific viewpoint. Another position is

that of the subjectivistic (or idealistic, if you will) approach, which very roughly speaking

can be determined as an opposite of the objectivistic position, claiming that the true

foundation of perceiving the world depends on the subject. Traditionally, we thereby

acknowledges two different approaches to the fundamental aspect of perception, though

both somewhat endorse a similar view on perception understood as representation (this

representation can either be of representing outer existing objects or an internal creation

build upon the subjects own interpretation).

Recently, new research within especially cognitive science has challenged this traditional

view on perception, pointing out that we have an alternative to the classical dichotomy

between the objective and subjective approach. The alternative consists in a middle way

between the two positions, one that unites the peripheral positions by emphasizing their

mutual relationship;

In contrast, the challenge posed to cognitive science is to question one of the more entrenched

assumptions of our scientific heritage – that the world is independent of the knower. If we are forced to

admit that cognition cannot be properly understood without common sense, and that common sense is

none other than our bodily and social history, then the inevitable conclusion is that the knower and

57 A good example of such a classical approach can be found in what Noë determines the snapshot-view. According to this view, experience (visual) represents the world as pictures do, through an internal representation of outer input. See Noë (2004b), p. 9 58

Varela et al. deals with different aspects and positions throughout The Embodied Mind but the essential issue in this context is the insufficiency of these theories; “*…+ having discovered the groundlessness of the self, we turn toward the world, we are no longer sure we can find it *…+”, p. 130

28

known, mind and world, stand in relation to each other through mutual specification or dependent

coorigination.59

One of the pioneers of the new notion of perception appears in The Embodied Mind by

Varela, Thompson and Rosch60. This book gave birth to an alternative concept of

perception, one founded on the roots of the phenomenological tradition61;

We propose as a name the term enactive to emphasize the growing conviction that cognition is not the

representation of a pregiven world by a pregiven mind but is rather the enactment of a world and a mind

on the basis of a history of the variety of actions that a being in the world performs.62

The idea is that instead of conceiving perception as a passive registration of the external

world, Varela et al. proposes an active approach to perception and thereby opens the

possibility of a dynamic understanding of the process of perception and of experience in

general. According to the enactment position the classical schism between the external

world and the subjective perceiver can be circumvented by choosing a middle way. This

middle way is inspired by the Buddhist concept of mindfulness63;

Mindfulness means that the mind is present in embodied everyday experience; mindfulness techniques

are designed to lead the mind back from its theories and preoccupations, back from the abstract

attitude, to the situation of one’s own experience itself.64

In everyday life we are commonly endowed with habitually actions and combined with a

stressful way of living, it seems fair to argue that we usually are quite distanced from our

59

Varela et al. (1991), p. 150 60

Varela et al. (1991) 61

I will not go further into the details of the phenomenological legacy. In the following section on embodiment, we will get a clear understanding of Merleau-Ponty’s influence on the enactive view. Throughout their book, Varela et al. acknowledges the phenomenological heritage, see ex. the introduction, where Merleau-Ponty is mentioned as having ”both inspired and guided our orientation here”. Varela et al. (1991), p. xv. 62 Varela et al. (1991), p. 9 63 Other very interesting concepts such as groundlessness, emptiness and compassion find its origin in the Buddhist tradition, but I will have to refer to The Embodied Mind for a further elaboration of these in relation to the enactive approach. 64 Varela et al. (1991), p. 22

29

selves. Mindfulness allows the mind to be present in embodied65 everyday experience. This

mindfulness, also termed awareness, enables the subject to achieve awareness not only

about its own actions and punctual self but because these relations only reveal themselves

in relation to the other, the subject is potentially able to grasp a surrounding world66.

Mindfulness is, in other words, a practical ability to achieve an unbiased attention of

present perceptions. Mindfulness is not a matter of intellectual capacity. Rather,

mindfulness is an alert participation in the ongoing process of living. The person

performing mindfulness is thereby both an observer and the very source of the perceptions

that originate from this awareness67;

We are both the mind and the observer of the mind. Therefore, chasing away or dwelling on any thought

isn’t the important thing. The important thing is to be aware of the thought. This observation is not an

objectification of the mind. It does not establish distinction between subject and object. Mind does not

grab on to mind; mind does not push mind away. Mind can only observe itself. This observation isn’t an

observation of some object outside and independent of the observer.68

In this sense mindfulness can be combined with the above mentioned aesthetic perception.

As determined, aesthetic perception calls for a dynamic and engaging attitude from the

perceiving subject. This attitude seems quite similar to the awareness called for within

mindfulness. The only conspicuous difference is apparently that whereas mindfulness has a

great field of potential perceptions, aesthetic perception is narrowed down a more specific

field of interest. Aesthetic perception thereby looses the multiplicity and openness of

mindfulness. Nevertheless, I find it fertile to combine the two notions not only because of

their similarities but also because mindfulness contributes with a more profound

understanding of the perceiving subject’s active and engaging role within aesthetic

65

Not to complicate matters more than necessary, I have chosen to postpone the treatment of embodiment. This is, however, not doing justice to the conception of the enactive approach, which is why I find it urgent to indicate the strong connection between embodiment and an active approach to perception. Just how interwoven these are will become evident in the next section on embodiment. 66 Varela et al. (1991), p. 246 67 For a more profound examination of mindfulness see ex. http://www.buddhanet.net/budsas/ebud/mfneng/mind0.htm (especially chapter 13 and 14), Wallace (2006) and Hahn (1975/2008) 68 Hahn (1975/2008), p. 40

30

perception. This active and engaging attitude is equally applicable to the specific listening

episodes I wish to focus on, namely what I have termed deep listening. I will shortly

develop this claim thoroughly69.

The enactive approach to perception does not necessarily involve the Buddhist notion of

mindfulness70. But in my opinion it not only illuminates my approach to the musical

experience, it also clarify the active component of perception in general. Making use of

mindfulness in relation to the enactive claim is a way of emphasizing the subject’s role of

actively engagement with the surrounding world. I must call attention to the fact that this

by no means imply that we commonly perceive in a unaware, passive, manner and it is only

through establishing mindfulness that we achieve the active component in perception. On

the contrary, this active component is an integrated part of our way of perceiving.

Practicing mindfulness is merely a practical illustration of this, but not a necessary

condition.

Since practicing mindfulness reveals the present in a non-judgmental, impartial and non-

conceptual manner we are disclosed with a pure experience of topicality, an experience

that reaches beyond the self. We have now returned to the above mentioned middle way

between the classical schism subject-object. Mindfulness is, in all its simplicity, a way of

paying close attention to the ebb and flow of our experiences and in particular being

attuned to the deep integration between our embodied actions and the world in which we

act. Practicing mindfulness will make us realize that our actions are dependently

conditioned by the many contexts in which they occur and that these contexts at the same

time are organized and structured by our patterns of embodied action. In this sense

(embodied) mind and world are interwoven in such a profound manner that it seems

impossible to try to separate the two. Embodied actions creates (i.e. enacts) a world which

69 Cf. “Music as an Active Doing”. 70 In fact, it would perhaps be more appropriate to focus on Nöe’s approach to enactive perception as he places the body as a whole at the center of perceptual experience, whereas Varela et al. seems to approach the phenomenon from a somewhat more general and cognitive position. But I have, in order to draw out the notion of mindfulness, found my focus in the general approach and continuously supplemented it with Nöe’s enactivism.

31

in turn redounds back upon and shapes (i.e. creates, enacts) an embodied mind. The

relation mind – world is thus one of reciprocal engagement, and not ontological separable.

The dichotomy subject - object is thereby overcome. Neither the self nor the world is a

stable pregiven condition, in which we can find our point of departure. In contrast, the

subject are left free of any kind of foundational aspects and must therefore actively engage

in the correlation to the surrounding world and its inhabitants. The priority of either the

external world or the perceiving subject recedes into the background, and we find

ourselves occupied with the fact that we are actively engaged in the surrounding world;

On one way, we reflect on that world as a domain of facts and states of affairs. On the other, we reflect

on the world as a domain for active exploration. The dual-aspect of experience is mirrored, then, in two

ways of thinking about the world. Phenomenology, then, aims at the second way.71

The enactive view implies that experience is considered as an active process of exploring,

manipulating and engaging with our environment. The individual is closely connected in its

autonomous ability to act and to perceive the surrounding world72. The external world and

the subject are inseparable connected. We have direct access to the world and the things in

it, and these (the things in the world) are the content of our experience. We discover, in

other words, the strong connection between mind and world, a discovery that finds its

origin through active involvement from the perceiving subject. But this implies that

perception is not only embedded in the external world, it is also embodied;

[…] knowledge is the result of an ongoing interpretation that emerges from our capacities of

understanding. These capacities are rooted in the structures of our biological embodiment but are lived

and experienced within a domain of consensual action and cultural history.73

71 Noë (no date available), p. 6 72

This link between agency and perception consist according to Varela et al. in what they term the self modifying process, Varela et al. (1991), p. 139. 73 Varela et al. (1991), p. 149

32

As stated previously, the enactive account of perception finds its origin in disapproval with

the classical concept of perception. Phenomenological speaking, the enactive view seems

much more attractive, as it not only appears more eloquent with our common

understanding but also because it offers a plausible way out of the traditional subject-

object schism. By situating the perceiving subject as both embodied and embedded within

an (existing) world, perception is not just a matter of “taking notice of something”, but it

also contributes to the enactment of the surrounding world. The classical division between

the subject and object fades out and is replaced by a reciprocal specification between the

organism and the environment74. We will now take a closer look at the role of the body

within this enactive approach to experience.

Embodiment

In the above paragraph I have sought verification for the claim that perception is a matter

of actively engaging with the surrounding environment. I therefore subsequently promised

to imply the findings of the enactive approach to the general area of aesthetic perception

and more specifically to the area of music. But before fulfilling this promise I will need to

take yet another detour in order to clarify the implications of embodiment in relation to

enaction. The necessity of such a clarification will appear obvious at a later time, and I

therefore appeal to you’re patiently awaitments for the return of music.

I may be walking down the path of generalization, but as in the discussion of perception I

similarly do not aim at a thorough examination of the concept “embodiment”. My intentions

are far more humble, and I merely wish to highlight some important aspects of

embodiment in the context of the enactive approach to perception. In some sense it is a bit

peculiar to separate embodiment and enaction, given their mutual interwoven character. In

fact, it can be argued that they stand in an interdependent relation to each other. I do

endorse this somewhat inseparable structure, but nevertheless, I feel obliged to give an

74 Varela et al. (1991), p. 174

33

account for each of these concepts in order to fully understand their interdependency.

Another gain by such a strategy appears to be a greater understanding of each of the

concepts at stake here, a feel of their own significance, so to speak. Besides, as we will later

discover, these aspects will not only be of relevancy in the case of enaction, when we return

to music we will discover the valuable insights of embodiment.

When speaking of embodiment it seems inevitable to refer to Merleau-Ponty. He was one of

the first to put emphasis on the importance of the body. In approaching perception,

Merleau-Ponty emphasizes this importance by situating the body as the very subject of

perception;

But by thus remaking contact with the body and with the world, we shall also rediscover ourself, since,

perceiving as we do with our body, the body is a natural self and, as it were, the subject of perception.75

My body is the primary cause of my possibility to perceive the world, to engage with and

achieve understanding of the surrounding world. This is not merely to say that all subjects

have a body, nor is it to stress the dependency on certain bodily features. The point is,

rather, that when considering human individuals as perceiving acting subjects, as agents,

an essential aspect of the subject’s manner of being is that of an embodied agent. The

subject is, in other words, essentially an embodied agent76. We are all placed in and a part

of the world and our body is the center of this relationship. The body is not merely a shelter

of my consciousness. On the contrary, my body is the very foundation of all my experiences.

This claim requires further elaboration. We earlier recognized the fact that we are situated

within the world77. The existence of the world is not a matter of interest here, since the

position/stand of the existence of the real already is made up before entering this

analysis78. So, we are situated within a world, a world that we take in and engage with

75 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 239 76

Taylor (1989/1990), p. 3 77 Merleau-Ponty(1945/2009), p. xv 78 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. xviii.

34

through perception79. Perception thereby becomes a basic condition for experiencing the

world, even a basic condition for having a world in the first place;

This [perception] is basic, first, because it is always there; I am always open to the world in this way […]

And secondly, perception is basic because it is the foundation of all the other ways of having a world.80

Though perception as such provides an elementary condition for the possibility of

interaction with the surrounding world, perception alone does not do the job. I always

necessarily perceive the world from my point of view, from where I am, via my senses.

Perception is thereby generated by the individual’s background, by her previous

experience and by her capacity to move around in it81. In order to fully understand the

claim of this essentially embodied agency, we must take a closer look at Merleau-Ponty’s

concept of the body schema. First we must acknowledge, though, the occurrence of a

conceptual ambiguity encumbered within the notion of body schema. As Gallagher

remarks, the English translation of Phenomenology of Perception confuses the translation of

“schema corporel” with body image82. Gallagher thereby concludes that Merleau-Ponty

himself adapts this ambiguity as he does not explicit explain the difference between body

schema and body image. But as Taylor Carman points out, Merleau-Ponty inherits his

terminology from Henry Head, who explicitly distinguishes between these two concepts83. I

therefore feel confident in assuming that Merleau-Ponty’s schema corporel coves the

English notion of body schema and this assumption will be maintained throughout the

following discussion.

79

“The world is what we perceive” as Merleau-Ponty puts it, Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. xviii 80

Taylor (1989/1990), p. 3. Taylor puts aside mystical experiences, which “claim to open us to a reality beyond the world”. However interesting these mystical experiences might be in relation to our musical experience, I have unfortunately not found it possible to elaborate this. 81

Taylor (1989/1990), p. 6. This background knowledge is by Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), pp. 157-158 described as an individual’s intentional arc. This notion will be examined further in the section entitled “Intentional Arc”. 82 Gallagher (2005), p. 20. I do not intend to develop a further analysis of the concept of body image, just point out that it according to Gallagher covers the system of perceptions, attitudes and beliefs pertaining to one’s own body. Body schema, in contrast, consists of a system of sensori-motor capacities that function without awareness or the necessity of perceptual maintaining, ibid. p. 24 83 Carman (1999), p. 218. Carman also provides an interesting connection to the Kantian legacy, where the notion of schematism provides Kant with a link between the category and the intuition, ibid. pp. 217-218

35

Merleau-Ponty uses the concept of body schema to capture the issues at stake in relation to

our interaction with the world84. The body schema as such encloses the set of integrated

skills that entails a readiness to anticipate and incorporate the surrounding world prior to

any form of intellectual involvement, e.g. application of concepts or formation of thoughts

and judgments85. Merleau-Ponty also denotes this integrated readiness as habit and

determines that habit manifests itself in the perceptual body; “it is the body that

“understands” in the acquisition of habit”86. Habit is thereby not to be interpreted as either

intellectual knowledge or involuntary action, but rather as an underling open system of

potentialities in regard to the access to the world;

This is because the normal subject has his body not only as a system of present positions, but besides,

and thereby, as an open system of an infinite number of equivalent positions directed to other ends.

What we have called the body schema is precisely this system of equivalents, this immediately given

invariant whereby the different motor tasks are instantaneously transferable. It follows that it is not only

an experience of my body, but an experience of my body-in-the-world […]87

We do not only have a feel of our own body but also of our body as situated within a world.

Embodiment is always given, experientially, as embedded embodiment (i.e. as a body

situated in the world). The body is thereby to be understood as a field of potential action, as

a potential capacity to move around, examine and take in the world88. The above

mentioned basic structure of perception is initiated by this very capacity to engage with the

world. We can determine that the primacy of perception is dependent on the embodied

agency and vice versa. We cannot navigate in the world without perception, and we cannot

perceive without being essentially embodied agents. But an important aspect is still

missing. This reciprocal structure of perception and embodiment can only be maintained if

84

According to Gallagher, the body schema is traditionally believed to be a product of development but recently this view has been contrasted by research claiming that a primitive and primary sense of embodied self is operative from the very start of life. These are not issues that will be pursued further, but I do endorse this innate character of embodiment and the following will assume this position. For further discussion on the matter, see Gallagher (2005), pp. 66-78 85 Carman (1999), p. 219 86

Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 167 and Carman (1999), p. 219 87 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), pp. 163-164 88 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 121 & Taylor (1989/1990), pp. 3-6

36

the agent possesses a sense of herself as an embodied agent. We have to hold some sort of

self knowledge that reveals the bodily field of potential action, we have to be not only

aware of our own embodiment but also embrace some kind of capacity to navigate, without

being engulfed by the initiation of bodily movement. Body schema is this very capacity. On

a practical level, the body schema enables us to interact and navigate throughout our

surroundings. On a theoretical level, the notion of body schema provides us with the

possibility to interpret the body as the intermediary between consciousness and the things

in the world89. The implications of the body schema inevitably supply us with not only a

sense of our body (subject body) but also a sense of our body-in-the world (object body).

To move one’s body is to aim at things through it, to “respond to their call”90 and given the

bodily sense of being situated within a world, we can thereby determine that the body is

our fundamental access to the world;

Our bodily experience of movement is not a particular case of knowledge; it provides us with a way of

access to the world and the object, with a “praktognosia” [practical knowledge], which has to be

recognized as original and perhaps primary. My body has its world, or understands its world, without

having to make use of my “symbolic” or “objectifying function”.91

Another important notion must be introduced in order to fully understand this bodily

experience of movement. The body schema as such is responsible for maintaining posture,

balance and governing movement. The body schema feeds on information obtained by

proprioception92, which is a subtle, but ubiquitous form of self-experience. Proprioception

is the sense of always knowing where my limbs are positioned in space, I do not have to

reflect upon it and it is thereby an automatic property. Because I have this intimate bodily

self-acquaintance at every moment, a felt understanding of where my body is at and what it

is doing, the body is an ever present frame through which the world is given to me. This felt

experience of embodiment will always be given as the center through which I experience

my world. The body image, on the contrary, is a more articulated form of bodily self-

89 More of this at the end of this section 90

Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 161 91 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 162 92 Gallagher (2005), p. 43

37

knowledge. The body image is, in other words, a reflected image of my own body, for

example thinking that I am fat or that someone is staring at me. But this reflective,

conceptually-developed sense of my body rests on the primitive findings of the body

schema93.

Our essential embodied agency can thereby be considered as a twofold character

containing not only a personal sense of myself as an embodied agent but also a sense of my

body as an object among other objects in the world (subject body versus object body). This

twofold structure is also applicable to perception, in that the activity of perception in one

way is a matter of taking my view on reality. On the other hand perception is also pre-

personal, a matter of inescapable being within a world94. We do in some regards master our

perspectives on the world, but in the end we can never escape the continuing situatedness

in the world.

To sum up, we are essential embodied agents who actively engage and perceive the

surrounding world. We know the world through our capacity to move around in it. But in

order to obtain this openness to the world, I necessarily need some kind of self-awareness,

I need to have a feel of my stance among things, otherwise I will lose orientation95. The

notions of body schema and proprioception cover this intimate self-awareness, this pre-

reflective feel of our own body and its capacity to move around in the world.

It is precisely this pre-reflective self-awareness that offers a way out of the traditional

schism between the subjective and the objective96. The body is, according to Merleau-

Ponty, both a lived subject, i.e. the body is a felt phenomenal perspective on the world. But

at the same time, the body is also an object situated alongside other objects in the world.

Our bodily existence is thus a constant negotiation of these two kinds of embodiment.

Gibson seems to contribute to the dissolution of the schism by summiting the pointlessness

of such a division. It is merely a matter of point of view;

93 Gallagher (2005), p. 24 94

Taylor (1989/1990), p. 10 95 Taylor (1989/1990), p. 6 96 Carman (1999), p. 206

38

The supposedly separate realms of the subjective and the objective are actually only poles of attention.

The dualism of observer and environment is unnecessary. The information for the perception of “here” is

of the same kind as the information of “there”, and a continuous layout of surfaces extends from one to

the other.97

We have now reached an understanding of the interwoven character of embodiment and

perception. Merleau-Ponty proposes a way of thinking about the body and the (embodied)

mind – world relation that suggests a way around the classical schism. We will now,

equipped with this theoretical fundament, return to the analysis of music.

97 Gibson (1979/1986), p. 116

39

On the scent of music

We are now finally ready to return to music. I will in the following seek an understanding of

the preceding theoretical elucidations in relation to music. This will not be a strict

chronological account, though. The only chronology I am aiming at is my own. In other

words, I will work to show my examination of music in relation to the above mentioned

theoretical foundation. I must therefore emphasis that the following analysis of music

originates from my point of view, from what I find important in my understanding of music.

First of all, I will return to an initial inquiry, raised in the beginning of the thesis, namely

that of the emotional qualities of music. This is an often neglected area of interest within

the field of music, probably due to the fact that emotions in relation to music is a

exceedingly complicated matter and besides, it has been considered as a second degree

derivative compared to the primary target within the investigation of musical influence;

[…]listening has been tackled in a predominantly structuralist fashion: It has been widely assumed that

the primary aim must be to investigate the kinds of abstract tonal, metric, grouping, melodic, and

timbral structures that people accumulate as they listen *…+ as well as the more dynamic processes to

which these structures give rise.98

The fact is that we do get emotionally moved by music. Many musical consumers will in all

probability ascribe this emotionally affect as an enhancement of the musical experience.

But at the same time, we cannot determine exactly why we do get emotionally moved by

music. As mentioned introductory, music is considered as a non-representational art99.

Music cannot represent moods, states of affair or events in a way that other art forms can.

But still, music elicits profound emotional impact on listeners, so something must be going

on, even though it is not formally represented. This “something” will serve as my point of

departure into the puzzling field of music.

98 Clarke (2003), p. 116 99 Cf. “The Phenomenological Listening Experience”.

40

Music and emotions

How do we get emotionally moved by a piece of music? This is a quite complicated

question. The matter of even determining what an emotion is is itself an extremely

complicated problem. The fact is that there is no unambiguous answer; we cannot precisely

say what an emotion is. There is, scientifically speaking, no agreement upon what an

emotion is100. I will nevertheless try to give an explanation of what it indicates when we say

that we are emotionally affected by a given piece of music.

There seems to be agreement to the fact that we do get emotionally moved by particular

music. This is a rather perplexing aspect of music. As mentioned, music is a non-

representational form of art that nonetheless arouses different emotional responses in the

listener. But whether these emotions are an intrinsic element of the music, a purely

subjective response, a cultural product/condition, or perhaps somewhere in between, is a

conflicting issue. To begin with, I will put the discussion of musical emotion’s ownership

aside and turn to the field of neuroscience to clarify their position on the subject. In the

end, nobody can possibly disagree with the fact that emotions somehow are related to the

perceiving subject.

Research indicates that our musical perception involves a considerably large amount of

neural networks shredded throughout the brain. In fact, a discovery within neurobiology

back in the 1970s shows connections between sound perception and the cerebellum part of

the brain. This means that the inner ear not only distributes all received information to the

auditory cortex as previously believed, but besides directly involves the cerebellum101.

Normally the cerebellum is considered as the part of the brain dealing with timing and

movements. But in 2003, Schmahmann discovered a close connection between the

100 Levitin (2006/2008), p. 182. Damasio claims that the term “emotion” should be applied to the autonomic arousal of specific cortical and sub-cortical structures, and that “feeling” which generally follows emotion should be applied to the complex cognitive, culturally inflected, and secondary interpretation of emotion, Damasio (1999), p. 42, also quoted in Becker (2004), p. 47. I endorse this conceptional distinction. 101 Levitin (2006/2008), p. 184

41

cerebellum and emotions specifying the cerebellum’s involvement in emotions102. This is

interesting in the case of music as this discovery gives us a plausible explanation of the

emotional arousing. We can scientifically detect the musical influence (though somewhat

blurred) and gain evidence for the intuitive claim that music convey emotional responses

from the perceiving subject. The issues at stake are according to Daniel Levitin similar to

the ones at stake in concern of language;

Music appears to mimic some of the features of language and to convey some of the same emotions that

vocal communication does, but in a nonreferential, and nonspecific way. It also invokes some of the

same neural regions that language does, but far more than language, music taps into the primitive brain

structures involved with motivation, reward, and emotion103

The parallel to language is, as mentioned, a risky business. Non-musical elements (such as

lyrics) potentially possess novel representational content and it is therefore important to

carefully distinguish between music and language. Nevertheless, the above quote from

Levitin serves its purpose by emphasizing the difference between the two.

The question remains of the source of the emotional reaction to a particular musical piece.

As alluded, I find it implausible that the respective emotional response should originate

from anything else than the perceiving subject. But the relation between music and the

arising emotion remains unsolved. Is the cause to be found within the structure of music or

perhaps as a mental construction based on the stimulus received by the music? In other

words, is the musical affect attributed to the perceiving subject or is it rather an immanent

quality? These are two prominent positions within the area of emotional responding to

music. I think the truth lies somewhere in between, and I will briefly sketch out the two

positions in order to clarify my own.

The first position –that music evokes emotions on the basis of its structure- is commonly

known as the formalistic approach. Peter Kivy, a great authority within philosophy of

102 Levitin (2006/2008), p. 175 103 Levitin (2006/2008), p. 191

42

music, is advocating what he labels enhanced formalism. Enhanced formalism is a

refinement of traditional formalism defended by ex. Kant and Gurney104. According to Kivy,

we do in fact get emotionally moved by music, e.g. music possesses emotive properties.

These emotive properties exist within the musical syntax itself, they are embedded within

the general structure of a particular piece of music;

In other words, the emotive properties of music, like such other properties as turbulence, or tranquility,

or its being major at one point, minor at another, or simply that it has one kind of melody here, and

another kind next, can be explained, initially, in terms of the simplest facts of musical structure: that is

sonic patterns, and that patterns consist in repetition and contrast.105

The emotive properties are in the music, not in the listener106. The listener is emotionally

moved by a piece of music when recognizing these aspects within the sonic pattern of the

particular piece. The emotional qualities are neither semantic content nor dispositional

properties, but rather things happening in the music and that the listener hears happening

there107.

One of the immense troubles related to Kivy’s enhanced formalism is the incapacity to

match this approach to the important role context plays in shaping the character and

content of individual listening episodes. In fact, Kivy’s account fails to recognize the unique

autonomous position the listener holds in shaping her own individual listening

experience108. I will return to these deficiencies later when illustrating my own view on the

matter, but let us first turn to the alternative position to see if it offers a more

comprehensive perspective.

The second position considers the emotive response evoked by music as a mental

phenomenon. This is a field of diversity but I have chosen one representative for the overall

104 Very roughly put, traditional formalism argues that music is pure sound structure without representational or semantic content, Kivy (2002), p. 68 105 Kivy (2002), p. 91 106

Kivy (2002), pp. 95-96 107 Kivy (2002), p. 95. Besides see Krueger (2009), p. 106 108 Krueger (2009), pp. 107-116

43

approach to the connection between music and emotions. But please note that my selected

delegate not necessarily frames the general arguments within this area. In fact, the

emotional responding to music appears to be only a small part of his examination of music.

But for the sake of simplicity and philosophical economy my focus finds its origin in Harold

Fiske and his stand.

In contrast to Kivy, Fiske points out that musical understanding solely is the outcome of the

listeners own mental processing. Understanding music is thereby a product of an

individual mental construction process, requiring both cognitive time and effort109. Music is

not out there, it is not an independently existing entity, but rather an internal pattern

construction on the basis of an on-going anticipation in the temporal experience of the flow

of information;

Owing partly to how sound is produced and transmitted and partly to the limitations of the narrow

perceptual field, the perceived shape of music can only be an outcome of a construction (not

reconstruction or ”copy”) calculated on the part of neural network mechanisms from the flow of

information extracted from the “now”[…] What it seems we do is: identify relevant cues, piece the cues

together into patterns that can be retained (in echoic memory) long enough for brain mechanisms to

examine and create the sense that we can “look” at music by invoking principles borrowed from vision,

and then creating the impression of an auditory “object”. The “object” seems complete and

multidimensioned but is, however, only remotely related to what we hear during the slit-like limitations

of the perceptual “now”. 110

Music is perceived as an on-going temporal experience. Music does not stand still long

enough to be a shape. Nevertheless we do experience musical shapes but these does not

exist independent of time111. Rather, musical shapes has its origin within the brains

109 Fiske (2008), pp. 25-26. I failed to find any explanations of the term “musical understanding” in Fiske’s work. I therefore choose to interpret musical understanding in my own terms, namely as the experience of recognizing organized pattern of sound as music. I find it plausible that Fiske will endorse this explanation. Support for this claim is ex. found on p. 41: “*…+ pattern realization is prerequisite for musical understanding. Music perception begins with pattern recognition *…+” 110 Fiske (2008), p. 56 111 Fiske (2008), p. 43

44

attempt to construct patterns from incoming acoustic stimulus information. The brain has

an underlying need for realized structure and in any kind of perception it is therefore

driven by a need to find discernable shape112.

One at the great achievements of Fiske’s account, we will from here on entitle it the mental

construction approach, is its capability to expound the active component of the individual

listening experience. Listening to music is a matter of actively engaging in the acoustic flow

of information. Music perception is an active process based on pattern construction

activity113. The listener, in other words, constructs her own listening experience. This is a

claim we will return to shortly. But first off all we will take a closer look at how Fiske

conceives the emotional aspect in relation to music. Not surprisingly, Fiske ascribes the

emotional response as something happening within the listener;

Having ruled out the idea that the connection originates with either the composer or sound object (this

rules out performer origin as well obviously), only a single possibility is left: specific expressive reference

originates with the listener in response to some life experience affect finding association with some

particular realized tonal-rhythmic structure or some multi-structural relationship. Let’s call this reference

“appearance value”.114

The so called appearance value is ascribed as belonging to the individual listener; it is

solely dependent on the listener’s response to realized tonal-rhythmic content. The

appearance value is thereby of no content in itself, but rather a specific extension of the

musical process known only by the listener115. Appearance value finds its source in the

individuals own life experience, and in this regard, emotional responding to a particular

piece of music can be determined as an affect caused by the specific internal frame of

reference, reserved for the particular listening individual;

112 Fiske (2008), pp. 40-41 113

Fiske (2008), p. 86 114 Fiske (1990), p. 125 115 Fiske (1990), p. 126

45

An emotional response to music is genuine and real-life, but its source is synthetic. The source is an

association; the result is an appearance of an emotion-laden event. Appearance value is (an important)

extra to understood pattern relationships and may, for many, enhance the musical experience. What is

clear, however, is that appearance-value is not part of the music itself, it is not embodied in the patterns

of their anticipation, or in the sound object. Nor is it entirely appropriate to claim that appearance value

is caused by music. Appearance-value is created by the listener in which an affect, based upon the

listener’s own life experiences, finds ground with particular musical patterns.116

The listener is in this mental approach responsible for creating her own listening

experience. I find this idea of perceptual composing quite intriguing. We do not just

discover music, as seemingly Kivy would argue, but we also create the character of our own

musical experience. Nevertheless, I fear that endorsing the full force of Fiske’s argument

inevitably would direct us back into the arms of subjectivism. If emotional responding to

music is solely a matter of an individual processes on the basis of an internal frame of

reference, how can music then ever reach out of the subject and be a shareable entity?

Besides, though I am fascinated of the composing aspect of the musical experience, I find

this claim as only part of the story, a facet of the bigger picture, so to speak. Music reaches

out of the subject; music is not just a question of mental processes. We use music in various

settings and in various scenarios in our lives, and the musical experience is strongly

dependent on the context in which it appears. In order to demonstrate this claim, I will first

of all exemplify a practical case, illustrating this multiplicity of how we use music as an

emotional regulator. I will hereafter return to the elaboration of my point of view.

Moodagent - A study case

There is a commercial tendency to try to combine people’s commercial interests. Think of

Amazon’s success of administrating the consumers’ preferences. They always seem to find

irresistible suggestions of new purchases. The Moodagent is one of the most ambitious

attempts to connect the emotional aspects in music. The Moodagent is a mobile technical

116 Fiske (1990), p. 129

46

devise, developed to specify music in accordance with the emotional aspects. The

Moodagent applies digital signal processing on the sound signal extracted from digital

music. The information based on this signal processing is through advanced recognition

technology and neural networks employed to extract the emotional aspects of music117.

The purpose is to facilitate a similarity of different kinds of music on behalf of the analyzed

emotional aspects. The consumers will thereby be capable of constructing individual

musical playlists, based on emotional aspects of music. Against a background of indication

of emotional value, the consumer is able to choose a particular desired emotional effect of a

piece of music. In practice, this is done by regulating five different slider bars on a mobile

phone118. If I for example feel angry and wish to hear music with angry connotations, I can

turn up the anger indicator and thereby receive a number of different music with

aggressive overtones. On the other hand, if I am going out and looking for some music to

support or initiate my mood for such an action, I would rather aspire for something

energetic and joyful music. Another potential of the Moodagent is the possibility to

organize your music collection. Applying the Moodagent to your collection of music enables

you to structure your listening episodes according to emotional indicators. It will be

possible to construct personalized playlists taking you from one emotional spectrum to

another.

My intention in this section has been to give a practical example of how we use music in our

everyday lives. In the particular case of the Moodagent, it is related to emotional regulation,

which is why I found it an illustrative example in this context. I have merely worked to

show the general aspects of the Moodagent, a further analysis of how the emotional aspects

are established and an encountering of the theoretical foundation, as well as the technical

details, would be a welcomed gesture in understanding the potential of this mobile device.

But I have achieved my purpose by positioning the Moodagent as a practical example of

how we use music as an emotional regulator in our everyday lives.

117 For further information of the Moodagent, see www.syntonetic.com/moodagent or www.moodagent.com 118 These slider bars includes sensual, tender, joy, aggressive and tempo.

47

Music as an active doing

Despite the intriguing elements in the above mentioned mental construction approach to

music, it nevertheless fails to give a comprehensive perspective on the diversity of the

musical phenomenon. However prosperous the mental construction approach may appear,

it can only supply us with a possible explanation of how an individual conceives music. But

it seems fairly unsatisfactory to explain music as an individual experience dependent on

invisible brain processes that we fall short in understanding. I wish to illustrate a more

nuanced picture of the musical experience by drawing attention to the various settings in

which we use music in our everyday lives. Understanding music is not just a matter of

detecting the internal influence or the mental construction. This is just a small part of it;

Work in anthropology of the emotions and elsewhere suggests that we can productively focus not on

trying to penetrate and pin down hidden internal states but rather on the manner, variably practiced and

conceptualized in different contexts, in which people are personally involved in the musical

engagements.119

If we restrict ourselves to the area of emotional responding to music, the above mentioned

Moodagent provides evidence for our way of using music as an emotional regulator. This

manner of regulating emotions goes far beyond the technical boundaries of the Moodagent.

The Moodagent is merely a practical example of the conscious adjustment of emotions by

the use of music. Such an emotional adjustment can also take place on a more or less

unconscious level and can also be more or less involuntary. But I want to take the

discussion of musical experience past emotional responses illustrating the multifaceted

and ubiquitous character of music.

First of all I will return to Fiske and his mental construction paradigm acknowledging his

active approach to the musical experience. Though disagreement with the full force of his

argument I nevertheless find this active component quite illustrative of the experience of

119 Finnegan (2003), p. 188

48

listening to music. In line with the elucidation of the active component in perception I find

this exceedingly applicable to the listening experience; we actively construct, or rather

compose the scope of our musical experience. This composition is among other things

dependent on the level of our anticipation in the particular musical scenery. In order to get

deeply involved in a given piece of music it will require a mode of what previously was

termed deep listening120. In deep listening episodes, the listener is intensely involved in

listening profoundly and being absorbed by a particular piece of music. This intense

involvement or awareness is quite similar to the previously mentioned awareness achieved

by mindfulness121. The listener directs his or her undivided attention towards the musical

piece in a way that is comparable to the practical achievement of mindfulness. Both of these

modes of experience are very active. In deep listening the perceiver is intensely listening,

attentive and utterly absorbed. The practicing perceiver of mindfulness is equally attentive

and intensely involved in the ebb and flow of his own experiences. Yet, paradoxically, one

loses the sense of being a distinct acting subject over and against an independent object

(i.e. the music as an object of perception in the case of deep listening or whatever specified

object of perception in the case of mindfulness). In both deep listening episodes and

mindfulness it seems fair to say that, experientially, the subject-object distinction weakens

or is dissolved, the mode of experientially immersion seems to reveal the close coherence

between the surrounding world and its inhabitants.

To fully grasp the multifaceted character of music, we will have to go past the individual

listening experience and enlarge the discussion of musical experience to contain elements

reaching beyond the subject. The social dimensions of music are an important aspect that

we will return to in the second part of the thesis122. Initially, I have chosen to turn towards

perceptual psychology, specifically James J. Gibson’s notion of affordances, to illustrate the

far-reaching perspectives of musical experience123.

120 The notion of deep listening is introduced in “The Phenomenological Listening experience”. 121 Cf. “Enaction & Mindfulness”. 122 As in the case of my separate treatment of active perception versus embodiment, it is not quite fair to make such a clear distinction between the solitary listening experiences versus the social dimension. It will later be evident that music is deeply rooted in our social world. 123 An ecological approach to the listening experience is establishing, based on the theory of affordances. See ex. Clarke (2003), Clarke (2005) or DeNora (2000).

49

Gibson uses the notion of affordances to describe the elements the environment offers the

animal;

The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for

good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but the noun affordance is not. I have made it up.

I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term

does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.124

The affordances of an object in the environment are the uses, functions, or values of that

object - In other words the opportunities the given object offers a perceiver. But

affordances are not merely dependent on a particular object’s properties; they are at the

same time defined relative to the particular perceiver, in that the perceiver interprets the

affordances in relation to his respective situation. Merleau-Ponty’s notion of “intentional

arc” may prove supportive here125. In describing the essentially embodied human nature,

Merleau-Ponty emphasizes that perception always inevitably is generated by the

individual’s previous experiences and capacity to move around in the world. This sort of

background knowledge is framed by Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intentional arc, which

projects about us our past, future, human setting, physical, ideological and moral

situation126. This basic practical orientation capacity is not only connected to the body

schema, but equally to the affordances in the environment. We pick up different

affordances dependent on our given situation and who we are.

This means that the same object offers different affordances, dependent on the perceiver. A

wooden chair, for example, affords a termite to eat, while to a human being it affords sitting

on (if rest is the desired effect), or perhaps standing on (in order to reach something). The

relationship between affordances in the environment and the interceptive animal (we will

from here on concentrate on human perceivers) is dialectical. It is neither a relationship

124 Gibson (1979/1986), p. 127 125

This notion was briefly mentioned in the section of Embodiment and will later be taken up again in “Intentional Arc”. 126 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), pp. 157-158

50

founded on perceivers imposing needs on an indifferent environment, nor a fixed

environment offering strictly delimiting affordances127. On the contrary, the relationship

between the environment and the perceiver is of a reciprocal character, where an

affordance “implies the complimentarity of the animal and the environment”128.

Gibson’s perceptual psychology is also known as the ecological approach to perception129.

Central to an ecological view is the idea that perceptual information specifies objects and

events in the world, and that perception and action are indissolubly linked130. All senses

obtain information about both the environment and the self, and in this sense

exteroception (awareness of the world) and proprioception (awareness of the self in the

world) must be complementary131. An understanding of this reciprocity of action and

perception provides us with a way around the mental construction paradigm. We are as

essentially embodied and embedded agents situated in the world, and we navigate within

this very world on the basis of the affordances the environment offers us, and equally on

the basis of our specific situation;

Instead of supposing that the brain constructs or computes the objective information from a

kaleidoscopic inflow of sensations, we may suppose that the orienting of the organs of perception is

governed by the brain so that the whole system of input and output resonates to the external

information.132

This resonance or tuning of the perceptual system to the environmental information is,

again, an illustration of the reciprocal character between the perceiver and the

environment. Perception is a self-tuning process which increases the perceiver’s resonance

127

Clarke (2003), pp. 117-118 128

Cf. above quote from Gibson (1979/1986), p. 127. Despite my appreciation of DeNora’s Music in Everyday Life, I nevertheless find her interpretation of Gibson’s notion of affordances inaccurate. DeNora claims that; “For Gibson, objects afford things independently of how users appropriate them.”, and she turns elsewhere to find justification for the reciprocity of the environment and the perceiver (DeNora (2000), p. 40). This is, as argued above, an unnecessary and misinterpreted exercise. 129 One of his works are entitled The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Gibson (1979/1986)) 130

Clarke (2003), p. 117 131 Gibson (1979/1986), p. 183 & p. 187 132 Gibson (1966/1968), p. 5

51

with the environment; “In music (and more obviously still in dance) the body resonates

with the world”133. Resonance is by no means passive, but on the contrary a highly active,

exploratory engagement with the environment134. We do, in other words, act within a

world that also acts upon us.

Musical Affordances

Applying the ecological approach to the experience of listening to music can be very

obliging for the attempt to illustrate the far reaching perspectives of the musical

experience. Interpreting music as affordances facilitates the possibility of explaining the

range of various listeners’ response to a variety of musical attributes;

The ecological approach to perception offers an alternative view that gives a coherent account of the

directness of listeners’ perceptual responses to a variety of environmental attributes, ranging from the

spatial location and physical source of musical sounds, to their structural function and cultural and

ideological value.135

Music offer an innumerous series of affordances, and different listeners pick up different

affordances in accordance with the diversity of their perceptual capacities136. This can be

illustrated by music’s interpretive flexibility. A particular piece of music offers a range of

musical affordances. These musical affordances are picked up by the perceiver on the basis

of not alone his or her perceptual competences but they are besides constituted from the

circumstances in which they are used137. Music thus affords a multiplicity that enables

different perceiver’s to interpret the very same piece of music in various ways, dependent

on perceptual capacities, use and thereby context. I may for example have an experience of

a particular piece of music that is attached to the previous setting in which I first heard the

133 Ingold (2000), p. 410. Original italics. 134 Clarke (2005), pp. 18-19 135

Clarke (2005), p. 46 136 Clarke (2005), p. 47 137 DeNora (2000), p. 44

52

given piece of music. This experience might accompany my future re-hearings of that piece,

coloring my impression of the particular music. Or it might be replaced and experienced in

a new way. Such an example of individual changeability within a particular piece of music

can function as an illustration of the multifaceted dimensions of the musical experience. We

experience music as offering a variety of affordances, which we actively engage with and

make use of in various ways;

The musical context offers a situation in which the listener is surrounded by acoustic information.

Designed intentionally for sensory exploration, the musical environment is characterized by the presence

of not only harmony and rhythm but also such factors as silence, timbre (instrumentation), dynamic

(amplitude), desity, texture, gestural and motivic figures, patterns, and audible processes of accretion

and degradation (such as rescendi or ritardandi, the processes of getting louder or slower). These factors

are affordances, objective characteristics of the music subjectively discriminated in context. To different

listeners, they may suggest attending to the music in particular ways *…+.138

Music is not just a stimulus that we passively register and incorporates as a pleasant

artifact139. On the contrary, understanding music as an affordance-laden structure suggests

that music is a dynamic art form, offering us a whole range of potential uses. Musical

environments are designed for exploration140. But musical affordances are not merely to be

understood as a one way relation between the object (the music) and the perceived

opportunities (the subject). Musical affordances emerge through the dynamic interaction

between the musical piece (the sounds) and the active listener with the appropriate skills.

It is important to stress the individual’s influence on the musical experience. Perception

(both everyday and aesthetic) is based in reality. Perception is not just a mental affair but a

skill learned, exploratory and voluntary141. Through intimate self-acquaintance is the

reciprocal relationship between perception and action established. Experiencing music is

thereby a matter of actively engaging in the musical environment, a perceptual learning

138 Nonken (2008), p. 294 139 Pinker describes music as auditory cheesecake. In his point of view music could vanish from our world, leaving our lifestyle virtually unchanged, Pinker (1997), p. 528 & p. 534. It should be quite obvious that I do not endorse this claim. 140 Nonken (2008), p. 294 141 Nonken (2008), p. 291

53

process not established out of the blue, but based on an innate ability to control or direct

the experience of music142.

Thus, we pick up different musical affordances depending on our perceptual skills, use and

the context in which they arise143. Music is not merely a stimulus, rather, music’s powers

are constituted by one self; we interact with the music144. We compose the content of our

musical experience by picking up musical affordances. Again we observe reciprocity, this

time between the object (the music) and the perceiver. Experiencing music is neither a

matter of receiving the musical sounds in an appropriate way, nor is it an unequivocal

relation, solely dependent on the perceiving subject. On the contrary it seems fair to say

that we to some extend create the content of our musical experience, while the music at the

same time creates us145.

Music is a deeply integrated part of our lives, a resource of transformative powers that

provides potentialities for doing things, changing things and making things happen146;

[…] recognizing music as […] an affordance structure, allows for music to be understood […] as a place or

space for “work” or meaning and lifeworld making. Music can, in other words, be invoked as an alley for

a variety of world-making activities, it is a workspace for semiotic activity, a resource for doing, being

and naming the aspects of social reality, including the realities of subjectivity and self […].147

We do things to and with music. This dynamic relationship finds verification in different

domains such as emotional regulation, memory recapturing, identity construction and

142

Nonken (2008), p. 285. Studies of neonate music therapy indicate that already within the womb the unborn child is exposed to a “uterine symphony” (DeNora, p. 77) I find this research quite interesting and I will continuously refer to it, but must unfortunately restrict myself in going further into those issues. 143

This will be thoroughly explored in the section “Situated musical actions”. 144

DeNora (2000), p. 41 145 An obvious consequence of such a claim would be to examine the identity aspects in relation to musical experience. DeNora speaks of music as providing material for identifying identity (DeNora (2000), p. 69). We will later catch a glimpse of music’s influences on the establishing social identities (“Musical Identities”), but a comprehensive study of the identity aspects of music will unfortunately fall beyond the scope of the present examination. 146 DeNora (2000), pp. 44-48 147 DeNora (2000), p. 40

54

interpersonal coordination, etc. Music is an “aesthetic technology”148, a cultural resource

offering not only pleasant sonic structures but besides a variety of potential uses.

A Sonic World

A suggestive way of summarizing the musical affordances is to portray music as offering a

sonic world. Music provides a sonic space. This sonic space is the internal spatial

configuration of the piece itself, i.e. the different ways that sound features hang together to

form a coherent musical work. By engaging in a particular piece of music the listener is

surrounded by acoustic information149. This acoustic information is incorporated by the

listener dependent on perceptual skills, use and the context in which they arise. The sonic

space is available to everyone, who is willing to openly engage with the acoustic

information of the particular piece of music. This proposes that music offers a shareable

sonic world – an intersubjective sonic space accessible to any individual with the

appropriate perceptual skills150.

Interpreting music as offering a shareable sonic world is by no means an attempt to

separate music from our everyday world. On the contrary, music is such an integrated part

of our everyday world that such a maneuver seems absurd. My intention of introducing the

notion of a sonic world is a purely theoretical concern – an attempt to encapsulate the

specific character of the phenomenon music, by conceptualizing the spatial aspects of

music. Schopenhauer believed that music was experienced exclusively through time with

absolute exclusion of space151. I believe he was wrong. I agree with his claim of the

importance of the temporal aspects of our musical experience and of music in general. This

will be evident in my examination of music and time below. But I do not think that an 148

DeNora (2000), p. 7 149

Nonken (2008), p. 294 150 By emphasizing the importance of the appropriate perceptual skills, I wish to disregard specific cases such as inabilities to perceive certain sound elements, due to either illness or innate defects (see ex. Sacks (1983/1986) or Sacks (2007) for illustrative examples of such perceptual defects related to musical perception). The appropriate perceptual skills are not a matter of having the right kind of musical training or any other kind of privileged status. Such an over-intellectualizing of musical experience can ex. be found in Kivy (2002), pp. 81-83. Rather, the appropriate perceptual skill is simply a matter of being willing to openly engage with the particular piece of music. 151 Schopenhauer (1969), p. 266

55

exclusion of the spatial aspects supply an accurate approach, either to the experience of

music or music itself. The spatial aspects are an important part of our musical experience.

In the end of the next part, the notion of a sonic space will be incorporated into my

conception of the musical world. Worth noticing first of all is the urgency of a clarification

of the social aspects of music. If music offers an intersubjective sonic world, we will need to

elucidate the aspects of the shareable character of music. This will, as promised, be the

center of focus in the next part of my examination. But first I will focus on what can be

termed as an intermediary of the social dimension, namely the case of dancing.

56

Interlude; Dancing –Illustrating the force of embodiment

This section will be focusing on dancing. My motivation for conveying an analysis of dance

originates in its twofold potential to illustrate partly the theoretical elucidations in concern

of embodiment, partly the multiplicity of the musical experience. Besides, I find the case of

dancing quite efficient to emerge a bridging between a characterization of the individual

listening experience and the social dimension of the musical experience.

Dance is a well integrated and deeply founded activity of our everyday lives. Its history

reaches far back and its practice finds a great variety in widespread manifestations. Recent

research within dance therapy designates an assumption that we are, in fact, born to

dance152. This research finds its source in an intensive dance programme with dual sensory

impaired children. Facing the devastating effects of deaf-blindness, these children

countenance great challenges, especially in the area of communication. A study into the

bodily effects of the dual sensory impaired children will therefore potentially reveal quite a

good understanding of the force of embodiment. As Bond puts it in her concluding remarks

“Such children remind me that I build my everyday social world through embodiment”153.

However fascinating such studies may be, I nevertheless want to move the discussion in

another direction. I find the assumption that we are born to dance intriguing, and I will in

the following work to show a possible explanation of the innate character of dance154.

Returning to the previous section on embodiment, let us recall Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis

on the body as the very foundation of all our experience. We are situated within a world

that we actively perceive and engage with as essentially embodied agents. But the

reciprocity of perception and embodiment can only be maintained through a sense of

oneself as an embodied agent. I have to know where my body is and what it is doing. This

152 Bond (2009), p. 402 153 Bond (2009), p. 218 154

Again, I have unfortunately not found the necessary space for developing an extensive analysis of the achievements of communicative musicality. Research within this field supplies evidence for this innate character of dance, see ex. Trevarthen and Malloch (2000).

57

intimate self-acquaintance is based on information attained by proprioception (knowing

where my limbs are positioned) and the body schema (which is responsible for

maintaining posture, balance and governing movement). We know the world through our

capacity to move around in it, but the openness to the world can only be obtained through

self-awareness.

Applying this theoretical foundation to the area of dance is an obvious strategy. Dance is

generally considered as enhancing self-awareness155;

[…] dance is conceptualized as intentional non-verbal behavior that expresses, through the dynamic

patterns of special movements in space, a heightened felt sense of self and/or environment.156

Given such a definition of dance it seems fair to argue that dance initiates this heightened

felt sense of self (we will return to the environmental aspects shortly). Dance is thereby the

practical illumination of the theoretical notions of proprioception and body schema. These

two notions are experientially exemplified in the case of dancing. Evidently, as mentioned,

dance is broadly manifested, and it is not insignificant to consider the context in which

dance is practiced. Professional ballet dancers face completely other challenges than

Saturday night clubbers157. In accordance with my overall project, I do not intend to engage

in a particular dimension (that is of either musical character or dance). My interest is to

accentuate dance as an observable outcome of the experientially aspects of music. I will

therefore neither be discussing dance as abstracted from music, but rather as a common

everyday situated aspect of our listening experience158.

155

Friedson (1996), p. 30, describes his own experiences with dance within Tumbuka healing as an expansion of self. 156 Bond (2009), p. 404. See also Wulff (2006), p. 137. 157 For an elaboration of the ballet world see ex. Wulff (2006). A thorough study of electronic dance music is found in Butler (2006), though the dance dimension is a bit neglected. 158

Gregory (1997), pp. 125-127 point out that it can, indeed, be difficult to tell whether the music is an accompaniment to the dance, or the dance a movement to the music. Besides, one can also imagine a situation where dance is completely precluded from music.

58

Listening to music in an engaging and intensely manner, i.e. listening deeply, not

necessarily results in dancing. But music will nevertheless commonly still have a profound

impact on the listening subject’s body;

Movement is, I believe, the most fundamental conceptualization of music – the basic category in terms of

which it is experienced.159

This impact can, besides dancing, be observed through finger tapping, head nodding,

swaying and several other more or less obscure bodily responses. The above mentioned

definition of dance as “intentional non-verbal behavior that expresses a heightened felt

sense of self” will therefore be extended to entail all of the bodily responses of musical

influence160. I will in the following assume that such bodily response, regarding their

individual form, is a result of not merely the perceived musical elements, but besides an

integrated individual interpretative response to both the music, the terms of which it is

being used, as well as the context or the setting, in which it arise. Here are my reasons;

Dancing to music often arise within a social setting where a variety of other participants

are present. The environmental aspects inevitably have an impact on not merely the

experience of dancing, but equally on the experience of the music in general. These

environmental factors will be examined below in the section “Setting the Scene”. I will

therefore initially focus on the individual dancing experience. But the idea of participation

is an important consideration. Dancing to music is not merely a participation in a larger

scale, implying social scenery, but equally a participation in the music. The dancing

individual actively engages with the music, creating a creative interpretive response to the

perceived musical sounds161. Music is frequently described in terms of movement162. I

159

Hamilton (2007), p. 142 160 Thereby avoiding, among other things, cultural and sociological discussions of dance, such as for example exemplifying dance as a primarily female phenomenon due to its sexual potential. For an elaboration of such a strategy, see. McRobbie (1991) 161 The temporal aspects of music is an important factor in understanding this claim, but I am afraid that I once again will have to postpone a discussion, this time that of the temporal aspects of music. See “Music and Time”. 162 Davidson and Malloch (2009) claim that music is experienced as movement, because musical meaning itself originates in the body, p. 565. I think they present only one side of the story, neglecting the role of context.

59

think an illustrative way of thinking about musical movement, is to think of dancing as a

creative musical performance163, where the individual dancer fashion a personal response

based on anticipation not only in the music as perceived here and now, but also on the

expectations of what to come164. Christopher Small uses the term “musicking” to express

the act of taking part in any kind of musical performance165. In dance, musicking in sound

and musicking in movement occurs simultaneously and in relation to each other166.

Participating in the music in this way is thereby both a creative and musical process, where

the dancer’s motion is a rhythmic additional counterpart to the sounding patterns of the

music, and besides an interpretation of the music that is being danced to167;

Taking a semiotic view (and one consistent with the naturalistic account of the sense given by

psychologist James J. Gibson, 1966), I assume that it is a basic psychological proclivity not to hear sound

as an uninterpreted quality, but to hear it as bearing information that is adaptively useful. In a natural

environment, such information could be about the location and movement of objects, the position and

attitude of another living thing, the affective state of another as bidding affection or retreat.168

Interpreting music through dance is first of all an individual determined phenomenon. The

dancer shapes his or her response as the music unfolds, and given that this response is

expressed through bodily movement, the dancer must possess a certain kind of self-

awareness in order to elicit such a response. This awareness of the self is, though primitive,

already effective from birth169. But the amount of self-awareness often increases

concurrently with the experience of dancing to music. A possible explanation of this

heightened felt sense of self is to turn to the previously explored intertwining of perception

and embodiment. When dancing to music one actively engages in the music in a particular

163

This notion of creative musical performance is inspired by studies within electronic dance music. Though used in a similar fashion it is important to point out that dancing within this particular kind of music has a significant impact upon the music, in that the DJ presumably responds to the audience’s feed-back. For more on electronic dance music see Fikentscher (2000) or Butler (2006). 164 Husserl uses the notion protention to describe anticipation in the future events, Husserl (1964), p. 76 and Husserl (1913/1998), pp. 174ff. In the section “Music and Time” I will elaborate this notion further. 165 Small (1998), p. 9. See also Fikentscher (2000), p. 57 166 Fikentscher (2000), p. 58 167

Butler (2006), p. 72 168 Cumming (2000), p. 118 169 Gallagher (2005), pp. 72-78

60

dynamic manner, where one must play an active role in shaping the direction of the

musical experience170;

Dancing, or “working (it) out” translates into a ritual in which the physical aspects of self, the body, is the

instrument for renewing the spiritual or mental aspect of self, that is, the nonphysical aspects of

identity.171

The dancing body is in this sense a musical instrument that elicits an immediate and

profound response to a particular piece of music as it unfolds, enabling us to explore the

nonphysical aspects of identity172. Identity aspects within the musical domain are a general

consensus. DeNora, for example, describes music as a building material of subjectivity, as a

resource for identifying identity173. Cumming specifically speaks of musical personality

coined in her notion of the sonic self, a creation that comes into being with sound174. The

sonic self is not a previously existing element of personality, but a dynamic making based

on the choices made among musical sounds. Establishing a sonic self is a matter of actively

engagement within the musical repertoire of possibilities. The sonic self can thereby be

understood as a twofold character. There is an outward face of identity exemplified in the

formation of subjects by their participation in the social sphere of gesture, language, or

music. But there is also an individuated identity that may become topic for my reflexive

self-awareness, knowledge of myself as a acting body175.

The experiential qualities are by Butler described as “unlocking the groove”;

170

Blacking states that in dance the body and mind are ideally united, quoted in Wulff (2006), p. 125 171 Fikentscher (2000), pp. 75-76 172 This relation to subjective identity seems even more evidently, when considering the aspects of musical time. This will be further explained in the section “Music and Time”. 173 DeNora (2000), p. 57 and p. 69 174

Cumming (2000), p. 23. Though the notion of the sonic self arises in relation to a discussion of musical performance, I nevertheless find it applicable to other dimensions of the musical experience. 175 Cumming (2000), pp. 10-12

61

Groove promotes multiple interpretations and flexible interactions – An unlocking of the temporal

experience into many directions.176

Dancing to music is an unlocking of the groove, or to use a previously discussed notion,

dancing is an interpretation of the musical affordances. The music provides a variety of

affordances that the dancer pick up in accordance with his or her perceptual skills, the use

in which they appear and the context in which they arise. To view music’s affordance laden

structure within the dancing domain enables us to understand the multiplicity of the

nature of dance. Dance is not just one thing but rather a variety of possibilities, actualized

in the response shaped by the performing participant as the music unfolds. But dance is not

merely an observable result of an individual’s movement. We use dance to do different

things. Some speak of dancing where a transitory step outside the everyday can be enjoyed.

Or dance can be used for liberation or as a political statement177. An important aspect,

worthwhile dwelling at for a moment, is the potentiality of creating a personal space

through dance. Though dance usually occurs in social settings, dancing nevertheless offers

the opportunity for creating a vital subjective space where one’s own territory is

demarcated in relation to others178. We are, as mentioned, directed in our experiences, our

body define the behavioral space and environment under constraints defined by

affordances179. In this sense it seems fair to argue that not only do listeners create the

content of their listening experience, they also enact or actively construct the context of

their music experience180. Dancing, aesthetically oriented movement, are the means for

constructing spaces of the subject181. I think that it is in this sense that the liberating

potential in dance is to be understood. By creating a subjective space, dancing

experientially releases a range of possibilities to be explored. Dancing gives us the potential

to redefine the social rules of everyday life, to explore gender and sexuality aspects, the

176 Butler (2006), p. 6. Locked grove are the short patterns etched into records that the DJ uses as tools in a performance, ibid. p. 5 177 Fikentscher (2000), pp. 65-66 178 Irigaray (1989), p. 132. 179

Gallagher (2005), p. 32 180 Goguen (2004), p. 121 181 DeNora (2000), p. 78

62

option to step outside restrictions, conventions and norms of the world outside the dance

setting182, and thereby to explore our own subjectivity.

Dancers’ project their self onto the music, and at the same time explore what is in the music

by means of the self183, thereby adding a kind of subjective reciprocity between the music

and the perceiving self. This reciprocity is already explored within the listening experience,

but returning to it now in the case of dancing inevitably makes it more obvious that an

important aspect is missing, namely the relation to other selves;

A listening subject cannot only move through different phases while listening, and with varying degrees

of assertoric strength, she can recognize the limitations of the interpretive world within which she

operates, and opening up the way of listening available to her, allow others to respond from a position of

difference. Listening, then, is not only a matter of musicality, but of hearing other selves.184

Listening to music in general inescapably is an activity deeply rooted in our everyday social

lives, and every kind of analysis of the listening experience must give an account of these

social aspects, in order to provide a broadly picture of the experience of listening to music.

The second part will be addressing this social dimension.

182

Fikentscher (2000), p. 75 183 Clarke (2005), p. 149 184 Cumming (2000), p. 71

63

Music as a Social Phenomenon

Music is as an active doing, an active participation in the sonic world offered by music on

behalf of the perceiving subject. So, is music then a pure private subjective experience? We

all certainly have different preferences regarding the type of music, we tend to like. In more

extreme scenarios this conflict regarding taste, stretches to the constituting elements and

becomes a discussion of the necessary and sufficient conditions for the indication of a piece

of music. As mentioned, I do not intend to engage in a discussion of particular types of

music. Nevertheless, I find it intuitively problematic to accept that music in general is a

private experience. On the contrary, I find it plausible that music essentially is a social

phenomenon. I will in the following advance at a justification of the essential social

character of our musical experience.

Music always takes place within a community and is thus inherently practice-, discourse- or

tradition related185. Music, as all other art, is deeply rooted in our practical and everyday

life. John Dewey gives a good hint of the importance of our everyday life, when he describes

the deficiencies in the theories of art;

My purpose […] is to indicate that theories which isolate art and its appreciation by placing them in a

realm of their own, disconnected from other modes of experiencing, are not inherent in the subject-

matter but arise because of specifiable extraneous conditions. Embedded as they are in institutions and

in habits of life, these conditions operate effectively because they work so unconsciously.186

Music and art in general cannot be understood detached from its context. Given our strong

involvement in the world, we tend to disregard this foundation, because we are so familiar

with our surroundings that they seemingly do not deserve further attention. The context of

music consists not only of the place of origin combined with different implications of the

constitution and conception of the object, but the context itself in which it appears seems to

185 Benson (2003), p. 41 186 Dewy (1934/2005), p. 9

64

form the very potential of music. Not only is the context in which music appears

determined by social factors, even the content of our experience of listening to this

particular music, in this particular scenario, is dependent on social aspects. Think of the

difference of experiencing a specific piece of music solitarily a cold rainy evening, and the

experience of the very same musical piece shared with hundreds, perhaps thousands of

like-minded peers at a summer festival event. These two diverse modes of a musical

experience are inevitably affected by the social connotations of the particular experience.

Taking a look at the history of music reveals different prescriptions, different conditions

and conceptions of the phenomenon music. How interesting these historical considerations

may be, I do not find it relevant in the given framework to embrace the historical

dimension. Worth noticing, though, is a traditional tendency to conceive music (and art in

general) as an autonomous entity somehow separated from our everyday world, inhabiting

its own domain;

Artistic activity is supposed not to play a part in constituting our sense of reality and therefore it is

possible to detach the product from the world in which it takes place and to measure it against a non-

worldly, non-temporal standard. By positing a reality existing independently of the artwork, it becomes

possible to detach the artwork from the temporal structure of that reality. Classical aesthetics then seeks

to naturalize temporal process.187

But recognizing the social nature of music in general is recently becoming an obvious

supposition in most approaches to analyzing the phenomenon. Even Adorno, despite his

claim of the autonomy of music (and his counterintuitive claim that music, or art in general,

only offers pleasure in regard to its amusing character188), acknowledges the social

component of music;

Art’s essence is twofold: on the one hand it dissociates itself from empirical reality and from the

functional complex that is society; and on the other, it belongs to that reality and to that social complex.

187 Hodge (1993), p. 256 188 Hamilton, p. 162. For an elaboration of Adorno’s position on music, see Hamilton (2007), pp. 153-191

65

This comes out directly in the particular aesthetic phenomena which are always simultaneously aesthetic

and faits sociaux [social facts]. Aesthetic autonomy and art qua social fact are not the same; moreover

each calls for a different kind of perception.189

I will in the following investigate these social components of music. This will be done partly

from focusing on the nature of music in general190. Is music at all an autonomous entity and

if so, is this autonomy consistent with the essential social nature of the phenomenon? Is it

necessary, or even possible, to make such a sharp distinction between art and reality,

indicated in the above quote from Adorno? I wish to illustrate the essential social character

of music. By doing this I will first of all return to the postponed exploration of the temporal

aspects of music. This will supply us with an understanding of the basic shareable nature of

the musical phenomenon. Music is potentially a multi-available entity, inevitably situated

within the current of our everyday social lives. Analyzing this basic situatedness of the

musical experience will form the next step in understanding the social components of

music. Afterwards, a further analysis of the social aspects of music is anchored in

expanding the notion of musical affordances to entail what we will call social affordances.

Understanding musical affordances as social will gain insight into the mutual tuning-in

relationship and joint attention, which will supply evidence for the social

interrelationships, initiated by a mutual musical experience. Finally, I will move towards

the more general social aspects of the musical experience by approaching the social setting

of music and the identity-material in music. Such a larger scale strategy calls for an

understanding of the basic social connotations within every given musical experience. I will

therefore, unlike the first part, focus particular on analyzing the musical experience, first of

all by examining the social implications of the individual musical experience, hereafter

working my way up, so to speak, illustrating the essential social character of the music

experience in general. But initially, we will examine the temporal aspects of music in order

to grasp the shareable nature of the musical experience in the first place.

189

Adorno; Aesthetic Theory (1984), p. 358 as quoted in Hodge (1993), p. 257 and partly in Hamilton (2007), p. 167. 190 Though I will not, as mentioned, anticipate in an ontological examination of the phenomenon music.

66

Music and Time

I have on several occasions hinted at the importance of time in relation to music. Not to

exhaust the act of suspension any longer, I will now take up this perplexing aspect of music.

But I must reiterate that this elaboration inevitably is rooted in my intentions of illustrating

the social dimension of experiencing music, why the following must be seen as clarifying

these particular aspects and therefore not as a thorough elaboration of the subject.

Music’s relation to time actualizes the urge for an analysis of this relationship;

Music poses the centrality of time to the artwork itself, with a particular urgency. Time is central not just

to the formation of the conventions and the development of the individual artist’s capacities, required to

produce or perform the work in question. A relation to time, to temporal sequence, and to temporal

structure is internal to music itself. This disrupts the attempt to set up aesthetic values as timeless and to

presume that time and temporality are irrelevant to artworks, and to judgments about them. The

function of time within music sets up a contrast to the form of temporality, which predominates in

everyday experience.191

Though music arises through everyday time, so to speak, music nevertheless seems to exist

in another time span. In everyday experience time is a causal entity, a frame in which tasks

are accomplished. In contrast, in the case of music, time is intrinsic to the internal

construction of music, not simply a frame in which it occurs192. But what is musical time

then? If we argue that musical time is an intrinsic ideal realm of time disconnected from

our ordinary everyday world193, we seem to violate the above claim that we actively

compose the content of our musical experience. Besides, it seems difficult to claim that

music essentially is a social phenomenon, if it at the same time is detached from the social

191 Hodge (1993), p. 256 192

Hodge (1993), p. 256 193 Susanne Langer and Roger Scruton are examples of such a position, Kivy (2000), pp. 27ff. and Scruton (1997), p. 489

67

domain. In the following I will investigate the character of musical time and argue that it is

unnecessary to detach musical time from our everyday world.

In illuminating these problems, I will take a closer look at some of Husserl’s observations

on the issue of time. I must apologize for this somewhat general approach to Husserl’s

account, which in itself is rich enough to form the basis of a separate investigation. But for

the sake of simplicity, I will only focus on the general aspects of Husserl’s comprehensive

analysis.

Husserl distinguishes between objective (cosmic) time and subjective (phenomenological)

time194. He focuses on the subjective internal time consciousness by describing the three-

fold division into past, present and future195. As experiences only occur in the present, the

past is experienced in the present in a different mode, which he terms retention

(memory196). Retention is a continuous modification of the same beginning point197. By

conceptualizing retention he enables us to distinguish past from present, though both are

experienced in the Now198. But the flow of time is a continual sinking away into the past;

Truly, however, it pertains to the essence of the intuition of time that in every point of its duration

(which, reflectively, we are able to make into an object) it is consciousness of what has just been and not

mere consciousness of the now-point of the objective thing appearing as having duration. In this

consciousness, we are aware of what has just been in the continuity pertaining to it *…+.199

Every now has its “horizon of Before” just as well as every now has a “horizon of After”200.

Our experiences are in this sense a threefold dimension of what has been, what is, and what

will come. Protention is the Husserlian term for this forward-looking expectation201.

194

Husserl (1913/1998), p. 192 195

Husserl (1913/1998), pp. 195-196. See also Goguen (2004), pp. 125-127 196 Husserl (1913/1998), p. 175 197 Husserl (1964), p. 51 198 Husserl’s observations on retention is confirmed by recent research on temporal cognition of music, where a pre-conscious buffer of about 10 seconds is identified, Goguen (2004), p. 126 199

Husserl (1964), pp. 53-54 200 Husserl (1913/1998), p. 195 201 Husserl (1913/1998), p. 175

68

Turning towards another influential character within phenomenology, Schutz elaborates

Husserl’s considerations on time202, applying them specifically to the area of music203.

Schutz also focus on phenomenological or subjective time, in particular he draws on the

notion of Durée, inherited from Bergson204. Durée embraces the inner time of our

consciousness differentiated from outer time, in that the durée has no measurable

capacity205. Schutz argues that the musical time resemblances the inner subjective time;

As long as a piece of music lasts, and as long as we are listening, we participate in its flux; or more

precisely: the flux of music and the flux of the stream of our consciousness are interrelated, are

simultaneous; there is a unity between them; we swim, so to speak, in this stream. And music goes on as

a unit which is indivisible. Only if we stop this ongoing development, only if we bring the flux to a

standstill, only if, so to speak, we step out of the stream and look back: then it seems that what we

experience as a unit while it lasted, has been constituted in polythetic steps.206

We experience music as a unit; we participate in its flux by a simultaneous coexistence

between our own stream of consciousness and the musical time. Only through a reflexive

glance will we be able to grasp the parts of the musical structure. This reflexive attitude is

made possible through the faculty of memory207. Drawing on Husserl, Schutz distinguish

between two types of remembrance (recollection), namely retention and reproduction,

where the former attach itself immediately to the actual experience, though it sinks into the

past. The latter, reproduction, refers to more remote pasts which are reproduced in

memory208. But the future is equally important;

202

Husserl’s main focus is on inner time consciousness, whereas Schutz tends to focus more broadly on the temporality of social relationships, but this differentiation will only supply us with a more extensive picture of the temporal phenomenon. 203

Husserl is also speaking of music in his development of his theory on time (see ex. Husserl (1964), p. 23 and Zahavi (2001), p. 121), though not as specifically as Schutz. But another objection must be made regarding Schutz. His work on music consists of posthumous publications, fragmentary in character. 204 The notion of durée seems quite similar to Husserl’s descriptions of the subjective/phenomenological time. 205 Schutz (1996), p. 257 206

Schutz (1996), p. 250 207 Schutz (1996), p. 255 208 Schutz (1996), p. 256

69

By living in our experiences, by being directed towards the objects of our acts and thoughts we are

always oriented towards the future, we are always expecting certain occurrences and events.209

These expectations are, as with recollection, divided into two. Protention portray those

expectations attached to actual experience and anticipation is those that refer to events and

experiences of the more distant future210. The two types of recollection (retention and

reproduction) and the two types of expectations (protention and anticipation) are not only

constitutive for the interconnectedness of the stream of consciousness, but they are also

constitutive for the experience of music211. Memory and expectations about the future are

the interplay in our consciousness that enables us to experience music as a unit. We live in

the flux of the ongoing music. Only by bringing the participation in the musical flux to a

standstill, only by assuming a reflective attitude will we be able to bring the acts of our

listening to objects of reflection212.

Music can thus be understood as a twofold temporal event. At one hand it is a unit, an

indivisible structure of ongoing movement. At the other hand, the accomplished musical

event is divisible into parts. We can scrutinize and analyze the different elements within a

particular piece of music, but this division can only be accomplished after bringing the

ongoing movement to a standstill. This structure inevitably results in what Schutz refers to

as the Eleatic paradox213. The flying arrow of Zeno is used as an analogy to illuminate this

paradox;

Consider the flying arrow of Zeno. Regard its flight as an ongoing movement. It is a unit from the instant

it was shot from the bow until it reaches its goal. Following this movement with your eyes, you

experienced one single event in inner time. Afterwards, in hindsight, when this movement will have been

completed, when the arrow has traversed its path, you may consider the movement – once performed

209 Schutz (1996), p. 256 210 Schutz (1996), p. 256 211

Schutz (1996), p. 257 212 Schutz (1996), p. 270 213 Schutz (1996), p. 249

70

and accomplished – as identical with the trajectory traversed by the arrow. Then you may break down

into pieces the unity of the ongoing motion […] But, then, the arrow does not fly anymore.214

Considering this dual temporal characterization of the musical experience, it not only

seems to be a plausible explanation of the temporal aspects involved in music, it also

enables us to avoid the autonomous claim of music. Music is not an isolated entity

inhabiting its own domain215, but rather deeply rooted and dependent on what we could

call real time. This paradoxical nature of musical time questions the very motive of

establishing a notion of “musical time”. By using a specific term to describe the musical

time, we unavoidably suggest that musical time coins another kind of time that differs from

everyday, or real time. Philip Alperson addresses this problem by arguing that musical time

is an instance of time in general;

The truth of the matter seems to be that the temporal dimension of musical experience is not

fundamentally different from that of any other sort of temporal experience. Rather, as an occurrence, an

art whose method of presentation is progressive in time, a piece of music is a piece with all phenomena

which occur in time: it has a determinate period of duration; an objective and irreversible time order; it

seems to involve the specific mental faculties of attention, memory, expectation, and apperception, and,

as such, it seems tied to our sense of personal identity.216

Though musical time is an instance of time in general, it is nevertheless profitable to

maintain the phrase “musical time” on a theoretical level as it illustrates the specific

temporal aspects of musical experience. It is important to maintain the notion of musical

time as it;

[…] underscore the fact that, in drawing our attention to intelligible structures whose patterns develop in

time, music does exploit certain features of temporal experience. It exploits the sense we have of

movement “through” time, it exploits a sense of movement with or against a regular temporal

background, and it exploits the sense of the integration of a flux of events into a single, unified whole. In

214

Schutz (1996), p. 249 215 Schopenhauer (1969), p. 262, for instance, argues that music is not confined to the phenomenal world. 216 Alperson (1980), p. 414. I will shortly follow up on the identity potential within music.

71

general, it makes duration an object of attention and calls upon the same faculties we employ in all time

perception.217

We will therefore continue to use the phrase musical time, memorizing that it is an aspect

of time in general. The necessity of maintaining the notion is due to the fact that musical

time in particular draws attention to a specific aspect of time. This specific aspect of time is

an aspect that escapes the measurable characteristics of ordinary time. Surely a piece of

music has these measurable durations. Music unfolds itself in time; it has a specific

duration, which is measurable. But by speaking of musical time, I wish to accentuate the

above mentioned similarities with subjective time. I wish to emphasize that experiencing

music is different from the outer time, so to speak, in that music unfolds itself in the inner

time, the durée. The experience of music is differentiated from outer time due to this

participation in the listening subject’s stream of consciousness;

The listener lived, while listening, in another dimension of time which cannot be measured by our clocks

or other mechanical devices. In the measurable time there are pieces of equal length, there are minutes

and hours. There is no such yardstick for the dimension of time the listener lives through; there is no

equality between its pieces, if there are pieces at all.218

The experience of music, the participation in the musical event involves participation in the

musical time. While experiencing music the listener lives in what appears to be another

time span219. But this simultaneity between the musical time and the listener’s stream of

consciousness is not merely an individual experience. On the contrary, participating in the

musical time entails an opening towards sharing, in vivid present, the others stream of

consciousness in immediacy220. Music thus becomes a shared time for those involved.

Through manifold participation in a given musical event, we are, in Schutz’s phrase,

217 Alperson (1980), p. 414 218 Schutz (1996), p. 254 219 Schutz uses an illustrative analogy to explain this incommensurability between the time we are living through versus clock time; The experience of waiting on the surgeon who operated on a person dear to us will inevitably feel quite different than the same amount of time spent chatting with a friend. Schutz (1996), p. 254 220 Friedson (1996), p. 124

72

growing older together; we are tuned-in, living together in the same flux221. We will now

explore this tuning-in relationship by first of all investigating the situatedness of the

listening experience. Afterwards it will be necessary to examine the nature of the sharable

music experience by drawing attention to notions such as mutual tuning-in relationships,

joint attention and social affordances.

221 Schutz (1964), p. 175

73

Situatedness of musical experience

First of all we will need to turn to the situatedness of the listener, elaborating a conceptual

frame in which the temporal and spatial surroundings of the listener are accentuated. This

is a necessary move as I wish to investigate the fundamental social connotations of the

listening experience. Every kind of listening to music is to some extent situated. Whether I

listen to music solitarily with my headphones on, or I am participating a large concert at

Roskilde Festival, these two very different modes of listening will inevitably be enfolded

with my particular cultural inheritance. I will always approach the music with a pregiven

set of expectations222.

I will in the following reconcile three different notions illustrating the situatedness of any

given musical experience, namely Merleau-Ponty’s “intentional arc”, Schutz’s “scheme of

reference” and Bourdieu’s “habitus of listening”223. These three notions each disclose a

perspective on this situatedness; Intentional arc seems to reveal the most basic structures

orienting us in our world, whereas scheme of reference is operational on the sociocultural

level. Habitus of listening is also working on the sociocultural level, though it appears to be

of a somewhat more general character, than the scheme of reference. I will subsequently

give a short description of each of the notions and hereafter bring them together in an

analysis of situated musical actions, which afterwards will function as a collective name of

the three notions at stake.

222 Becker (2004), p. 69 223

Bourdieu does not specifically speak of habitus of listening, but in order to narrow the focus, I have chosen to follow Becker (2004), pp. 70ff in her specification of the habitus. This strategy will be more comprehensible in the paragraph concerning Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus.

74

Intentional Arc

I will begin with Merleau-Ponty´s notion of intentional arc as this notion, as mentioned, is

operative at the most basic level. Merleau-Ponty gives the following description of the

intentional arc;

[…] the life of consciousness – cognitive life, the life of desire or perceptual life – is subtended by an

“intentional arc” which projects round about us our past, our future, our human setting, our physical,

ideological and moral situation, or rather which results in our being situated in all these respects.224

By living and acting within the world, humans inevitably acquire a variety of different skills

appropriate to multiple different situations. Dependent on the individual’s respective

perspective and equally dependent on the given situation, the individual will respond

accordingly. This means that the intentional arc prescribes the way we pick up different

affordances in our environment;

The agent sees things from some perspective and sees them as affording certain actions. What the

affordances are depends on past experience with that sort of thing in that sort of situation. The idea of

an intentional arc is meant to capture the idea that all past experience is projected back into the world.

The best representation of the world is thus the world itself.225

It is precisely in this sense that the intentional arc is a basic concept – it is operational pre-

consciously. It functions on the level at the body schema, which, as we have seen, is

responsible for maintaining posture, balance and governing movement. The intentional arc

is in this respect an orientation capacity which not only enables adjustment to the

environment but equally enables different sorts of interactions with our changing

environments. Our bodily adjustments are shaped by environmental features which in turn

shape how we engage with these environmental features – we change our environment by

224 Merleau-Ponty (1945/2009), p. 157 225 Dreyfus (1998), in the section “Learning without Representation: Merleau-Ponty’s Intentional Arc”

75

acting in it. This intimate body-world reciprocity is secured by the intentional arc. Thus, the

intentional arc shapes our actions and is likewise shaped by them226.

Scheme of Reference

Alfred Schutz was a pioneer within sociological phenomenology and his notion scheme of

reference is therefore not surprisingly founded upon that tradition. Interested in clarifying

the essential structures of the life-world, and in exposing the role of subjectivity in the

construction of the social world227, Schutz maneuvers at the level of our social lives.

Scheme of reference captures the sociocultural background against which things are

constituted in their meaning. In this context Schutz also speaks of typification. Typification

is a type of practical know-how that determines the experience of the life-world; it is a sort

of background knowledge that determines how we interpret a given situation;

[…] In all such cases he can discover within his past experience the context of motivation constituting the

partner’s reaction. This may be specific experience of this particular partner, or it may be knowledge of

the typical reactions one can expect when one affects another person in a typical way. We always carry

about us the knowledge of rules of this kind. We simply take them for granted, and, since we have no

reason to question them, we never even bother to ask where we learned them.228

The typifications that lays the ground for our social interaction is part of our everyday

encounter with the world and its inhabitants, and as such, largely unknown to the agent.

The typifications are based primarily on our previous experiences, but they are not static

rules. Rather, they emerge from the dynamic reciprocal interaction with the other229, which

is why they are open for alteration.

A simple example can illustrate the issues at stake here. In the western world (roughly

speaking) we experience a dog as a domesticated pet, whereas in China, for example, the 226 Ibid. Dreyfus calls the body-world reciprocity a feed-back loop. 227

Overgaard & Zahavi (2009), p. 100 228 Schutz (1932/1967), p. 162 229 Schutz (1932/1967), pp. 154ff

76

status of a dog is infused with another conception, considering its status as a culinary meal

(or think of the rank of a cow in India). Applying this to music, listening to a classical piece

of music brings about a whole other experience to me as opposed to an African tribe

member. I suspect that my cultural heritage supplies connotations reaching beyond my

musical experience (an obvious example would be the general presumption that classical

music is an high-status form of music), whereas the African tribe member, free of such

connotations, on the contrary has another scheme of reference conducting the musical

experience of a classical piece of music.

One of the great achievements of Schutz’s sociological phenomenology is his understanding

of the social world as a manifold of different realms. The social world is not simply one

thing but various domains presenting different challenges to the interactive agents;

Just as the world of my actual perception is only a fragment of the whole world of my experience, and

this in turn is but a fragment of the world of my possible experience, so likewise the social world (itself a

portion of this “whole world”) is only directly experienced by me in fragments as I live from moment to

moment.230

This results in an extensive analysis of these different realms but a further investigation

into these is beyond the scope of this paper. What will prove profitable in this framework is

to notice Schutz’s observations concerning the We-relationship. The We-relationship is

defined as “face-to-face relationships in which the partners are aware of each other and

sympathetically participate in each other’s lives for however a short time”231. When we are

living in a We-relationship, we are involved in each other in such an intimate manner, that

we share a common stream of consciousness. When we are involved in each other, each of

our experiences will be colored by this interpersonal engagement, our experiences will be

influenced by this solidarity232. This is previously framed by the notion of mutual tuning-in

relationship and will be thoroughly explored in s separate section below.

230

Schutz (1932/1967), p. 142 231 Schutz (1932/1967), p. 164 232 Schutz (1932/1967), p. 167

77

But let us sum up the scheme of reference. We have a horizon of interpretative schemes of

references. These are based upon typifications of previous experiences and our cultural

heritage. We enact our social lives in different realms, embracing direct interaction with

our surroundings, dissociated knowledge of people outside my environment, previous

events (autobiographical as well as pre-personal) and artifacts in the world testifying their

human origin233.

Habitus of Listening

Bourdieu’s notion of habitus is meant to frame the system of dispositions that enable us to

navigate and act within a given social environment. The habitus is;

[…] structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles of the

generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively “regulated” and

“regular” without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals

without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary to

attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating

action of a conductor.234

The habitus is not a set of rules but rather inclinations or dispositions, determining the

actions of a social agent. But it is important to emphasize that despite the function of the

habitus as a source of the agent’s actions, the habitus is not the product of an individual’s

strategic intentions235. On the contrary, the habitus is a precondition for social interaction,

a sort of immanent law that is endowing the commonsense world with an objectivity

secured by a general consensus236. The habitus is thus a basic structured system of

dispositions facilitating social interaction. The habitus is not a static system, but a dynamic,

233 Schutz (1932/1967), p. 109. In his analysis of artifacts, Schutz is exceedingly close to Heidegger’s analysis of tools. Both Schutz and Heidegger conceive artifacts/tools as a constant reference to the Other. 234

Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 72 235 Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 73 236 Bourdieu (1972/1977), pp. 80-81

78

or rather dialectical relationship between the objective structures within the habitus and

the cognitive and motivating structures, which they produce. The habitus is thereby

constantly transformed and reproduced in accordance with historical practices237. But

these structuring structures, the habitus, are only revealed in the object, which they

structure238, and, as such, beyond the grasp of consciousness239.

Although Bourdieu acknowledges the dialectical relationship between the habitus and the

individual, he nevertheless seems to operate on a more general level, so to speak. He does

not clarify the role of the individual, besides the fact that he conceives the individual

system of dispositions as structural invariants of the habitus in general240. This combined

with the transcendental nature of the habitus, the inconceivable structure of the

structuring structures leads me to presume that the notion of habitus is operative on a

superior level of abstraction; that it captures the social heritage, we cannot fully grasp.

Despite this generality, I would like to stress the importance of conceiving the habitus as a

set of dispositions. We will, as mentioned, focus on the habitus of listening. Judith Becker

presents such a strategy241;

Our “habitus of listening” is tacit, unexamined, seemingly completely “natural”. We listen in a particular

way without thinking about it, and without realizing that it even is a particular way of listening […] A

“habitus of listening” suggests, not a necessity nor a rule, but an inclination, a disposition to listen with a

particular kind of focus, to expect to experience particular kinds of emotion […] The stance of the listener

is not a given, not natural, but necessarily influenced by place, time, the shared context of culture, and

the intricate and irreproducible details of one’s personal biography.242

237 Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 83 238 Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 90 239 Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 94 240

Bourdieu (1972/1977), p. 86 241 Becker (2004), pp. 70 ff 242 Becker (2004), p. 71

79

Becker uses the notion of habitus of listening to express the temporal and spatial

situatedness of the listener243. As indicated in this, admittedly perfunctory, elaboration of

the notion of habitus, I believe that this notion must be complimented with the notions of

intentional arc and scheme of reference. This will be my intention in the subsequently

section.

Situated Musical Actions

Every kind of musical experience is to some extent situated. Adapting the habitus of

listening, we gain knowledge of the social dispositions each individual necessarily and

subconsciously implement on the musical experience. We have a disposition to listen to a

piece of music with a particular focus, which is determined by our given cultural heritage.

But the social agent in question here, inevitably have a solitary set of experiences equally

determining the extent of the musical experience. In other words, the agent has a variety of

interpretive schemes of references at his disposal, which partly are based on the structures

of his given environment, typifications extracted by typical reactions in typical events, but

at the same time founded upon the agent’s previous experiences. To oblige the most

fundamental level of the individual’s orientation capacities, we will have to turn towards

the notion of intentional arc in order to validate the claim that we pick up different

affordances.

I have chosen to bring the above three notions together, as I believe that they illustrate

three different perspectives on the situated musical experience. But this situatedness is

inseparable from its actual use. The situatedness of any sort of musical experience is not

just a cognitive or embodied matter, but equally enacted244. It is important to notice that

the individual not merely is exposed to a fixed context, in which the musical experience

occurs. In contrast, the individual actively shapes the character of the context of the

243

Becker (2004), p. 70. According to Becker, the habitus of listening is the aural equivalent to the visual term “gaze”. 244 Goguen (2004), p. 120

80

musical experience, which is why I think the notion of “situated musical actions”245 quite

well captures the issues at stake. But obviously the creation of the context of the musical

experience happens within a given social frame. The social scenery plays a crucial role in

shaping the musical experience. We will now study some of these social effects by first of all

examining the social affordances.

245 This notion is also used by Goguen (2004)

81

Social Affordances

Music inevitably summons the present of the other246. But how is this so? To explain this

we will have to, once again, return to the notion of musical affordances. As explored above,

music is an aesthetic technology, socially available to the perceiver with the appropriate

skills247. Music offers a sonic space that affords engagement and appropriation of the sonic

structures248. But it is not merely the perceiver’s ability to obtain the musical affordances

that determines the musical experience. Picking up musical affordances is a dynamic

interaction with the music itself – The musical affordances are realized within this dynamic

relationship. Music is a material in the world, an intersubjective accessible sonic space that

we can manipulate and do different things with. Dependent on the use of the music, the

character of the musical experience will be affected. We use music in different scenarios.

These will be examined below249. Worth noticing in this regard, is the dramatic change that

occurs when listening to music in a social setting, as compared to a solitary listening

episode. Again, every kind of musical experience is to some degree socially charged, every

musical experience is situated. But the specific experience of sharing the musical

experience directly with others alternates the conception of the music at play, just as well

as the conscious decision to retreat to a solitary listening experience would influence the

musical experience.

The social impact on the musical experience can be explained by referring to social

affordances. Music is a material situated within the world and offering a variety of

affordances, including social resources;

[…] the study of how music is used in daily life helps to illuminate the practical activity of casting ahead

and furnishing the social space with material-cultural resources for feeling, being and doing. This is part

246 This claim was made at the end of the section ”Dancing – Illustrating the force of Embodiment” and will now be thoroughly elaborated. 247

Cf. “Musical Affordances”. 248 Cf. “A Sonic World”. 249 Cf. “Setting the Scene”.

82

of how the habitat for social life – its support system – is produced and sustained […] music is a resource

for producing social life.250

Music offers social affordances; it is a social resource that presents a shareable sonic space.

Just as musical affordances arises in the dynamic interaction between the piece of music

and the perceiver, so does social affordances arise during the interaction with the other in

a common we-relationship. Exemplifying this in relation to music, let us first turn to the

individual listening experience. As explored above, the individual actively engages with the

musical piece, to some extent creating the content of the listening experience on the basis

of a dynamic interaction with the music. The solitary listening experience (for the sake of

simplicity we will disregard the social connotations for a moment) is thus created through

a dynamic interplay between the music and the individual. Applying this to the social

scenario, listening to music with others entails not merely my own resonance with the

musical affordances but equally awareness that others too, respond and react to the music

at play. I will be alert to others reactions as I acknowledges the availability of the musical

affordances for the other251. This is particularly observable at an electronic dance event,

where the dancer responds to the music played and the other dancers’ movements. But the

dancing crowd equally influences the music, as the DJ adapts the music in accordance with

the dancers’ response. Music in such scenarios can thus be said to communicate a whole

range of different relationships.

The other can only disclose himself when he is to some degree sense able, but he is, in

himself, an important source of affordances252. The task of picking up social affordances

from the other requires an explorative human activity to reveal it253. To understand the

extent of the shareable character of music, we will return to Schutz and incorporate his

notion of mutual tuning-in to the composition of social affordances.

250 DeNora (2000), p. 129 251 Schutz (1964), p. 160, speaks of actions as being ”oriented in their course with reference to one another”. Gibson (1979/1986), p. 135, describes the other as an important source of affordances. 252 Gibson (1979/1986), p. 135 253 Good (2007), p. 271

83

Mutual tuning-in Relationship

Music affords a social sonic space. This shared accessibility of musical affordances is what

establishes the social environment254. Music is an aesthetic technology, a tool for shared

action and feeling. In this respect, music affords a mutual tuning-in relationship;

It is the thesis of the present paper that this sharing of the other’s flux of experiences in inner time, this

living through a vivid present in common, constitutes what we called in our introductory paragraphs the

mutual tuning-in relationship, the experience of the “We”, which is at the foundation of all possible

communication.255

In this mutual tuning-in relationship, the “’I’ and the ‘Thou’ are experienced by both

participants as a ‘We’ in vivid sense”256. Recall Schutz’s analysis of the temporal aspects of

music. According to Schutz, participating in any given form of musical event involves

participation in the inner time, the durée. Experiencing music with others is living together

in the same flux – we are, as Schutz puts it, growing older together257.

Approaching the social musical experience as a mutual tuning-in relationship is highly

applicable to the theory of affordances (both affordances in general, as well as

musical/social affordances)258;

If perception is not the having of representations, but the activity of keeping in touch with the

environment surrounding one, then it becomes much more likely that two or more individuals will share

at least some of their awareness.259

254

Costall (1995), p. 473 255

Schutz (1964), p. 173. The notion of this mutual tuning-in relationship is founded upon an analysis of “Making Music Together” (the title of the text), and therefore originate in the relation between performer-listener, but given the fact that Schutz also uses this notion elsewhere, I feel confident at applying it to the musical experience in general. 256 Schutz (1964), p. 161 257 Schutz (1964), p. 175 258

Again, my focus will be on the musical/social affordances, but the following considerations are equally relevant to the general theory of affordances. 259 Reed (1992), p. 12

84

Understanding others then, arises from a situation of shared awareness, which is part of

intersubjectivity260. We are tuned-in, not merely to the objects existing in the world, but

equally in our interaction with the other. We share information specific to environmental

situations261. In this sense, one could argue that all affordances are social. James M. M. Good

addresses this problem by referring to what he calls the dilemma of social affordances. This

dilemma arises from the difficulties of applying the theory of social affordances to a social

science investigation;

The more a theory focuses on abstract invariances, the more remote it comes from the flow of

interaction, the more it concentrates on the minutiae of meaningful interaction in the flow, and the more

one is weighed down by ponderous description.262

But as the dilemma specifically occurs within the social science domain, and as it is

concerned with a practical aspect of detecting these social affordances, we will not discuss

this dilemma further than recognizing its existence. I find no difficulties in accepting that all

affordances are social263. On the contrary, such a claim only seems to support the intimacy

of mind, body and world, whereas it gives an opening to the intersubjective world. Besides,

as we discovered in analyzing the musical affordances, social affordances are not merely

detected, but they are actively created and maintained by the joint action of interacting

parties264;

Shared awareness, on this view, is emphatically not the identity of two private experiences, but is instead

a joint or mutual experiencing of a particular aspect of the world […] Hence, what is shared […] is not

subjective states, but information specific to environmental situations.265

260

Good (2007), p. 273 261 Reed (1992), p. 12 262 Good (2007), p. 276 263 Costall (1995) gives some interesting ideas on why Gibson failed to underplay the socio-cultural in the perception of affordances. According to Costall this failure consists in Gibson’s concept of literal perception and his concern with the problem of cultural relativism. (p. 475) 264 Good (2007), p. 280 265 Reed (1992), p. 12

85

We will now move on to investigate the character of this joint action, framed by the notion

of joint attention.

Joint Attention

We are tuned in to our environment and the affordances that are offered by this specific

environment. This means that we are tuned in to other people existing within this

environment. Joint attention frames the mutual awareness occurring when two or more

people are attending to the same object in the environment266. But this mutual awareness

is not merely an additional aspect of our perception of a given object. Rather, joint attention

result in a shared experience with the other (-s), a fundamental mutual stance affecting the

experience of the given object267. Jointly attending to a given object in the environment is a

matter of establishing a framework for attending to the environment, or making use of one

already established268;

The shared framework is a way for the content of our attentional states to be mutually fixed. Yet

establishing a framework is also a matter of mutually structuring the activity of attending to the

world.269

Returning to the above developed notion of situated musical actions, we will now

incorporate this in relation to joint attention, specifically within the musical sphere. Any

kind of musical experience is to some degree situated. We experience music with a pre-

dispositioned set of expectations dependent on our cultural heritage, individual

background and perceptual capacities. We will in this context focus on the social

experience of listening to music, but it is important to have in mind, though, that the

fundamental level of the social experience nevertheless necessitate the individual

266 Cochrane (2009), p. 59. Joint attention is believed to be established in infants from around nine months, but I will mainly focus on mature joint attention in what follows. 267

Campbell (2002), pp. 174ff 268 Cochrane (2009), p. 61 269 Cochrane (2009), p. 62

86

participants self-awareness270, one needs to be prepared and open towards mutual

attending to the music;

Hence joint attention is characterized by an ongoing preparedness to alter the way I attend to something

should you direct me to it, as well as being self-consciously aware of the publicly available aspects of my

own behavior as they have the potential to lead your attentional focus. This preparedness and openness

should be mutual.271

Establishing a mutual frame is one of the main contributes of joint attention. This shared

framework applies yet another dimension to the situated musical action, as it modifies the

musical experience. As explored above, experiencing music is a matter of actively engaging

and creating the content of this very experience. Experiencing music in a jointly attending

manner has a vivid impact on the musical experience, because the musical perception is

mediated by the other person’s task of perceiving the music272;

Such mutual co-ordination entails that we share the task of perceiving together, filtering our experiences

through our awareness of the other, such that the experience is intrinsically altered. Joint attention

involves establishing a plural subject of attention, in which a framework for perceiving the world is

generated, and in which the actual interactions involved define that state.273

The establishing of this plural subject results in a unifying tendency, where different

individuals listen and responds to the music as a group274, i.e. music launches group

identity. Think of a large concert, where the crowd seemingly responds as a unit. In such

scenarios you will often find yourself swaying back and forth, applauding, dancing, etc. in

270

This self-awareness is at first glance quite similar to Merleau-Ponty’s intentional arc. But given that intentional arc is operational at a pre-conscious level, the self-awareness at stake here differentiates itself, as the notion of joint attention operates at a cognitive level. 271

Cochrane (2009), p. 62 272 Cochrane (2009), p. 64 speaks of the task of seeing, but summarizes that it is perception in general. However, he does not justify this shift of focus. The interesting aspect of this observation is that though Cochrane is focusing in musical perception, he nevertheless seems to slip into a focus on visual perception on the default. The tendency to focus on visual perception is thoroughly described during my motivational account and the section “The Phenomenological Listening Experience”. 273 Cochrane (2009), p. 65 274 Cochrane (2009), p. 73

87

synchronization with the others around you. You will commonly respond to the

group/community accordingly. Some describes this as a feeling of falling into the music275.

We adopt and adapt to the resources within an environment and in a social context this

implies that we resonate our responses according to those of others. Music is such a

resource. Through music we resonate with our surroundings (including the presence of

others) and through music we gain an understanding of our self and of our social identities.

In order to further grasp this identity-material within music, we will first off all need to

examine the scenery of any musical performance and see how the scene or the setting

affects the musical experience.

275 DeNora (2000), p. 124

88

Setting the Scene

The physical surroundings of the musical event are an important factor in our musical

experience. I will in the following work to show a few indications of these spacial

influences. But I must point out that I by no means aim at an exhaustive account but rather

wish to call attention to the fact that the social scenery plays a role in the shaping of our

musical experience.

Examining the scenery of the musical event is to some extent an expansion of the situated

musical actions. But whereas the elaboration of the idea of situated musical actions

resulted in a conceptual frame in which the solitary musical experience reveals itself as a

fundamental orientational capacity, defined by the individual’s cultural heritage, I now

wish to take a closer look at the influences at stake within the social surroundings of the

musical event. So, having demonstrated the individual’s basic situatedness of any musical

experience, I will currently inspect the physical surroundings of the musical event and the

impact it has on the musical experience.

As indicated above, the musical experience dramatically changes, when sharing the

experience with others. Listening to music, for example, with others, alters the experience

of music, due to the implications of the above mentioned aspects of social affordances,

mutual tuning-in relationships and joint attention. I will not only respond to the musical

affordances related to my own situated musical actions but equally react upon others

situated musical actions. In this context, the other is to some extent constituent of my

musical experience. We will pursue this idea further in the next section on musical

identities.

The physical environment of the musical event may have a profound impact on the musical

experience. The physical space, in which a given musical event occurs, influences the

experience;

89

Performance spaces affect greatly the relationships that are created among those that are inside

them.276

Whether a concert hall, a park, stadium, small pub, etc, these physical locations inevitably

infect our experience of the musical event as a whole. This is not merely due to the

experience of being at the different locations, but also because these different places offer

different opportunities for development of the musical performance, and of the experience

of listening to the particular music as well. An important factor is, obviously, the technical

potential for establishing a good sound. The sound aspect seems more persistent when

attending a large concert, than it would be during more intimate musical sessions, such as

for example an acoustic live session at a bar. In the first case, we tend to have higher

expectations to the technical facilities supporting the sound, probably due to the fact that

such a huge musical event inevitably creates a distance between the participants and the

performing crew, a distance that is united by the music277. So, if the music reaches the

audience distorted, this will infect the experience radically. In the second case, the intimate

live session, other factors such as closeness with the performer, intimacy with the rest of

the audience or familiarity/atmosphere in the surroundings might make up for the

technical facilities. Over and all, it appears that our expectations and level of tolerance vary

with the sort of music being played. We seem to be more tolerant during a live rock show,

given the many contingencies (i.e. spontaneity of live performing, possibility of mistakes,

unpredictable sound equipment, audience reactions, etc.) than would be the case in a live

symphonic performance or opera.

Revisiting Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, we can say that we have a common set of

expectations to different musical events, specified by the culture we live in. Attending a

large concert of any kind is infused with the participants’ dispositions to anticipate in the

particular event. We all have a habitus of musical event, so to speak, that induces this

common set of expectations, depending on our cultural heritage. This means that if I am

276

Small (1998), p. 199 277 Besides, when attending a large musical event we usually pay an admission fee. This can also have an influence on the expectations prior to the event, as we tend to be more expectant, when having paid for the admission.

90

participating a concert of classical music, I will have certain expectations not only to the

music but also to the setting, in which the music is to be experienced. I will expect some

degree of formality amongst the other participants and the space we share, I will equally

expect to be seated, and will be quite surprised if the surroundings of the event fail to

match, to some degree, my previous experiences and my cultural expectations278. Thus, the

habitus plays a role in shaping how the music manifests to us, perceptually speaking.

On the other hand, music can also be used to support, or even create, scenes in our social

world. Music is a resource for establishing an agent’s aesthetic dimension. Music is used for

elaborating configured spaces that are hospitable to some types of actions, inhospitable to

others. Individuals “orchestrate” their social activity through music279; musical scenes are

created in accordance with the particular agency called for. Given the habitus of musical

events, we all have expectations to the physical surroundings of specific musical events, ex.

the concert hall hosting a classical concert. But the relationship between the music and the

setting in which it occurs is of a reciprocal character – the music also strongly infuses the

space, in which it unfolds. This theoretical statement is widely manifested in our everyday

lives. Think of the soothing music played in a cramped elevator offering reassurance to the

passengers. Or think of the jolly Christmas music played in a packed mall, provoking whole

different connotations, than those actually manifested280. Music seemingly plays a crucial

role in shaping and guiding our actions in different contexts;

Music is thus part of the cultural material through which “scenes” are constructed, scenes that afford

different kinds of agency, different sorts of pleasure and ways of being.281

Music has an ability to drive and organize action. In this sense, music can be a prescription

of social order282. Again, we use music to do different things. Music is an active doing,

278 Obviously, breaking such conventions can be a deliberate strategy on the behalf of the organizers or the performing musicians. 279 DeNora (2000), p. 110-111 280 In fact, music is a ubiquitous feature of shopping and the retail sector has undergone a potent development within the musical sphere, emerging still new ways of optimizing our consumption. For more on this interesting aspect of music, see DeNora (2000), pp. 131ff. 281 DeNora (2000), p. 123

91

essentially embedded in our everyday social lives. The physical surrounding of the musical

event is an important factor, influencing the musical experience. Music unfolds within a

given physical frame, which is shaping the musical experience. Exactly the temporal

dimension of music is what makes it a social powerful phenomenon. Music is a way of

happening that moves through time283. Participating in the musical event is sharing the

temporal dimension. The last section of the social inquiry of music will be examining one of

the shared aspects of the musical event, by focusing on musical identities.

282 DeNora (2000), p. 125 283 DeNora (2000), p. 161

92

Musical Identities

I have on several occasions hinted at the identity material within music and I now wish to

evolve the idea that music can be a resource for establishing identities. The potential for

creating identity through music is a well-established field of research, primarily concerned

with examining music as a resource for establishing personal identity284. I endorse this

interesting field of research, but I nevertheless approach the identity potential from

another angle, as I advance the phenomenon from a social perspective. I want to explore

the culmination of the above developed argument that we come together in our mutual

musical experience. I will, in other words, extend the theoretical fundament for the mutual

response to a given musical event285. This will be done by exemplifying how music is a

material of establishing identity within a group of participants.

The relationship between music and identity can be approached from two different

theoretical perspectives. The first concerns the identity “status” of an individual, while the

other investigates the contribution of social groups in structuring specific musical

behavior286. Obviously, such a distinction is mainly theoretical, whereas it is impossible to

study an individual’s identity separated from the social surroundings. The distinction will

prove profitable, though, as it enables us to focus on two different, but equally important,

perspectives of the identity material within music. I will, as mentioned, approach the

phenomenon from the social identity perspective, an approach that has not yet been

extensively investigated287.

284 Hargreaves et al. (2002), p. 14 285 This mutual response is previously examined through the notions of mutual tuning-in relationships and joint attention. 286

Tarrant et al. (2002), p. 134 287 Hargreaves et al. (2002), p. 5 states that the social functions of music have been seriously neglected. Besides, see Tarrant et al. (2002), p. 134

93

We will, nevertheless, have to recognize the innate aspect of musicality288. This is an

inescapable field of research when seeking an understanding of the importance of music in

our everyday lives; “Music may be at the source of the ability to be socialized in the human

way.”289 We are all musical – every human being has a biological and social guarantee of

musicality290. Acknowledging the innate character of musicality supply evidence not

merely for the importance of music to human beings, but function in addition as a premise

for my investigation of social identity prospects within music. We are all to some degree

musical beings and cannot ignore the fact that music is an important factor in shaping

identity.

Turning towards social identity theory will supply the necessary conceptual framework of

the study of social identity. We are all, according to social identity theory, members of

different social groups, both large-scale, such as gender and race, and smaller scale groups,

for example family, colleagues, etc. Interaction between two or more people are

distinguished by whether the behavior primarily is based on individual characteristics or

based upon acknowledging one’s own and others group membership. Behavior in the first

case is coined by interpersonal behavior; the latter is referred to as intergroup behavior291.

I wish to focus on intergroup behavior. The necessity of such a strategy can be illustrated

by referring to the importance of the context, in which social behavior occurs;

*…+ attempts to define or describe oneself inevitably proceed from a perspective, and different

perspectives have different implications for how a person is treated *…+ Thus, interest in “true identities”

and “actual characteristics” of persons can be replaced by concern with the perspectives in which they

are constructed.292

288 Communicative musicality is a relative new field of research describing our innate abilities to take in the world, Malloch and Trevarthen (2009), p. 4. The innate aspect of musicality within this field is in line with the statement mentioned during analyzing the phenomenon of dance; We are all born to dance. 289 Trevarthen (2002), p. 22 290

Hargreaves at al. (2002), p. 15 291 Tarrant et al. (2002), p. 137 292 Gergen (1991/2000), p. 146

94

We construct our selves, so to speak, dependent on the situations we encounter. When this

construction occurs in an intergroup relationship, the sense of self alters in relation to the

other selves. Revisiting the notion of joint attention facilitates an opportunity to grasp this

alternation. When jointly attending an object, the experience of the particular object is to

some extend constituted by the other. The other is in one sense or another phenomenally

present, shaping the character of my experience. Applying this to the area of identity-

construction, we can argue that when joint attention occurs within a specific social group,

in which the member’s feels attached, a mutual feeling of community may arise;

Every way we can think of to specify a human being will involve a relationship with others. Our

relationships specify us; they change as we change, and we change as they change. Who we are is how

we relate. So it is that to affirm and celebrate our relationships through musicking, especially in company

with like-feeling people, is to explore and celebrate our sense of who we are, to make us feel more fully

ourselves […] we have been allowed to live for a while in the world as it ought to be, in the world of right

relationships.293

An obvious approach in exemplifying this in relation to music is to consider the concert

scenario once again. Attending a concert with others dramatically alters the musical

experience294. This is partly due to the social surroundings and the situated musical actions

of me and others. We respond not only to our physical environment but also to the actions

of others. But an aspect of the latter is missing, namely that of social identity. When

participating in a concert, the individual often find him- or herself so absorbed in the event

that the sense of self is defined in relation to the other participants. This is most likely to

occur “in company with like-feeling people”295. In such cases, we seem to relate and

respond to the music as a group – our reactions are to some degree synchronized. Think for

example of a packed dancehall at an electronic dance event. The dancers typically

synchronize their movement in relation to each other, the dancer responds to the other

293 Small (1998), p. 142 294 The concert seems the clearest example of this, but the alteration of the musical experience equally occurs in other scenarios, where the experience is shared between two or more people. Besides, a solitary musical experience is, as mentioned, socially charged. This suggests that the alternation of the musical experience is situation-dependent, rather than merely physical qualified. 295 Cf. above quote

95

dancer, creating a collective synchronized movement reminiscent of a choreographed

dance. This synchronicity is a type of simultaneity that goes beyond co-temporal

occurrence296. The participants experience a collective energy that facilitates a felt sense of

group behavior297 – a sense of being part of a particular environment with the other

participants298. Another example of such coordinated group behavior can be found in an

enthusiastic crowd at a live rock show, simultaneously waving their hands above their

head. The impact on a spectator of these two mentioned examples is in severe contrast to

observing a symphonic event, as for example opera. Nevertheless, the participants of an

opera are equally synchronized in their participation, though in a passive manner. It would

be considered as highly inappropriate to stand up and shout during an opera event (unless

of course it is practiced as an act of approval after the event has finished). Every kind of

musicking, every kind of participation in a musical event calls for a specific mutual attitude

on behalf of each participant. This establishes a community amongst the participants, a

mutual frame in which the experience of the music is shared.

I have worked to illustrate not only the identity material within music but equally a

verification of the claim that we mutually react to a given musical event. When attending a

musical event, we may experience the music within a community of attendants.

Admittedly, this inspection is insufficient, but it nevertheless serves the purpose by, once

again, emphasizing the importance of music in our everyday lives. I will now turn towards

a closure of the discussion of the social dimension of music by arguing that the experience

of listening to music is a partaking of the musical world.

296 Fikentscher (2000), p. 80 297

Fikentscher (2000), p. 81 describes this collective energy as vibe. 298 Whether this felt sense of group behavior is initiated by the collective energy or the synchronizing movements is analogue to the chicken vs. egg-discussion and will not be of relevancy in this context.

96

Listening to Music – A partaking of the Musical World.

We do things to and with music. Music is a powerful form of art, influencing many people’s

everyday lives across the world. I have worked to show the essential social foundation of

music through examining the temporal aspects of music, the basic situated musical actions,

the mutual sharable experience of music due to the social affordances, the mutually tuning-

in relationships and joint attention, and finally the influence of the physical surroundings

and the social identity potential within music. After gaining this insight into the social

dimensions of music, it appears unfeasible to argue that music is an autonomous entity,

detached from our everyday social lives. On the contrary, music is a material deeply

situated within the current of our everyday world;

As case studies show, music’s effects can be dramatic. It may return language to those for whom it has

been lost and restore memory to the amnesiac. It may bring awareness to the torpid and trigger violent

seizures in the otherwise calm. This seems extraordinary. Yet music is no miracle but an experience

available to everyone.299

Music does seem to have extraordinary powers. I think it is these prevailing aspects of

music that persuades some people to speak of music as a mysterious force300, sometimes

even of music as an entity inhabiting its own independent world301. Considering these

powerful elements of music, it seems profitable to speak of a musical world, albeit on a

theoretical level. Music affords a shareable sonic world available to any active perceiver,

who is willing to dynamically engage with this sonic world. But the sonic world not merely

finds it origin in our everyday world; it is equally maintained, preserved and enacted

within this everyday world. It is, in other words, impossible to separate the sonic world

from our everyday world. There is, as Gibson emphasizes, only one world;

299

Nonken (2008), p. 290 300 Small (1998), p. 141 determines that music is “an activity that is always to some degree religious in nature”. 301 Ex. Scruton (1997), p. 489

97

It is a mistake to separate the natural from the artificial as if there were two environments; artifacts

have to be manufactured from natural substances. It is also a mistake to separate the cultural

environment from the natural environment, as if there were a world of mental products distinct from the

world of material products. There is only one world, however diverse, and all animals live in it, although

we human animals have altered it to suit ourselves.302

Despite this “one world claim” the purpose of maintaining a conceptual description of the

musical world supplies potential for elaborating understanding of the unique character of

the musical phenomenon. By employing the notion of a musical world, I wish to emphasize

in particular the special nature of the temporal aspects in music. The temporal dimension

in music is, as explored above, a twofold entity. Mutual participating in a musical event is a

mutual participation in the inner time, the durée. When experiencing music together, we

live in the same flux, we share an instant of time with the other (-s);

In that all musical performances evolve over time, the relationships the performance brings into being

are also evolving. The relationships at the end of the performance are not the same as those of the

beginning. Something has changed between the participants through the fact of having undergone the

performance together. Who we are has changed, has evolved a little *…+ Those relationships are all

around us as we music, and we are in the midst of them. We need make no effort of will to enter into the

world that the performance creates, for it envelopes us, whether we will it or not.303

When experiencing music with others we are, in Schutz’s terminology, growing older

together. This is, in my opinion, the ultimate claim of the sharable nature of the musical

experience and equally of the essential social character of music in general. Sharing music

with others is an explorative activity disclosing knowledge about the self, the surroundings

and the other participants involved in the event – we explore the world through our acts of

musicking.

302 Gibson (1979/1986), p. 130. Also quoted in Costall (1995), p. 471 303 Small (1998), p. 140

98

But music is not merely a resource for exploring our environment. Music is also a source of

profound immersion304. We tend to occasionally have an experience of being caught up in

the music, to lose a sense of time and place and submit ourselves to the music;

Rather, music can be seen to place in the foreground of perception an ongoing, physical and material

“way of happening” into which actors may slip, fall, acquiesce. This passing over into music, this musical

mediation of action, is often observable, often known to self as a feeling or energy state. It is also a local

phenomenon, something that occurs in the here and now of action’s flux, as actors interact with music’s

presence in an environment or social space. This aspect of music illuminates the body as an entity

configured in relation to its material-cultural environment.305

Though music basically is situated within the current of our everyday social lives, it is

nevertheless more than a material object, on which to reflect upon306. Music is an innate

capacity available to us from the very beginning of our lives. Music is a capacity through

which we resonate, adapt and explore our world. Hence, music is a resource for exploring

our environment, ourselves and others, a resource for exploring personal identity and

social relationships – a resource through which we come to understand our world. It is

these potentials of music that I wish to accentuate by conceptualizing the musical world.

Thus, when we listen to music, we actively engage with the musical world. We pick up

musical affordances according to our perceptual capacities, use and the context in which

they arise. Listening to music is an interaction with the music at stake – we engage with the

musical piece in a reciprocal manner, meaning that the music to some extent offers the

components of the listening experience, which is at the same time to some extent created

by ourselves. But every kind of listening experience is somewhat social in character. This is

obviously manifested when sharing the experience of listening to music with others. When

mutual listening episodes occur, we will not only be able to detect our own picking up of

the musical affordances, we will equally be aware of the social availability of the sonic

304 This is particularly investigated within the area of trance applied to cultural studies of how a given culture uses music to achieve a state of trance. See ex. Friedson (1996) for an interesting introduction to the subject. 305 DeNora (2000), p. 160 306 DeNora (2000), p. 160

99

world. This means that we will furthermore be attuned to the other’s response to the

music. In this sense, the other will function as a “co-creator” of my listening experience

(just as I will equally infect his or hers listening experience).

But even when focusing on the solitary listening experience, we will find these social

connotations. Every musical action is to some extent situated. This was explored above

through the notions of intentional arc, scheme of reference and habitus of listening. Solitary

listening episodes have traditionally been the center of focus when discussing the

experience of listening to music. Such solitary listening affairs certainly is a noticeable part

of our musical experiences in general, but I have worked to show my distance from the

traditional tendency to assume that these episodes are the ideal mode of listening to music,

and besides their inclination of characterizing the solitary listening episodes as a passive

affair. On the contrary, every kind of engagement in the musical world is an active and

dynamic event, inevitably situated within the current of our everyday social lives. The

solitary retreat to the musical world is socially situated through the individual’s cultural

heritage, his or hers background knowledge and previous experiences. I may deliberately

choose to shut the world out, so to speak, by indulging to the world of music through a pair

of headphones. Or I may, during my years as a teenager, withdraw to my room playing

unreasonable loud music, and thereby trying to communicate (or even act out) my anger to

my surroundings.

The social dimension of music is an inescapable part of any attempt to approach the

phenomenon. I cannot image, and have not yet discovered, a comprehensive approach to

music, disregarding its social fundament. And why should such one exist? Music is

essentially a social activity. We use music in our everyday social lives; our acts of musicking

will always to some extent be situated within this social domain. Further investigations

into the social domain of music will not merely underline my approach to the musical

phenomenon, but will equally be welcomed in understanding the great importance and

impact of music that makes it such a powerful tool for humans across the world.

100

Conclusion

Approaching the musical experience is a philosophical rich inquiry. The experience of

music is an elusive phenomenon in many ways. I have in the above investigated my

approach to the experience of music. My first concern was to establish a conception of the

specific mode of attending to the music. By emphasizing the notion of deep listening, I have

been able to center my focus on the listening experience, thereby eliminating a discussion

of the different musical experiences and the different levels of anticipation in a given

musical event. Listening to music, in my usage of the phrase, is a matter of deeply engaging

with the music at stake. This was further illustrated by examining the character of aesthetic

perception and the specific attention achieved by mindfulness. Leaving music aside for a

while, I have developed a theoretical frame in which my claim of music as an active doing

has found its basis. Investigating the enactive approach to perception has convinced me of

the persuading effects of such an approach and equally of the embodied perspectives of our

experiences. Perception, generally speaking, is essentially embodied and situated within

the world. This has been of crucial importance to my discovery of the significance of the

social dimension. I have repeatedly insisted on putting this dimension aside, though, as I

have aspired to complete my discussion of the solitary musical experience, before engaging

in the social aspects of the musical experience. This has not been an easy strategy. I have

frequently been strained by this decision to divide the investigation of the musical

experience into two parts. Especially in applying the theoretical fundament to the analysis

of the musical experience has this concern been importunate. Discussing issues such as the

emotional affects of music, the musical affordances and music as offering a sonic world

have inevitably called for an exploration of the social perspectives of the musical

experience. But I have maintained my strategy convinced that it would supply me with a

deeper understanding of our musical experience. Besides, in retrospection, it has only

provided further evidence for the unavoidably social connotations of our musical

experience.

101

The claim of music as an active doing has been bridged with the social dimension of our

listening experience through an examination of dance. The case of dancing is one of the

best ways to illustrate the active and embodied structures of our musical experience.

Dancing is a perfect example of how a participant actively engages in the music being

heard, creatively fashioning an observable response. Besides, investigating dance

inevitably calls for an analysis of the social dimension of the musical experience.

The social aspects have been approached through an examination of the temporal

character of music. Music is a temporal form of art, manifesting itself through time.

Experiencing music is a matter of participating in the musical time. Every kind of musical

action is to some degree situated. The situatedness of our musical experience was

investigated by the notions of intentional arc, scheme of reference and habitus of listening.

These three notions was coined in the notion of situated musical actions, illustrating how

our musical actions always will be influenced by our personal perceptual capacities, our

autobiographical history, and cultural heritage. Revisiting the notion of musical

affordances, I have illuminated the social connotations of the affordances and thereby

established the foundation of understanding music as a social, sharable phenomenon.

Music facilitates a mutual-tuning-in relationship, in which the participants share an

instance of time together. This mutual-tuning-in relationship is combined with the notion

of joint attention in order to grasp the character of shareable aspects of our musical

experience. When experiencing music with others the musical experience dramatically

alters. This is due to the fact that when attending to music in social contexts, we are aware

of the other (-s) attending to the music as well. The social scenery of the musical experience

will also influence how the music is experienced. The physical surroundings are an

important factor of our musical experience. Finally I round up the investigation of the social

dimension of our musical experience by examining the identity aspects within music.

Sharing musical experiences with others is an important source of our social identities.

Over and all I argue that listening to music is a partaking in the musical world. Emphasizing

the theoretical connotations of this musical world, I avoid the persuading claim that music

is an autonomous entity, inhabiting its own domain. On the contrary, music is deeply

102

rooted in this world – our everyday world. Conceptualizing music as a musical world is

nevertheless a profitable maneuver, as it provides a conceptual frame in which insight into

the complex structures of our musical experience can be achieved. When we listen to

music, when we deeply engage in listening to a specific piece of music, we take part in the

musical world. Listening to music is in this sense a matter of active participation in a

mutual available “world” – the world of music. But the level of participation, the act of

musicking is inevitably strongly connected to our everyday social lives. In other words,

listening to music is an active doing, essentially founded within the current of our everyday

lives.

103

References

Alperson, Philip (1980): ’Musical Time and Music as an Art of Time’ in The Journal of

Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 38 (4), pp. 407-417.

Bastian, Peter (1987/1995): Ind I Musikken – En bog om Musik og Bevidsthed.

Gyldendal/Publimus, Haslev, DK.

Becker, Judith (2004): Deep Listeners – Music, Emotion, and Trancing. Indiana University

Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis.

Behnke, Elizabeth A. (1989): ‘At the Service of the Sonata: Music Lessons with Merleau-

Ponty’ in Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays. Edited by Henry Pietersma. The Center for

Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America, Washington, D. C.

Benson, Bruce Ellis (2003): The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue – A Phenomenology of

Music. Cambridge University Press, UK.

Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann (1966): The Social Construction of Reality – a

treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Anchor Books, New York.

Blacking, John (1973): How Musical is Man? University of Washington Press, Seattle, USA.

Blacking, John (1995): Music, Culture, and Experience – Selected Papers of John Blacking.

Edited by Reginald Byron. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Bond, Karen (2009): ‘The human nature of dance; Towards a theory of aesthetic

community’ in Communicative Musicality – Exploring the basis of human companionship.

Edited by Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen. Oxford University Press, New York.

104

Bourdieu, Pierre (1972/1977): Outline of a Theory of Practice. Translated by Richard Nice.

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Butler, Mark J. (2006): Unlocking the Groove – Rhythm, Meter, and Musical Design in

Electronic Dance Music. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, USA.

Campbell, John (2002): Reference and Consciousness. Oxford Cognitive Science Series.

Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Carman, Taylor (1999): ‘The body in Husserl and Merleau-Ponty’ in Philosophical Topics,

vol. 27(2).

Clarke, Eric F. (2003): ‘Music and Psychology’ in The Cultural Study of Music – a critical

introduction. Edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton. Routledge,

New York/London.

Clarke, Eric F. (2005): Ways of Listening – An Ecological Approach to the Perception of

Musical Meaning. Oxford University Press, New York.

Clayton, Martin. Trevor Herbert and Richard Middleton (ed.) (2003): The Cultural Study of

Music –a critical introduction. Routledge, New York.

Cochrane, Tom (2009): ‘Joint Attention to Music’ in British Journal of Aesthetics, vol. 49 (1),

pp. 59-73.

Costall, Alan (1995): ‘Socializing Affordances’ in Theory & Psychology, vol. 5(4), pp. 467-

481.

Cumming, Naomi (2000): The Sonic Self; Musical Subjectivity and Signification. Indiana

University Press, USA.

105

Damasio, Antonio (1999): The Feeling of What Happens – Body and Emotion in the Making of

Consciousness. Harcourt Brace & Company, Orlando, Florida.

Davidson, Jane and Stephen Malloch (2009): ‘Musical communication; The body

movements of performance’ in Communicative Musicality – Exploring the basis of human

companionship. Edited by Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen. Oxford University

Press, New York, pp. 565-584

DeNora, Tia (2000): Music in Everyday Life. Cambridge University Press, New York.

Dewey, John (1934/2005): Art as Experience. Perigee Books, Penguin Group, New York,

2005.

Dibben, Nicola (2003): ‘Musical Materials, Perception, and Listening’ in The Cultural Study

of Music – a critical introduction. Edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert and Richard

Middleton. Routledge, New York/London.

Dreyfus, Hubert (1998): Intelligence Without Representation – Merleau-Ponty’s Critique of

Mental Representation: The Relevance of Phenomenology to Scientific Explanation.

Http://www.class.uh.edu./cogsci/dreyfus.html.

Dufrenne, Mikel (1953/1973): The Phenomenology of Aesthetic Experience. Translated by

Edward S. Casey, Albert A. Anderson, Willis Domingo and Leon Jacobson. North Western

University Press, Evanston, USA.

Finnegan, Ruth (2003): ‘Music, Experience, and the Anthropology of Emotion’ in The

Cultural Study of Music – a critical introduction. Edited by Martin Clayton, Trevor Herbert

and Richard Middleton. Routledge, New York/London.

106

Fikentscher, Kai (2000): “You better work”; Underground dance music in New York City.

University Press of New England, USA.

Fiske, Harold E. (1990): Music and Mind – Philosophical Essays on the Cognition and

Meaning of Music. Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music, vol. 25. The Edwin

Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York.

Fiske, Harold E. (1993): Music Cognition and Aesthetic Attitudes. Studies in the History and

Interpretation of Music, vol. 41. The Edwin Meller Press, Lewiston, New York.

Fiske, Harold E. (2008): Understanding musical understanding –The Philosophy, Psychology,

and Sociology of the Musical Experience. The Edwin Mellen Press, Lewiston, New York.

Friedson, Steven M. (1996): Dancing Prophets – Musical Experience in Tumbuka Healing.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Gallagher, Shaun and Jonathan Cole (1995): ‘Body Image and Body Schema in a

Deafferented Subject’ in Journal of Mind and Behavior, 16, pp. 369-390.

Gallagher, Shaun ( 2005): How the Body Shapes the Mind. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.

Geraets, Theodore (1989): ‘The Return to Perceptual Experience and the Meaning of the

Primacy of Perception’ in Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays. Edited by Henry Pietersma. The

Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press of America,

Washington, D. C.

Gergen, Kenneth J. (1991/2000): The Saturated Self – Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary

Life. Basic Books, New York.

Gibson, James J. (1966/1968): The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems. George Allen

and Unwin Ltd, Ruskin House, London.

107

Gibson, James J. (1979/1986): The Ecological Approach to Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum

Associates, Publishers, London.

Goguen, Joseph A. (2004): ‘Musical Qualia, Context, Time and Emotion’ in Journal of

Consciousness Studies, vol. 11, no. 3-4.

Good, James M. M. (2007): ‘The Affordances for Social Psychology of the Ecological

Approach to Social Knowing’ in Theory & Psychology, vo. 17(2), pp. 265-295.

Gregory, Andrew H. (1997): ‘The roles of music in society’ in The Social Psychology of Music.

Edited by David J. Hargreaves and Adrian C. North. Oxford University Press, New York.

Hamilton, Andy (2007): Aesthetics and Music. Continuum International Publishing Group,

London and New York.

Hanh, Thich Nhat (1975/2008): The Miracle of Mindfulness. Translated by Mobi Ho. Rider,

Random House Group, Great Britain.

Hargreaves, David J. and Adrian C. North (ed.)(1997): The Social Psychology of Music.

Oxford University Press, New York.

Hargreaves, David J., Dorothy Mill and Raymond A. R. MacDonald (ed.) (2002): ‘What are

musical identities, and why are they important?’ in Musical Identities. Oxford University

Press, New York.

Heft, Harry (2001): Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Barker, and the

Legacy of William James’s Radical Empiricism. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers,

London.

108

Hodge, Joanna (1993): ‘Aesthetic Decomposition; Music, Identity, and Time’ in The

Interpretation of Music. Edited by Michael Krausz. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Husserl, Edmund (1964): The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Edited by

Martin Heidegger. Translated by James S. Churchill. Indiana University Press, Bloomington,

USA.

Husserl, Edmund (1913/1998): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a

Phenomenological Philosophy. First Book – General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology.

Translated by F. Kersten. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.

Husserl, Edmund (1989/2002): Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a

Phenomenological Philosophy. Second Book – Studies in the Phenomenology of Constitution.

Translated by Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The

Netherlands.

Irigaray, Lucy (1989): ‘The gesture in psychoanalysis’ in Between Feminism and

Psychoanalysis. Edited by Teresa Brennan. Routledge, New York.

Ihde, Don: Listening and Voice –Phenomenologies of Sound. Second Edition. State University

of New York Press, Albany, 2007.

Ingold, Tim (2000): The Perception of the Environment – Essays in livelihood, dwelling and

skill. Routledge, London and New York.

Janaway, Christopher (2006): Reading Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art – Selected Texts

with Interactive Commentary. Blackwell Publishing, UK.

Johnson, Galen A. (1993): The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader – Philosophy and Painting.

Michael B. Smith, Translation Editor. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology

and Existential Philosophy. Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois.

109

Kapferer, Bruce (1983): A celebration of demons – Exorcism and the Aesthetics of Healing in

Sri Lanka. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

Kivy, Peter (2002): Introduction to a Philosophy of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.

Klein, Gabriele (2003): ‘Image, Body, and Performativity; The Constitution of Subcultural

Practice in the Globalized World of Pop’ in The Post-subcultures Reader. Edited by David

Muggleton and Rubert Weinzierl. Oxford, New York

Krueger, Joel W. (2009): ‘Enacting Musical Experience’ in Journal of Consciousness Studies,

Vol. 16 (2-3), pp. 98-123.

Leman, Marc, Frank Desmet, Frederik Styns, Leon Van Noorden and Dirk Moelants (2009):

‘Sharing Musical Expression Through Embodied Listening – A case study based on Chinese

Quqin music’ in Music Perception, vol. 26 (3), pp. 263-278.

Levitin, Daniel (2006/2008): This is Your Brain on Music – Understanding a Human

Obsession. Atlantic Books, Great Britain.

Magee, Bryan (1983/1997): The Philosophy of Schopenhauer. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Malloch, Stephen and Colwyn Trevarthen (2009): ‘Communicating the vitality and interests

of life’ in Communicative Musicality – Exploring the basis of human companionship. Edited by

Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 1-11.

McRobbie, Angela (1991): Feminism and Youth Culture – From ‘Jackie’ to ‘Just Seventeen’.

Macmillian, London.

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1945/2009): The Phenomenology of Perception. Translated by

Colin Smith. Routledge Classics, London and New York.

110

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1948/2009): The World of Perception. Routledge Classics, London

and New York.

Nöe, Alva (2004a): Action in Perception. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Nöe, Alva (2004b): ‘Experience without the Head’ in Perceptual Experience. Edited by

Tamar Szabó Gendler and John Hawthorne. Oxford University Press.

Nöe, Alva (no date available): Art as Enaction.

http://www.interdisciplines.org/artcog/papers/8

Nonken, M. (2008): ‘What Do Musical Chairs Afford? On Clarke’s Ways of Listening and

Sacks’s Musicophilia’. Ecological Psychology, vol. 20, issue 4, pp. 283-295.

Overgaard, Søren and Dan Zahavi (2009): ‘Phenomenological Sociology – The Subjectivity

of Everyday Life’ in Jacobsen, M.H. (ed.): Encountering the Everyday: An Introduction to the

Sociologies of the Unnoticed. Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillian, pp. 93-115.

Pedone, Nicola (1995): ‘Intersubjectivity, Time and Social Relationship in Alfred Schutz’s

Philosophy of Music’ in Axiomathes, No. 2, pp. 197-210.

Phillips-Silver, Jessica and Laurel J. Trainor (2005): ‘Feeling the Beat; Movement Influences

Infant Rhythm Perception’ in Science, 308, p. 1430.

Phillips-Silver, Jessica and Laurel J. Trainor (2007): ‘Hearing what the body feels; Auditory

encoding of rhythmic movement’ in Cognition, 105 (3), pp. 533-546.

Pinker, Steven (1997): How the Mind Works. Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, England.

111

Reed, Edward S. (1992): ‘Knowers talking about the Known: Ecological Realism as a

Philosophy of Science’ in Synthese 92, pp. 9-23.

Reed, Edward S. (1996): Encountering the World – Towards an Ecological Psychology.

Oxford University Press, New York.

Rodrigues, Helena Maria, Paulo Maria Rodrigues & Jorge Salgado Correia (2009):

‘Communicative musicality as creative participation; From early childhood to advanced

performance’ in Communicative Musicality – Exploring the basis of human companionship.

Edited by Stephen Malloch and Colwyn Trevarthen. Oxford University Press, New York, pp.

585-610.

Sacks, Oliver (1983/1986): The Man who mistook his wife for a hat. Picador, published by

Pan Books, Great Britain.

Sacks, Oliver (2007): Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain. Picador, London.

Sager, Rebecca (2006): ‘Creating a Musical Space for Creating the Other-Self Within’ in The

Musical Human. Edited by Suzel Ana Reiley. Ashgate, Hampshire, England.

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1969): The World as Will and Representation –volume I. Translated

by E. F. J. Payne. Dower Publications, Inc., New York.

Schopenhauer, Arthur (1966): The World as Will and Representation – volume II. Translated

by E. F. J. Payne. Dower Publications, Inc., New York.

Schutz, Alfred (1932/1967): The Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by George

Walsh and Frederick Lehnert. Northwestern University studies in Phenomenology and

Existential Philosophy. Northwestern University Press, USA.

112

Schutz, Alfred (1962): Collected Papers vol. I – The Problem of Social Reality. Edited by

Maurice Natanson. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands.

Schutz, Alfred (1964): Collected Papers vol. II – Studies in social Theory. Edited by Arvid

Brodersen. Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands.

Schutz, Alfred (1996): Collected Papers vol. IV. Edited by Helmut Wagner and George

Psathas. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands.

Scruton, Roger (1993): ‘Notes on the Meaning of Music’ in The interpretation of Music.

Edited by Michael Krausz. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Scruton, Roger (1997): The Aesthetics of Music. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Sibley, Frank (1993): ‘Making Music our Own’ in The Interpretation of Music. Edited by

Michael Krausz. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Small, Christopher (1998): Musicking – The Meanings of Performing and Listening. Wesleyan

University Press, Middletown, Connecticut.

Tarrant, Mark, Adrian C. North and David J. Hargreaves (2002): ‘Youth identity and music’

in Musical Identities. Edited by Raymond A. R. MacDonald, David J. Hargreaves and Dorothy

Mill. Oxford University Press, New York.

Taylor, Charles (1989): ‘Embodied Agency’ in Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays. Edited by

Henry Pietersma. The Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology & University Press

of America, Washington, D. C.

Trevarthen, Colwyn and Stephen Malloch (2000): The Dance of Wellbeing – Defining the

Musical Therapeutic Effect in Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 9 (2), pp. 3-17.

113

Trevarthen, Colwyn and Stephen Malloch (2002): ‘Musicality and Music before three –

Human Vitality and Invention Shared with Pride’. Zero to three, 23 (1), pp. 10-18.

Trevarthen, Colwyn (2002): ‘Origins of musical identity: evidence from infancy for musical

social awareness’ in Musical Identities. Edited by Raymond A. R. MacDonald, David J.

Hargreaves and Dorothy Mill. Oxford University Press, New York.

Varela, Francisco J., Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch (1991): The Embodied Mind –

Cognitive Science and Human Experience. The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Wallace, Alan B. (2006): The Attention Revolution – Unlocking the Power of the Focused

Mind. Wisdom Publications, Boston, USA.

Wulff, Helena (2006): ‘Experiencing the Ballet Body; Pleasure, Pain, Power’ in The Musical

Human –Rethinking John Blacking’s Enthnomusicology in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by

Suzel Ana Reiley. Ashgate, Hampshire, England/Burlington, USA.

Zahavi, Dan (2001): Husserls Fænomenologi. Gyldendal, DK.

Zelazo, Philip David, Moris Moscovitch and Evan Thompson (2007): The Cambridge

Handbook of Consciousness. Cambridge University Press, USA.