Music and human existence
Rhonda Claire Siu
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of Humanities and Languages
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
April 2014
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Abstract
This thesis investigates the proposition that music plays a crucial role in human existence. More so than the other creative arts, music has been overlooked as a proper subject of philosophical investigation. Philosophy’s hesitation before music can be mainly attributed to the significant challenge posed by music’s seemingly indefinable nature or what Theodor Adorno terms its “enigma”. Unlike the analytic philosophy of music, which tends to view music as an abstract object of knowledge, my thesis investigates music’s remarkable ability to transform and enrich human existence. I do this by examining music in terms of a dynamic lived experience. This thesis demonstrates how music’s transformative effect stems from its intertwining with the interrelated corporeal, affective, intersubjective, temporal and spatial dimensions of existence.
With recourse to Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics, this thesis begins with an analysis of why music’s enigma poses problems for traditional philosophical frameworks which seek to define it. Chapters two and three then examine how Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche give music an elevated place amongst the creative arts through their claim to its ability to embody the metaphysical foundations of existence. I argue that the early
Nietzsche improves Schopenhauer’s account by claiming not so much that music alleviates human suffering but that it provides the means of affirming life. Chapters four and five move beyond dependence on a metaphysics of Will to conceptualise music’s transformative power in terms of lived experience through Alfred Schutz and
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophies. Schutz’s philosophy examines how music is based on the intersubjective and temporal dimensions of existence. However, I ii
identify a problem with Schutz’s privileging of the mind over the body in the musical experience. My analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression addresses this limitation by emphasising how music draws its creative power from the corporeal and affective aspects of experience. By investigating music in ways that emphasise its integral place in existence, this thesis thereby provides a potential starting point from which to redress music’s diminished presence in the philosophical literature.
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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Ros Diprose, for her guidance, support and generosity throughout my candidature. Her meticulous and honest feedback on the many drafts that I passed by her has been invaluable. She has taught me much about the actual craft of writing and of critical thinking, thereby providing me with the means to view aspects of my own work in a different light.
Thank you also to my co-supervisor, Simon Lumsden, who has helped me greatly along the way. I am particularly grateful for the teaching opportunities that he has given to me and the support and guidance he provided to me in my capacity as a tutor.
I would also like to acknowledge the moral support and kindness shown to me by fellow postgraduates. Not only have they been very generous in offering to read my work but they have also helped to see me through the more difficult moments of my candidature.
In this respect, I wish to acknowledge (in no particular order) Anisha, Jac, Emilie, Scott,
Kudzai, Wai Wai, Patricia, Beck, Yuzhou and Ash. I am also especially grateful to
Francesco and Mindy. I have enjoyed undertaking this journey alongside them, including our many chats over coffee, at conferences, etc.
The friendships that I have developed over the past few years with fellow residents at
NCV have also enriched my life in so many different ways. In particular, by playing music with these residents, I have been constantly reminded of the reasons for why I chose my research topic in the first place.
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Thank you also to my family for always being there and seeing value in what I do.
Last but not least, I would like to thank David, whose constant presence, generosity of spirit, and encouragement have been invaluable over the past few months. I could not have finished writing this thesis without his unwavering support. v
Table of Contents
Abstract i
Acknowledgements iii
Table of abbreviations vi
Introduction 1
Chapter one: 11
Music’s “enigma” in Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics
Chapter two: 61
Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music”
Chapter three: 107
Music’s life-affirming power in Nietzsche’s early aesthetics
Chapter four: 151
Music, temporality and intersubjectivity in Schutz’s phenomenology
Chapter five: 212
Music, language and expression in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology
Conclusion 276
Bibliography 282 vi
Table of abbreviations
Adorno, Theodor
AT - Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor & ed. Gretel Adorno & Rolf Tiedemann (London: Continuum, 1997).
ND - Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Seabury Press, 1973).
PMM - Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell & Wesley V. Bloomster (London: Sheed & Ward, 1973).
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice
PhP - Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge Classics, 2002).
Nietzsche, Friedrich
BT - The Birth of Tragedy, in The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967). Referenced by section number followed by page number(s).
DW - “The Dionysian Worldview”, trans. Claudia Crawford, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 13 (Spring 1997): 81-97. Referenced by section number followed by page number(s).
GM - On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Walter Kaufmann and bound with Nietzsche, Friedrich, Ecce Homo (New York: Vintage Books, 1989). Referenced by essay number followed by section number and page number(s).
GS - The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974). Referenced by section number followed by page number(s). vii
MW - “On Music and Words”, trans. Walter Kaufmann, in appendix to Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, by Carl Dahlhaus, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 106-119.
TL - “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”, in Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the early 1870’s, trans. & ed. Daniel Breazeale (New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1990), 79-97. Referenced by section number followed by page number(s).
Schopenhauer, Arthur
PP - Parerga and Paralipomena: short philosophical essays, 2 vols., trans. E.F.J. Payne (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974).
WWR - The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols., trans. E.F. J. Payne (New York: Dover Publications, 1966). 1
INTRODUCTION
Every rehearsal of the Maggiore Quartet begins with a very plain, very slow three-octave scale on all four instruments in unison: sometimes major, as in our name, sometimes minor, depending on the key of the first piece we are to play. No matter how fraught our lives have been over the last couple of days, no matter how abrasive our disputes about people or politics, or how visceral our differences about what we are to play and how we are to play it, it reminds us that we are, when it comes to it, one. We try not to look at each other when we play this scale; no one appears to lead. Even the first upbeat is merely breathed by Piers, not indicated by any movement of his head. When I play this I release myself into the spirit of the quartet. I become the music of the scale. I mute my will, I free my self.1
The central place of music in human existence has often been, and continues to be, overlooked. More often than not, music is simply regarded as a means of escapism, that is, a realm wherein we can be shielded from, and thereby rendered immune to, the trials and tribulations of everyday life. That music is still regarded as a negligible, rather than crucial, part of human experience is encapsulated in F. Joseph Smith’s astute observation that the “problem with music is that it has too often been regarded as a mere embellishment to civilization, as entertainment, as something not belonging in essential manner to man’s spirit”.2 This thesis challenges this widespread view by examining, from a philosophical perspective, the more fundamental roles that music might play in human existence once we rethink the nature of human existence itself.
To an even greater extent than the other creative arts, such as painting, sculpture and architecture, music is often passed over as a proper subject of philosophical investigation. This is emphasised in Dennis J. Schmidt’s remark that:
1 Vikram Seth, An Equal Music (Orion Books: London, 1999), 12. 2 F. J. Smith, introduction to In Search of Musical Method, ed. F. J. Smith (London: Gordon and Breach, 1976), 1. 2
what we find in [the] history [of philosophy] is that philosophers have tended to
exhibit one of two attitudes to the phenomenon of music: ignoring it or sublating
it. Mostly, philosophy has simply ignored music so that one is not terribly
surprised when Lacoue-Labarthe suggests that “it would not be an exaggeration
to propose that […] nothing really has happened in more than two thousand
years between music and philosophy, and that the history of their relations is, in
a word, quite dull.” Or, when music is taken up by philosophers (and here it is
mostly the case that systematic philosophers who are driven by an extra-musical
concern with systematicity), then music is usually sublated into concerns that
move away from, rather than toward, the heart of music.3
Philosophy’s hesitation before music can be mainly attributed to the significant challenge posed by music’s seemingly “indefinable” nature or what Theodor Adorno calls its “enigma”.4 Unlike conventional philosophical notions of language, music is usually regarded as being inherently non-representational, non-semantic and a- conceptual. Consequently, it tends to frustrate the attempts to define it made by traditional philosophical frameworks. This is because these frameworks privilege representational and conceptual ways of understanding objects or phenomena in their epistemological forms of analysis.
3 Dennis J. Schmidt, “Keeping Pace with the Movement of Life: On Words and Music”, Research in Phenomenology 43 (2013): 196. 4 Theodor W. Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, in Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 139. Hereafter cited as “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”. 3
Andrew Bowie suggests that developing an awareness of the ways in which music is seemingly impermeable to philosophical analysis is already an important starting point for rethinking the complex relationship between music and philosophy.5 He states:
Although we may not be able positively to state what music’s resistance means,
by explaining that music actually doesn’t mean things in the way language does,
we might be able to suggest ways in which the limits of philosophy in relation to
music could be shown.6
According to Bowie, further investigation into the potential “limits of philosophy” vis-
à-vis music could help us to address the broader question of “whether the commitment to or the neglect of music by philosophy is a significant factor both in assessing the role of philosophy in modernity and in thinking about the future of philosophy”.7
Significantly, his claim that music could lend important insights into the future direction of philosophy suggests that the relationship between these two disciplines may not be as antagonistic as they first appear. Or, in a somewhat paradoxical manner, it is music’s challenge to philosophy that furthers the latter’s cause by motivating it to develop an awareness of its own limitations and address them. Like Bowie, my thesis aims to explore not only potential philosophical approaches to music but also whether music can act as an opening for re-evaluating how we philosophise in general. However, unlike Bowie, I will not focus on philosophy’s place in modernity but will rather conduct a more general examination of how music might inform philosophical interpretations of the world. Hence, I will examine both the main points of difference
5 Andrew Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 13. 6 Ibid., emphases in original. 7 Ibid. 4
between these two disciplines as well as their crucial interconnections, the latter of which have been relatively less examined in the literature.
Developments in the past forty to fifty years in the analytic philosophy of music, whose proponents include Jerrold Levinson, Stephen Davies and Jenefer Robinson, have been greatly helpful in renewing philosophical interest in music.8 These analytic philosophers have done much to produce increasingly sophisticated accounts of music that far exceed its conventional definition of “organised sound”. The key concerns of the analytic tradition are summarised by Bowie as follows:
Discussion of music in analytical philosophy often takes the form of attempts to
determine what constitutes a musical “work”: is it the score, all performances
which “comply” with the score, any performance that gets near to compliance,
etc.; as well as attempts to establish whether music can be said to possess
“meaning” in the way verbal language does, to define the concept of
“expression”, and to ascertain whether music “arouses” emotions or just has
“emotional properties”.9
What both unites and underlies these analytic accounts of music is what Philip Alperson terms the “object-oriented view of music”.10 By this, he means that musical pieces are regarded by analytic philosophers as “objects whose mode of attention and evaluation is properly cast in terms of their disposition to present aesthetic qualities appropriate to disinterested aesthetic experience”.11 In other words, these philosophers tend to
8 Philip Alperson, “Facing the Music: Voices from the Margins”, Topoi 28 (2009): 92. 9 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 2. 10 Alperson, “Facing the Music”, 92. 11 Ibid. 5
consider music as an abstract “object” of knowledge, the meaning, properties and value of which can be precisely characterised from a detached, third-person viewpoint. When described in this way, this “object-oriented view” of music would seem to adhere to the traditional philosophical division between the human “subject” and the “objects” it supposedly investigates. As Bowie claims, “[s]ome of the problems which most concern analytic philosophers of music are themselves generated by the model of a spectatorial subjective mind confronting an objective world of which music is a part.”12
While praising analytic philosophers for producing what he regards as “many carefully articulated discussions of formal, expressive, and representational aesthetic properties in music”, Alperson also argues that the growing popularity of this “object-oriented view” means that the scope of issues that are actually available to a philosophical analysis of music has been significantly restricted.13 In particular, he claims that the various
“concrete human and social contexts” from which musical pieces emerge have been, for the most part, merely presupposed by analytical philosophers.14 These contexts,
Alperson suggests, are “often simply presented as a preliminary backdrop that allows the technical discussions to get off the ground”.15 As I will shortly demonstrate, like
Alperson, one of my key concerns in this thesis is to explore how music interacts with the various concrete human and social contexts in which it is inherently embedded.
What the above discussion suggests is that an overreliance on the “object-oriented
12 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 8. 13 Alperson, “Facing the Music”, 92. 14 Ibid., 93. 15 Ibid. Bowie also makes a similar point that, by viewing music as an “object”, we risk overlooking the ways in which it is actually intertwined with the social and cultural aspects of the world. He states:
The very fact that music changes its nature in relation to the development of human societies, so that, for example, certain kinds of sound either begin to be or cease to be culturally acceptable, cannot be understood without seeing music holistically as part of a world, rather than as an object. (Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 32, emphases added) 6
view” of music adopted by recent analytic philosophers might prevent us from developing more creative and inclusive approaches to examining music’s relationship with philosophy.
In light of the above, this thesis offers an alternative perspective of the complex music- philosophy relationship to that maintained by the analytic tradition. In particular, it explores the crucial relationship between music and human existence, an approach which I suggest is more receptive to music’s “enigma” than its analytic counterpart. In contrast with analytic approaches, I examine music not as an abstract object of knowledge but rather in terms of a dynamic lived experience in which we actively participate through the actual process of composing, playing or listening to music.
Since I explore music as an experience rather than a “thing”, I will not be attempting to isolate the particular properties that music might possess, including those that apparently differentiate it strictly from so-called “non-music” (e.g. mere “noise”, animal sounds etc.). Similarly, I will not perform detailed musicological analyses of the specific properties or features of musical works, such as their use of certain rhythmic, harmonic and/or melodic effects (e.g. the “hemiola” effect and “double stopping”).
Although I will refer to particular musical works, genres and concepts from time to time in my analysis, I will do so for the purpose of explaining or elaborating the particular philosophical concepts that they serve to illustrate.
Rather, my key argument in this thesis is that the experience of music is both meaningful and valuable due to its remarkable ability to transform and thereby enrich human existence. The analysis investigates the mysterious, yet undeniably powerful, effect that this experience has on us, for example, by inquiring into the strange forces 7
that are at work in the music-making process where melodies, rhythms and harmonies intertwine, musicians’ bodies and emotions converse with each other, and even time appears to shed its linearity. It is also motivated by more specific questions, such as:
How can a single intake of breath be so expressive, by signalling not only a performer’s entry point into the piece but also its tempo, dynamics and emotional tone? How can a unique connection be forged between strangers who have just played a piece together for the first time? And, more broadly, how can music shatter the illusion that we are self-contained entities whose boundaries cannot be transgressed?
For me, these are all questions that are implicated in Adorno’s notion of music’s
“enigma” that I mentioned earlier. They are also questions that prompted me to undertake this doctoral project in the first instance. In response to such questions, this thesis argues that music’s powerful transformative effect originates in its intertwining with the various interrelated dimensions of human existence, namely, its metaphysical, corporeal, affective, intersubjective, temporal and spatial dimensions. By conceiving of music as an experience that (re)connects us with the world and the people who inhabit it, I am also attempting to dissolve the traditional philosophical distinction between the human “subject” and the musical “object” to which the analytic tradition adheres. My analysis engages philosophers, most of whom challenge this traditional ontology. These include theorists who are typically associated with the philosophy of music (such as
Adorno, Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche), together with the phenomenologists, Alfred Schutz and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, whose views of music are often overlooked within the context of their wider philosophies.
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With recourse to Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics, chapter one of this thesis analyses why music’s “enigma” poses problems for philosophical frameworks which seek to define it. Central to this analysis is Adorno’s key contention that music’s simultaneous proximity to, and distance from, language greatly contributes to the difficulty of locating its “meaning and justification” or what he calls its “raison d’être”.16 This first chapter also examines his conception of how music evolves alongside the social and historical phenomena with which it is intertwined.
Chapters two and three then examine the relationship between music and metaphysics by establishing a dialogue between Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s aesthetics. Instead of dismissing music’s important role in existence because of its inherent ineffability, these two philosophers give music an elevated place amongst the creative arts because of their claim to its ability to express the metaphysical foundations of the world. Chapter two examines Schopenhauer’s key claim that music has an epistemological function that involves transforming human existence and temporarily alleviating human suffering. In
Schopenhauer’s philosophy, one particularly intriguing aspect of music’s transformative power is what Jerrold Levinson calls the “paradox of music’s appeal”, that is, the puzzling fact that music remains “immensely appealing” to us while also being, according to Schopenhauer, a “direct copy” of the “source of universal suffering” in existence17 (which, as we shall see, is akin to the Will or Kantian “thing-in-itself”).
Like Schopenhauer, the early Nietzsche develops an equally metaphysical approach towards music by also associating music with the Will or what he calls the underlying
“flux” of existence. However, as I will argue in chapter three, the early Nietzsche also
16 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 137-38. 17 Jerrold Levinson, Contemplating Art, Essays in Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 363. 9
builds on Schopenhauer’s conception of music by claiming not so much that music temporarily alleviates suffering but that it actually provides the means of affirming life.
I suggest that he thereby improves Schopenhauer’s account by simultaneously acknowledging and transcending the pessimism that permeates Schopenhauer’s worldview. The analysis of Nietzsche’s key early work, The Birth of Tragedy (hereafter
BT), is supplemented with insights from two of his rarely-mentioned unpublished essays
(“The Dionysian Worldview” and “On Music and Words”). This permits me to demonstrate how, for Nietzsche, music’s transformative, life-affirming power originates in its potent corporeal and affective expression of the social and metaphysical dimensions of human existence.
Chapters four and five then progress beyond a metaphysics of Will to conceptualise music’s transformative power in terms of lived experience through both Schutz and
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophies. Chapter four examines how Schutz’s philosophy enriches our understanding of the relationship between music and existence through his conception of how music interacts with the intersubjective and temporal dimensions of our life. To examine this intersection between time and intersubjectivity,
I analyse Schutz’s fundamental notion of the “mutual tuning-in relationship”,18 the musical manifestation of which describes the ways in which the composer, listener(s) and performer(s) meet in overlapping dimensions of time.
However, my analysis also goes on to identify Schutz’s privileging of the mind over the body in the musical experience as a potential weakness of his account. Chapter five thus addresses this limitation by focussing on how music draws its creative,
18 Alfred Schutz, “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship”, in Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 161. Hereafter cited as “Making Music Together”. 10
transformative power from the role of corporeality and affect in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of expression. This final chapter also serves to consolidate the main themes of my thesis, namely, music’s intertwining with the intersubjective, corporeal, affective, temporal and spatial dimensions of existence. By investigating music in the above ways that emphasise its integral place in human existence, this thesis thereby provides a potential starting point from which to redress music’s diminished presence in the philosophical literature. 11
Chapter one
Music’s “enigma” in Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics
Introduction
While mainly known as a sociologist and philosopher, Adorno was also deeply interested in music. Bowie observes that, “Adorno probably wrote more involving the relationship between music and philosophy than any other leading modern thinker.”19
This first chapter focusses on what I regard as two particularly insightful aspects of
Adorno’s philosophy of music, namely, his crucial notion of music’s “enigma” and his intricate analysis of how music is embedded in the wider social and historical dimensions of human existence. Adorno identifies music’s “enigma”, that is, its inherently ineffable or seemingly “indefinable” nature, as being its essential feature.
This “enigma”, he argues, largely explains why music resists the attempts to define it made by philosophical frameworks that are based in reason and thought. This key notion in Adorno’s aesthetics is thus central to my exploration of the complex relationship between music and philosophy in this thesis.
As a prominent proponent of the Frankfurt school of Critical Theory, Adorno’s wider philosophy engages with a critique of what Richard Leppert describes as the “specific historical circumstances of Western modernity” that involves a “Marxian-indebted critique of exchange economy and its impact on the subject and society”.20 Adorno’s writings on aesthetics (including music) are thus greatly informed by this theory,
19 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 309. 20 Richard Leppert, introduction to Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 22. 12
understood as a method of challenging capitalist ideology in order to enable social and political transformation towards greater freedom. In this respect, Lambert Zuidervaart suggests that, art, for Adorno, can position itself in relation to society in two main ways.
First, art is necessarily intertwined with society and may thus be part of the
“exploitation” and oppression of society that capitalism both engenders and perpetuates.21 Second, however, art could also play the contrasting role of critiquing capitalist ideology and may therefore participate in the “transformation of society” itself.22 My intention in this chapter, however, is not so much to explore Adorno’s views of Critical Theory, but to use his conception of art’s role in society and history as a means of demonstrating that music is not removed from, but rather firmly entrenched in, the concrete dimensions of human existence.
Section one of this chapter explores Adorno’s critical examination of the limitations of past philosophical approaches to conceptualising the world or “reality”. Section two then examines how these limitations are central to explaining why such approaches have, in his view, failed to adequately account for music’s essential feature, that is, its
“enigma”. To develop a more comprehensive analysis of what he means by music’s
“enigma”, I will also discuss the challenges associated with ascertaining music’s
“meaning and justification” or what Adorno terms its “raison d’être”. This, I will perform from the perspective of music’s complex relationship with “signifying language”, as understood in his philosophy.
The remainder of the chapter then investigates Adorno’s views of art’s transformative effect. I argue that these could suggest one way in which his aesthetics illuminates the
21 Lambert Zuidervaart, “Theodor W. Adorno”, The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, accessed February 9, 2014, http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/adorno/. 22 Ibid. 13
crucial role that music plays in human existence. In section three, I first examine how this transformative effect transpires within music itself, that is, within the complex interaction between music’s “subjective” (i.e. “expressive”) and “objective” (i.e.
“conventional”) aspects. In section four, I broaden this analysis to examine how music evolves alongside the wider socio-historical circumstances with which it is intertwined.
Finally, in section five, I apply these insights to the specific tradition of “modern music” so as to consolidate my arguments. To do this, I examine Adorno’s evaluations of
Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky’s contrasting styles of music.
1. The limitations of philosophy
Adorno’s main critique of past philosophical frameworks or methodologies pertains to their ambitious claim to be able to “grasp the totality of the real”.23 In other words, he challenges their misguided belief that philosophers can actually explain and know
“reality” in its entirety through the supposedly unerring resources of “thought” and an all-encompassing “reason”.24 Adorno’s critique here is directed in particular towards
“idealist” philosophers like Kant and Hegel. By adopting this belief, Adorno suggests that such philosophers thereby overlook the distinct disjuncture that he claims actually exists between philosophy and the reality that it attempts to explain. He argues instead that reality cannot be completely comprehended through the rational and methodical means employed by earlier philosophical frameworks precisely because its “order and form suppresses every claim to reason”.25 Reality, being itself disparate and highly complex, can only provide philosophy with an “incomplete, contradictory and
23 Theodor W. Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, Telos 31 (Spring 1977): 120. Hereafter cited as “The Actuality of Philosophy”. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. 14
fragmentary” “text” to decipher.26 This text would ultimately elude the grasp of philosophers who seek to unite the various interrelated dimensions of human existence into a tidy and coherent whole. More broadly, Adorno believes that increasing scepticism over philosophy’s ability to “grasp the totality of the real” also poses a profound challenge to what he terms its “actuality”.27 Here, he is questioning philosophy’s ability to respond to its “cardinal […] questions” about the nature of reality (e.g. “What is truth?”).28 Adorno’s concerns about the limitations of philosophy are also pertinent to aesthetics (which I will soon discuss) because it partakes in the reality with which philosophy has lost touch.
In response to this challenge to philosophy’s “actuality”, Adorno proposes an alternative type of philosophy that does not lay claim to the ability to “grasp the totality of the real”. Instead, his “changed philosophy” emphasises the dynamic process of philosophising itself rather than the elusive, and perhaps illusory, “end result” of this process, that is, a conclusive account of reality itself. And, as we shall see throughout this thesis, this has implications for an investigation of music and its place in reality or existence. In Negative Dialectics, he describes this “changed philosophy” in the following way:
the changed philosophy itself would be infinite in the sense of scorning
solidification in a body of enumerable theorems. Its substance would lie in the
diversity of objects that impinge upon it and of the objects it seeks, a diversity
26 Ibid., 126. 27 Ibid., 124. 28 Ibid. Bowie draws our attention to the fact that this challenge to philosophy’s “actuality” remains a pertinent issue in the contemporary world, by noting that there is a “growing sense these days that philosophy is actually not very good at establishing the ‘real nature’ of things” (Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 3). 15
not wrought by any schema; to those objects, philosophy would truly give itself
rather than use them as a mirror in which to reread itself, mistaking its own
image for concretion.29
When conceived as thus, Adorno’s notion of a “changed philosophy” would depart from previous philosophical frameworks by ceasing to impose its own rigid concepts,
“theorems” and/or “schema” upon its “objects” of analysis in an authoritarian and mono-directional manner.30 This tendency of philosophy to prematurely impose its own concepts upon its so-called “objects” of analysis is a central aspect of Alperson’s critique of the analytic philosophy of music. With respect to the latter, he states:
If I may put the matter somewhat polemically, it is my view that this
philosophical orientation has things backwards. What philosophy needs to do is
to examine the entire range of practices in which music finds a place in the lives
of people as sets of meaningful activities and let these sorts of reflections drive
the philosophical agenda.31
Adorno’s conception of a “changed philosophy” provides a potential means of correcting this “philosophical orientation” through the method he terms “philosophic interpretation”.32 Given that philosophy only has access to the “incomplete, contradictory and fragmentary” script that reality presents it with, Adorno suggests that this method of interpretation would involve a process of “unriddling”.33 This
“unriddling” process signifies a point of departure from previous philosophical
29 ND, 13. 30 Ibid. 31 Alperson, “Facing the Music”, 93. 32 Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, 126-27. 33 Ibid., 126. 16
frameworks because the so-called “meaning” that a philosophical question seeks to uncover would be contingent rather than absolute.34 If, hypothetically-speaking, this
“meaning” was absolute, this process would be superfluous because there would essentially be nothing left for us to “unriddle”.
Insofar as the content of this “changed philosophy” would be constituted and driven by its “objects” of analysis, the relationship between it and these objects would appear to be characterised by greater reciprocity. Moreover, taking into account the ever- increasing number and variety of objects that are available for analysis, the conceptual frameworks that this “changed philosophy” develops would need to be flexible enough to accommodate change. By resisting “solidification” or “concretion” in this way, philosophy would also have to maintain an ironic awareness of the contingency of its own underlying principles. As Harro Müller puts it, in Adorno’s philosophy,
“interpretation [is] a philosophical procedure that claims the status of evidence while remaining conscious of its fallibility”.35 In the overall conclusion to this thesis, I will revisit Adorno’s notion of a “changed philosophy” in order to consider ways in which music could provide an opening for rethinking the nature of philosophising itself. What emerges later in this chapter is the parallel between this “changed philosophy” that is based on “philosophic interpretation” and Adorno’s interesting approach to
“philosophical aesthetics”, which also involves interpretation. As with “philosophic interpretation”, meaning in aesthetic interpretation is also regarded by Adorno as a
“riddle” or “puzzle” rather than a fixed feature of the artwork itself.36 This puzzling
34 Ibid., 126-27. 35 Harro Müller, “Mimetic Rationality: Adorno’s Project of a Language of Philosophy”, New German Critique 36, no. 3 (Fall 2009): 92. 36 Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, 127, AT, 161 & Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 139. 17
aspect of artworks is what he refers to as their “enigma”, a key concept in his aesthetics to which I now turn.
2. Music’s “enigma” and its relationship with language
Due to their misguided belief in their ability to explain reality through thought and reason, earlier philosophical frameworks, Adorno argues, have been unable to develop an appropriate approach to art, including music. This failure is evidenced by the spawning of an undesirable “pluralism of aesthetic theories”.37 He regards this as a problematic development because these theories, such as those that are “empirical”,
“normative” or “descriptive” in nature, are passing trends that do not remain valid in the long-term.38 Importantly, Adorno suggests that the inability of philosophy to grasp music’s essence in particular is symptomatic of this general inability to produce an appropriate philosophical aesthetics. Philosophy stumbles most noticeably when attempting to conclusively account for music’s “meaning and justification”, which, as I mentioned earlier, he also terms its “raison d’être” or the “thing by which it acquires its right to exist”.39 Such quests to locate music’s “raison d’être”, Adorno claims, are ultimately fruitless because it is precisely these conventional philosophical notions of
“meaning”, purpose and “justification”, with their firm basis in reason and knowledge, that art forms like music resist. As he puts it, in “the end, it is the raison d’être of every art to be unavailable to any raison d’être […] the question itself is drawn from the very realm of self-justificatory, teleological rationality that art suspends”.40
37 AT, 422. 38 Ibid. 39 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 137-38. 40 Ibid., 138. 18
According to Adorno, art’s resistance to these conventional philosophical concepts of
“meaning and justification” emanates from its very core. As I mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, he designates art’s essence as its “enigma” (or “enigmatic character”),41 that is, its inherently abstract and ineffable nature. In general, Adorno claims that this “enigmatic character” is common to both music and the other creative arts.42 What makes his aesthetics even more interesting, however, is his further claim that music is even more “enigmatic” than both “language” (and hence “poetry” and
“prose”) and the “visual arts”.43 While Adorno suggests that music, language and the visual arts are all, to some degree, “enigmatic”, he also stresses that this “enigmatic character is emphasized” in music whereas it is “hidden” in both language and the visual arts.44 This, he argues, is because, while not actually being direct representations of reality, these two areas are nevertheless usually understood as representational in that they are taken to be more directly connected to the “visually or conceptually determined world of objects” than music.45 I will expand on this last point in relation to the visual arts before examining it in relation to language.
What allows the “enigma” to remain “hidden” in the visual arts, Adorno argues, is the fact that, in paintings, the “relationship to objects is merged with the content”.46 This assertion about the amalgamation of a painting’s content with the objects it depicts is
Elsewhere in “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, Adorno reinforces this claim by stating that, the “search for the meaning of music itself, as something to be disclosed in the rational justification of its raison d’être, is revealed as a delusion” (Ibid., 139). 41 Ibid., 138. 42 Theodor W. Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, in Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 122. Hereafter cited as “Music, Language, and Composition”. 43 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 138-39. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid., 139. 19
best illustrated by way of example. It would generally be considered uncontroversial that the reddish-orange hues in a painting of the sunset (i.e. the painting’s content) are directly correlated with these same hues in a “real” sunset (i.e. the object that the painting depicts). At least in this example, then, we could suppose that external objects are usually identifiable in, and subsumable under, a painting’s content. This could lead to the further suggestion that the answer to the question, “What aspect of, or object in, the external world does this artwork represent?”, would be relatively less obscure in visual artworks than in music.
There would, however, be exceptions to Adorno’s claim about the relative obscurity of music in comparison with visual artworks. It could hold in the case of “realist” art (e.g. still life or landscape paintings) where depictions of trees or a vase of flowers are usually considered clear representations of particular external objects. However, in a more abstract painting, such as a canvas painted in a uniform shade of red, it may not be as clear as to what it could be said to depict: the actual colour “red”, blood, passion, anger, etc. Hence, in this case, the content of the painting (e.g. its red colour) may not be directly correlated with a particular object/particular objects in the external world
(e.g. the colour “red”, blood, etc.). Equally, some composers of music quite deliberately align the content of their works (i.e. “partial events, motifs, themes, and their elaboration”, etc.)47 with specific external objects. For example, Louis-Claude Daquin’s piece, Le Coucou, contains a motif that is a clear imitation of the cuckoo’s call. At least in these and similar examples, then, we could claim that there are some instances where visual artworks are more “enigmatic” than their musical counterparts.
47 AT, 194. 20
The reasons behind music’s “enigma” can be further explained through Adorno’s comparison of music with “signifying language”, by which he means “ordinary spoken language”,48 as opposed to poetry, for example. In general, whereas Adorno claims that music is characterised by a sense of “untranslatability” or “indefinability”, he posits that
“signifying language” is conventionally assumed to have the ‘“appearance of something like ‘transparency’ or comprehensibility”.49 That he posits that language merely seems to be “transparent” suggests that he does not actually consider language to be a direct or exact representation of reality (a point that I raised earlier). However, this
“appearance” of “transparency” is nevertheless significant because, in his view, it is what permits the “enigmatic character” of language (i.e. its lack of transparency) to remain hidden. Adorno suggests that this appearance of transparency stems from the fact that language partakes in the “medium of cognition”.50 He seems to relate cognition to transparency here because the content of thought is traditionally considered to be self-evident, or at least clearly understandable, by virtue of its basis in reason.
Moreover, Kathleen Higgins notes that the “idea of music’s ineffability – its untranslatability into words – has often been taken as a symptom of an inadequacy on the part of language”.51 She claims that music is often conceptualised as a “deficient language” because it does not possess a “robust semantics”, by which she means the
48 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 126. In a note to “Music, Language, and Composition”, the translator, Richard Leppert, explains Adorno’s use of the term, “signifying language”, in the following way: “[t]hroughout this essay, Adorno uses the phrase meinede Sprache to refer to ordinary spoken language. Meinend, in this usage, is quite idiosyncratic, which lends the phrase heightened importance. Semantically, it is related to Meinung (opinion); it should not be translated by its English cognate meaning, which is closer to the German Bedeutung. In the text, meinende Sprache has been rendered throughout as ‘signifying language’.” (Ibid.) 49 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 139 (emphasis added). 50 Ibid. 51 Kathleen M. Higgins, The Music Between Us: Is Music a Universal Language? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 96. 21
“ability to refer systematically to particular meanings”.52 And it is this possession of a
“robust semantics” that she suggests is considered an especially “useful” aspect of language.53 Further insights into why music lacks the “robust semantics” that language possesses can be developed by examining Adorno’s notion that music maintains an ambivalent stance towards signifying language insofar as it simultaneously appeals to, and resists, it.54 Importantly, this ambiguity in the music-language relationship helps to explain the opacity of music’s “meaning” for conventional philosophy as well as the related difficulty of locating its “raison d’être”. According to Adorno, this question of musical meaning only really became a contentious issue in the “modern music” of the twentieth-century insofar as earlier forms of Western music remained largely within the boundaries of “tradition”.55 Within these boundaries, music’s meaning, he claims, was simply taken as transparent and “self-evident” and was thus uncontested.56 It was this reanimation of the question of musical meaning in the twentieth-century that instigated and precipitated a “crisis of music” that came to define “modern music”.57 I will expand on this crisis that stems from what Adorno terms the “decay of the raison d’être of music”58 in my later discussion of musical expression.
To analyse this ambiguous relationship between music and language, I will first outline their similarities before discussing their differences. In Adorno’s view, the main similarity between music and signifying language is their mutual ability to “say something” 59 or convey a particular message. It is also this ability to “signif[y]
52 Ibid., 95-96. 53 Ibid., 95. 54 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 113. 55 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 140. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 135 & 146. 58 Ibid., 136. 59 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 113. 22
something” that makes both “more than just sound”.60 He claims that this shared capacity to communicate comprehensible messages stems from the “concrete structure” that he believes both music and “speech” possess.61 Notably, “musical forms” are conventionally understood as exhibiting similar structural elements to speech, such as the “sentence, phase, period, and punctuation”.62 For example, melodies from the
Classical era of Western music (1750-1820) usually consist of a “question” phrase that makes the piece sound “unfinished” (i.e. like a question mark) and a corresponding
“answer” phrase that makes it sound “finished” (i.e. like a full stop). Moreover, Adorno claims that music contains “general”, “recurring symbols” whose role is similar to that of “concepts” in language.63 Just as linguistic concepts identify particular categories or ideas under which “individual things” in the external world can be subsumed, these
“recurring symbols” in music allow for “musical specification”.64 That is, they identify certain roles that musical constructs (e.g. “chords”, harmonic progressions, etc.) are usually taken to play within a particular context.65 For example, certain “steps of a cadence”66 (e.g. 1c, V, I) are normally assumed, by Classical musicians at least, to signal the end of a musical piece. During performances, these symbols provide a common reference point on which musicians can rely to ensure that their various interpretations of the composer’s score remain more or less consistent with each other.
However, as I will shortly explain, while Adorno recognises that music/art contains some conceptual characteristics, he nevertheless maintains that the latter are only incidental, rather than fundamental, to it.
60 Ibid., 113-14. 61 Ibid., 113. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid., 113-14. 64 Ibid., 114. 65 Ibid., 113-14. 66 Ibid., 114. 23
Adorno goes on to claim that these general symbols in music are a product of evolution.
That is, they are solidified over time, such that their apparent “invariance has become sedimented, a kind of second nature”.67 One key consequence of their concretisation is the establishment of music’s “idiomatic character”.68 By this, I take Adorno to mean particular uses of the musical elements that have become conventional and recognisable over time. For example, “terraced dynamics” (i.e. sudden rather than gradual changes in dynamics) are a highly recognisable feature of Baroque music and are usually assumed to apply in performances, even if they are not notated in the written score.
Adorno’s more general example of music’s “idiomatic character” is “tonality”,69 or the way in which certain arrangements of notes and pitch intervals are more acceptable or more commonly used than others. For example, major and minor scales are more widely used in Western music than pentatonic scales (used mostly in Asian music) or whole tone scales (used mostly in Debussy’s “impressionistic” works).
Despite these similarities with signifying language, however, Adorno also claims that music lacks “absolute signification”.70 That is, he stresses that an unequivocal meaning cannot be attributed to music insofar as it does not contain a fixed “system of signs” which refer to something external to itself.71 Crucially, and in contrast with the conventional model of language, music does not directly pick out particular things in the external world. Indeed, Adorno attributes music’s “enigma” largely to this Western dilemma of having to search within music (e.g. within its form, techniques, rhythm, etc.), rather than outside of it, to find its “meaning and justification”.72 He takes the
67 Ibid. 68 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 145. 69 Ibid. 70 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 114. 71 Ibid., 113-14. 72 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 137-38. 24
strong view that “there is absolutely no general moment to be found that would be capable of going beyond the description of music to indicate its meaning and justification”.73 Adding to this dilemma is the fact that, as I mentioned earlier, it is precisely these notions of “meaning and justification” that music resists and thus cannot provide.
Nevertheless, by bringing to light this conundrum surrounding music’s meaning,
Adorno is not trying to suggest that music is meaningless. Rather, his point is that its so-called “meaning” remains contingent and hence malleable within the particular works that carry it.74 Adorno explains this contingency in terms of the process he calls the “absorption of meaning” in art.75 The latter seems to concern the way in which artworks evolve alongside the evolution of wider cultural and socio-historical phenomena and thus come to assume various significances over time. I will, in sections four and five, expand on the mechanisms of an artwork’s evolution in my discussion of the ways in which music interacts with both society and history.
Another significant way in which music and language are simultaneously similar to, and different from, each other can be located in Adorno’s notion of “interpretation”. As I mentioned briefly earlier, this notion of interpretation is central not only to his understanding of philosophy’s essence, but also to his understanding of music’s essence.
This notion, he argues, is common to both linguistic and musical meaning, but in contrasting senses of the term.76 For reasons I will gradually explain, Adorno claims that, to “interpret language means to understand language; to interpret music means to
73 Ibid. 74 AT, 164. 75 Ibid. 76 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 115. 25
make music”.77 Language, he suggests, involves a “conceptual” type of
“understanding” that employs the conventional analytical resources of “contemplation and thought” to comprehend objects/phenomena.78 As I signalled earlier, although
Adorno acknowledges that the concept partakes in both language and art (in ways that I will shortly elaborate), he nevertheless stresses that, unlike language, art cannot be considered as fundamentally conceptual.79 As we shall see, this tendency to downplay the role that the concept plays in art is a shared feature amongst the philosophical perspectives of music presented in this thesis.
Indeed, Adorno argues that if artworks could be fully explained through the conceptual mechanisms of contemplation and thought (that the conventional model of language employs), they would not be artworks at all.80 This inexplicability stems from the fact that an artwork, by virtue of its “enigmatic character”, is essentially a “puzzle” or
“riddle”.81 While it may contain the “potential for a solution”, this solution is not
“straightforward” but ultimately “remains a vexation” for the spectator/listener.82
Hence, art’s “enigma” could be expressed as the deep gulf that separates the “promise” of an “objective solution of the enigma” and the absence thereof.83 Given that artworks are a riddle rather than a ‘“problem”’ with a definite solution, comprehending the
“content” of an artwork involves a very different type of understanding from that conventionally involved in language.84 Whereas, as I mentioned earlier, language typically aims at the “transparency” of meaning, a proper understanding of an artwork involves recognising the inherent opacity of its content. In other words, the “solution”
77 Ibid., emphases added. 78 AT, 161-62. 79 Ibid., 126 & 162. 80 Ibid., 161. 81 AT, 161 & Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 139. 82 AT, 161-62. 83 Ibid., 169. 84 Ibid., 161-63. 26
(for want of a better word) to art’s “enigma” is paradoxical because it consists in the fact that art’s essence is its “enigma”. Adorno does not criticise this somewhat counterintuitive conception of art’s meaning for its apparently circular logic but claims instead that it represents “[u]nderstanding in the highest sense – a solution of the enigma that at the same time maintains the enigma”.85
For Adorno, art’s “enigma” or essence “only emerges demonstratively in the profoundest experience of art”.86 In terms of music, this means that its “enigma” is disclosed to an individual when s/he “plays” music87 but retreats from view if s/he conceives of music as an abstract object of knowledge. It is in this sense that Adorno claims that the “only person who can solve the riddle of music is one who plays it correctly, as something whole”.88 Moreover, his focus on the actual experience of music both recalls and reinforces his notion that musical interpretation involves the dynamic “act” or process of “making music” itself. That music is essentially a dynamic process rather than a static object also signals a key difference between the roles that he argues the concept plays in language and music. Unlike its function in language,
Adorno claims that the concept in music (and in art in general) is not simply a static category under which multiple things/properties can be subsumed.89 Instead, art actually transfigures the concept through a process whereby the latter’s “scope can be affected and its meaning refashioned”,90 often in metaphorical and nuanced ways. For example, the ordinarily tragic concept of “death” may somehow be transfigured into an uplifting or hopeful notion in a musical work through the skilful employment of a
85 Ibid., 162. 86 Ibid., 161. 87 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 139. 88 Ibid. 89 AT, 126. 90 Ibid., 163. 27
poignant combination of consonance and dissonance. In short, then, whereas the concept undergoes a transformation in art, its function remains mainly fixed in language.
In Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics, this transformative effect also operates on a broader level whereby the relationship between the “subjective” and “objective” aspects of an artwork constantly changes alongside the socio-historical circumstances in which it is embedded. It is this constantly evolving relationship between the “subjective” and the “objective” that his central notion of “dialectic” encapsulates. To set the background for my analysis of his idea of “dialectic”, I will first discuss the various key elements that are involved in the complex interaction between the subjective and objective aspects of music/art, beginning with his notion of “mimesis”.
3. The relationship between the subjective and objective aspects of music/art
The concept of “mimesis” occupies an “indispensable” role in Adorno’s aesthetics91 because it is a crucial aspect of understanding what he does with the subject/object distinction in music and art in general. And, as we shall shortly see, this concept also facilitates an understanding of the expressive and affective dimensions of music’s transformative effect. However, “mimesis” also remains an elusive notion because, as
Ernesto Verdeja observes, “it receives little sustained treatment in his writings, instead being presented through allusions to what it is not”.92 Perhaps the most clear and succinct formulation of “mimesis” can be found in Adorno’s claim that “mimetic
91 Ibid., 52. 92 Ernesto Verdeja, “Adorno’s Mimesis and its Limitations for Critical Social Thought”, European Journal of Political Theory 8, no. 4 (2009): 494. 28
comportment” is the “assimilation of the self to its other”.93 He does not restrict the term, “other”, to another person here but also employs it to describe contrasting concepts. For example, “irrationality” would be the “other” to “rationality”.
At first glance, Adorno’s definition of “mimetic comportment” could give the impression of “conformity”, that is, the idea that the “self” absorbs the “other” by eliminating any existing difference(s) between them. Nevertheless, he dispels this idea that the self consumes the other, or at least “subordinat[es] the other to itself”, by arguing that in art, the “subject” is “separated from [its other] and yet not altogether separated [from it]”.94 Adorno’s claim here that the self and other are simultaneously distinct and indistinct from each other in art suggests that he would thereby dismiss an interpretation of mimesis where the other is subsumed under the self. Moreover, by positing that the self is at least partly distinct from the other, he thus also departs from the conventional definition of mimesis as an “exact copy” or “imitation” of something.95
This blurring of the boundary between the self and other leads Adorno to conclude that,
“[m]imetic comportment [is] an attitude toward reality distinct from the fixated antithesis of subject and object”.96
Just as, for Adorno, mimesis bypasses the subject/object distinction, so too does his broader notion of “artistic expression” in which mimesis is also implicated.97 In other words, similar to mimesis, the subjective and objective aspects of artistic expression are also simultaneously distinct and indistinct from each other. On the one hand, he claims
93 AT, 416. 94 Ibid., 69-70 & 419. 95 Ibid., 145. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid., 145-46. This idea is evident in Adorno’s claim that “[e]xpression approaches the transsubjective; it is the form of knowledge that – having preceded the polarity of subject and object – does not recognize this polarity as definitive.” (Ibid., 146) 29
that an artwork is not completely objective because it is not a direct representation or copy of things/phenomena in the external world.98 On the other hand, and in contrast with more conventional theories of artistic expression, he claims that an artwork is not entirely subjective because it is neither a direct translation of the “impulses” of its artist(s)/creator(s) nor of those of its “recipient”.99 If the content of an artwork could indeed be fully dictated by the subjective “impulses” of these individuals, Adorno argues that it would no longer be “mimetic”.100 That is, its “essential determination” by these impulses would render its content fixed, effectively overriding the dynamic interaction between the subjective and objective aspects of art that mimesis implies.101
In contrast, Adorno argues that the “feelings of the author” (or the composer, in the musical context) only constitute a “partial” rather than “decisive” aspect of artworks.102
In particular, he disputes what he regards as the widespread, yet overly simplistic, view that an artwork’s “emotional expression” is always positively correlated with the emotions felt by the spectator/listener.103 In the case of music, adherents to this
“popular” perspective of artistic expression would suggest that a “listener is […] to become excited when the music seems to do so”.104 To further challenge this notion that the “subjective experience of the recipient” exhausts the domain of emotional expression, Adorno critiques the “conventional” notion of “lived aesthetic experience”
(Erlebnis) with which he believes this overly subjective view of art corresponds.105
Basically, a theory of artistic expression that emphasises “lived aesthetic experience” posits that the emotions of the artist himself/herself are somehow “lived or relived” by
98 Ibid., 145. 99 Ibid., 146 & 318. 100 Ibid., 146. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid., 318. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid. 105 Ibid., 318-19. 30
the recipient (i.e. the spectator/listener) when engaging with this artist’s work(s).106 As
I will demonstrate in chapter five, like Adorno, Merleau-Ponty also challenges an overly subjective conception of artistic expression through his critique of Malraux’s theory of painting.
Pursuing this critique of the notion of “lived aesthetic experience” further, Adorno argues that a more authentic conception of the “artistic experience” can be found in what he calls “[f]ull comprehending experience” (Erfahrung).107 He explains the latter in terms of “shudder”, a concept which he describes in the following way:
Shudder, radically opposed to the conventional idea of experience [Erlebnis],
provides no particular satisfaction for the I; it bears no similarity to desire.
Rather, it is a memento of the liquidation of the I, which, shaken, perceives its
own limitedness and finitude.108
The above passage suggests that, rather than confirming or reconfirming one’s sense of self (e.g. one’s fundamental moral values), “shudder”, for Adorno, is the state that follows the dissolution of this sense of self. According to him, shudder is not a state into which we voluntarily enter or impose on ourselves, but is rather an “involuntary comportment”,109 that is, something that happens to us. In particular, it is an experience of “shock” or of being “shaken”110 that exposes us to the undesirable, daunting or darker aspects of our existence. These would include an awareness of the boundaries that ultimately circumscribe the scope of our wants, capacities and aspirations, of which a
106 Ibid., 318. 107 Ibid., 319. 108 Ibid. 109 Ibid. 110 Ibid., 318. 31
prime example is our inability to live forever (i.e. our “finitude”).111 Adorno describes this exposure to the limits of our existence, including our eventual demise, as a sudden and acute sense of vulnerability through which we catch a glimpse of a potential situation where our own “self-preservation” is threatened.112 However, he also clarifies that this “disappearance” or “liquidation of the I”113 should not be taken literally. Our self-preservation is not actually stripped from us; we are rather confronted with the threat of its removal.114 In Adorno’s own words, in “its immediacy the shudder feels the potential as if it were actual”.115 In section five, I will also provide examples of how the twentieth-century composers, Schoenberg and Stravinsky, convey this experience of shudder or shock in their compositions.
This experience of shudder or shock partakes in a broader concept that is also central to
Adorno’s theory of expression, namely, “gesture”. A key characteristic of the musical gesture is its mysterious, almost indescribable, transformative effect on us. He claims that this effect is so powerful that it allows music to transport us to an “alienated reality”.116 Music, for Adorno, would seem to possess more expressive power than signifying language due to its embodiment of the suggestive power of the gesture.
Importantly, his notion of gesture thereby demonstrates another way in which music departs from signifying language. Due to its communication of more concrete forms of meaning (e.g. place names), signifying language would seem to be relatively poorer than music in its expressive means because it largely dictates what people think and how they should feel. We should recall here that, by “signifying language”, Adorno is
111 Ibid., 319. 112 Ibid., 320. 113 Ibid., 319-20. 114 Ibid., 320. 115 Ibid. 116 PMM, 129. 32
referring to “ordinary spoken language” rather than other forms of language that may be more suggestive in nature, such as poetry.
Expanding on this relationship between music and the gesture, Adorno claims that the
“origin [of music] is gesticulative in nature and closely related to the origin of tears. It is the gesture of release.”117 He explains this somewhat obscure claim by stating:
The human being who surrenders himself to tears and to a music which no
longer resembles him in any way permits that current of which he is not part and
which lies behind the dam restraining the world of phenomena to flow back into
itself.118
By drawing a parallel between the “origin of tears” and that of music, he thereby suggests that the transformative effect of the musical gesture is grounded in the body and affect. This is reinforced in Bowie’s claim that, in Adorno’s philosophy, “[m]usical gestures can renew the force of emotions, enable new emotions to emerge, evoke the mood of a particular situation, evoke a landscape, a time, etc.”119 The feeling of emancipation or “gesture of release” that is produced by both music and tears takes place in our bodies by way of loosening our “face muscles” and parting our “lips”.120
Just as we loosen our grip on our emotions when we let our tears run their course, we must also allow ourselves to be carried along by the “current” that courses through the
“world of phenomena” when participating in the musical experience.121
117 Ibid., 128. 118 Ibid., 129. 119 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 361. 120 PMM, 128. 121 Ibid., 129. 33
Significantly, this passage about the musical gesture also suggests that our relationship with music has more to do with its ability to transform us rather than our ability to transform it. The reciprocal nature of the relationship between human beings and music thus reinforces Adorno’s assertion that artistic expression is not purely subjective. Our renewed openness to the world requires that we loosen our tight grasp on our
“subjectivity” by ceasing to impose our own “meaning” upon the world (of which music is a part) and letting the world “flow” through us instead.122 On this interpretation, then,
Adorno does not seem to be suggesting that humans are completely detached from the
“world of phenomena” by virtue of not partaking in its current. Rather, his main point seems to be that humans are not the sole driving force behind the evolution of this world and thus do not completely dictate the direction and force of its underlying “flux”.
As we shall see in chapter three, Adorno’s description of the corporeal and affective dimension of the musical experience bears resemblance to Nietzsche’s key assertion that music symbolises a “state of disindividuation” that reconnects us with the underlying “flux” of existence. Like Adorno, Nietzsche also associates music with a heightened state of affect, which, in his view, provokes the dissolution of the barriers between oneself, other people and the world. Hence, Nietzsche would be sympathetic to Adorno’s notion that music simultaneously transforms us as we transform it. This is because, for Nietzsche, music’s disindividuating effect implies that an individual is not a self-contained entity in the world and thus cannot completely determine the direction of its underlying “flux”.
122 Ibid., 128-29. 34
As I mentioned earlier, the key to understanding how the subjective and the objective elements interact in Adorno’s notion of artistic expression also lies in art’s transformative effect. And it is this effect that highlights the important role that music plays in human existence that Adorno’s analysis points towards. According to him, both aspects of an artwork are transformed in such a way that allows it to develop its own unique mode of expression. As I also suggested earlier, a central aspect of this transformative process is his key concept of “dialectic”. It is also this concept that he believes contributes significantly to the “fruitful” or productive nature of accomplished works of “modern art”.123 In “dialectic”, Adorno argues, the subjective and objective aspects of art are “not mutually exclusive, but rather mutually determinant polar opposites”.124 To explain this claim, he clarifies what he does not mean by “dialectic”.
First, dialectic does not consist in the simple amalgamation of an artwork’s subjective and objective aspects, for example, a poem about the sunset which combines a physical description of the sunset (e.g. its fiery hues) with a description of how a person feels when looking at the sunset (e.g. nostalgic). Second, Adorno clarifies that dialectic also does not involve alleviating the tension between these two aspects. In other words, an artwork should not seek to “strike a balance” between them by situating itself in “some middle ground”.125
Rather, he is seeking a more profound and complex notion of dialectic, whereby “each pole realizes itself only in the other”.126 By this, he means that the relationship between these two apparent “extremes”127 (i.e. the subjective and objective aspects of art) is characterised by both distance and proximity insofar as they remain implicated in, and
123 AT, 55. 124 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 145. 125 AT, 55. 126 Ibid. 127 Ibid. 35
are mutually shaped by, each other. Their relationship is thus characterised by a movement whereby each simultaneously approaches and resists the other. Being characterised by continuous movement, this relationship is dynamic rather than static, which helps to explain Adorno’s claim that a “dubious consensus”128 is reached between the two poles or extremes rather than a stable balance. In section five, I will examine this notion of dialectic more closely by investigating how it might manifest itself in a musical piece like Schoenberg’s Erwartung.
Adorno also uses this notion of dialectic in a broader sense to help explain the reasons behind the “decay of the raison d’être of music” that I mentioned earlier. He situates this explanation within what he calls music’s “linguistic character”.129 The fundamental characteristic of music’s “linguistic character”, he claims, is its “dual nature”, that is, its simultaneous embodiment of the subjective and objective aspects of art.130 On the one hand, he refers to the objective aspect of music’s “linguistic character” as
“convention”.131 “Convention” encompasses those features of music that reflect its resemblance to signifying language, including its “idiomatic character” (e.g. the traditional systems of tonality that I discussed earlier) and its “rational” characteristics.132 By the “rational aspect” of art in general, Adorno is referring to the
“logicality” or “logical consistency” of artworks, for example, the “empirical causal relation”133 that exists between the “question” and “answer” phrases in a piece of
Classical music that I mentioned earlier. Adorno appears to associate these features of music with convention because they are more likely than others to remain stable over
128 Ibid., emphasis added. 129 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 145. 130 Ibid. 131 Ibid. 132 Ibid. 133 AT, 180-81. 36
time. On the other hand, he uses the term, “expression”, broadly here to designate the various subjective features of music, which would include its “pre-rational, […] mimetic” and “gestural” aspects.134
For Adorno, the “contemporary crisis” of music in the twentieth-century, in which music’s “raison d’être” was called into question, was a direct consequence of the complex interaction between these two aspects of convention and expression.135
Generally speaking, the modern music of the twentieth-century was characterised by the
“emancipation of dissonance”, that is, the departure from traditional harmonies and tonalities such as the use of major and minor key signatures. As a result, new systems of tonality (e.g. Schoenberg’s use of “atonality” and the “twelve tone row”) and new harmonic techniques (e.g. the increased use of chromaticisms, tri-tones and tone clusters) were created. Modern music, Adorno claims, saw the expressive/subjective aspect of music assume a more assertive role over the conventional/objective aspect of music from which it is nevertheless inseparable. A key manifestation of this increasingly assertive role was the gradual separation of expression from the systematic and logical aspects of signifying language.136 For example, Adorno notes that the “most recent of twelve-tone compositions”, by which he means those composed by
Schoenberg’s contemporaries (e.g. Anton Webern), largely avoided replicating the
“natural inflections of speech”.137 Such inflections were a distinctive feature of earlier compositions in the Western tradition that employed a style called stile recitativo.138
134 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 145. 135 Ibid., 146. 136 PMM, 128. 137 Ibid. 138 Ibid. In PMM, the translators, Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Bloomster, define stile recitativo as a “vocal style designed to imitate and emphasize the natural inflections of speech, employed particularly in opera, most notably Baroque” (Ibid.). 37
In a somewhat paradoxical development, however, Adorno argues that the more the expressive/subjective aspect of music seeks to disintegrate its conventional/objective counterpart, the more it “works toward its own dissolution”.139 Otherwise put, the more expression attempts to override convention in music, the more it tends towards its own destruction. One explanation for this apparent paradox is that the dialectical relationship between the subjective and objective aspects of art entails that it is only by interacting with convention that expression is able to carve out its own contours and significance. Bowie explains this aspect of Adorno’s aesthetics in the following way:
Expression without convention can cease to have any social significance beyond
being a refusal to accept anything dictated by convention. As soon as
expression ceases to constitute such a refusal, however, it must begin to become
convention if it is to be significant at all. Expressivity, like uniqueness, is
inconceivable without its counterpart, but convention can cancel out what makes
expression possible by rendering mechanically repeatable what was formerly
expressive.140
Moreover, by seeking to completely consume its objective counterpart, the subjective element thereby also breaks down the tension between them. The artwork thereby loses its vibrancy because it is in the intricate ways through which this tension is played out that endows this work with its dynamic, transformative character. Adorno argues that it is this movement towards the dissolution of both aspects that has led to the “decay of the raison d’être of music”, this being, as I mentioned earlier, a crisis that came to
139 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 146. 140 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 362. 38
define modern music.141 This, he suggests, is due to the fact that, when the very existence of both convention and expression is contested in music, the difficulty of locating its meaning and justification also intensifies. In the following analysis of music’s complex relationship with history and society, I will closely examine how these tensions between its subjective and objective aspects can be understood to be played out in modern music.
4. Music, history and society
According to Adorno, the dialectical interplay between the subjective and objective elements of music transpires alongside the equally dynamic interaction between music and the wider socio-historical circumstances with which it is entwined. And, for him, it is this interaction with both history and society that renders this interplay within music itself even more dynamic and complex. Leppert describes music’s intricate interaction with both history and society in Adorno’s philosophy as thus:
Adorno’s work pursues music’s meaning as produced through the complicated
interplay of the work’s own specificity – which develops in response to the
demands of its musical material, the outgrowth of society and history – and
meaning that results from the social-historical site the music occupies, both in
the time of its making and in the ever-changing present.142
It is this interaction between the meaning of musical works, history and society that this section examines in detail. Insofar as music is itself a socio-historical phenomenon, we
141 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 146. 142 Leppert, introduction, 74. 39
could suppose that, socio-historical developments not only transform music, but that music also influences these developments. My analysis of music and history will mainly focus on how history influences the development of music. In contrast, my discussion of music and society will mainly focus on how music might inform the development of society. I begin with an examination of Adorno’s account of music’s relationship with history.
In general, Adorno argues that a conception of what art is/is not evolves as history itself evolves.143 Hence, artworks, in his view, are not fixed but rather “dynamic” entities that necessarily partake in a “process of becoming” or change.144 A “definition of art” in the present moment must therefore encompass considerations of both its past (i.e. “what [it] once was”) and its potential future (i.e. “what it wants to, and perhaps can, become”).145
To support this claim, Adorno highlights the fact that some art forms previously considered as non-art, so to speak, (e.g. “cultic works”) are now considered as “art”, and vice versa.146 A more recent example of this is heavy metal music. While the latter was probably considered by some as pure noise at the time of its inception, it would probably be considered an outdated style of music in today’s society, at least when compared with more contemporary styles such as hip hop. Adorno also stresses that the progress of this “process of becoming” in art remains unimpeded by a work’s concretion in physical form. In other words, an artwork’s significance will still change over time even after it has been “sketched on paper, painted on canvas, or carved in stone” and displayed in a museum.147 In the particular case of music, even if the score
143 AT, 3. 144 Ibid., 232 & 235. 145 Ibid., 3. 146 Ibid. 147 Ibid., 235. 40
of a particular piece continues to be published over time, the degree and type of cultural significance that this piece embodies may still vary significantly in the long-term.
Adorno specifies that this transformation that artworks undergo over time is more profound and complex than that which simply reflects the “changing attitude of individuals” towards them.148 This “changing attitude”, in his view, merely scrapes the surface of this process of becoming in comparison with the more significant “inner transformation” that occurs within the artwork itself.149 By this “inner transformation”,
Adorno is essentially referring to the evolution of its “form”, the latter of which he describes as the “relation of its whole and parts”.150 He argues that the most fundamental change in this relation concerns a “process of collapse”, that is, the gradual
“dissolution of [the artwork’s] layers”.151 This “collapse” or eventual demise is, in turn, largely a result of what he calls the “neutralisation of culture”.152 The latter describes the phenomenon whereby the “cultural reserve” or context from which artworks emerge and acquire their distinctive significance, “shrinks”.153 For this reason, Adorno claims that works that were previously considered “critical” at the time of their inception “may become uninterpretable and fall mute” as time passes.154 For example, in the years leading up to the establishment of the French Republic, the song, La Marseillaise, evoked connotations of rebellion. On the one hand, this song remains culturally significant in France today because it is the French national anthem. On the other hand, its cultural significance may have decreased, or at least changed in nature, insofar as the
148 Ibid. 149 Ibid., 235 & 254. 150 Ibid., 235. 151 Ibid. 152 Ibid., 254. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid., 254 & 299. 41
“call to arms” that it invokes would probably be of diminished/changed relevance to contemporary French society.
Bowie, however, raises the point that not all musical works, genres or traditions will inevitably be confronted with a decrease in their ability to “challenge [their] audiences” over time.155 His main point is that, just as the cultural reserve from which artworks emerge can contract, it can also be expanded or transformed in such a way that endows these works with a new meaning. In his view, there can be “situations when a revival of something from the past may, in a particular context, be highly significant, whether it be
Mendelssohn’s revival of Bach, or the return, at a time when free jazz itself tended to settle into a routine, to chord-and-scale-based improvisation which incorporates some of the possibilities opened up by free jazz”.156 Given that this is a possibility that Adorno does not really address, Bowie suggests that he thereby “pays too little attention to the differing contexts of musical activity”, partly due to “his too exclusive concentration on modern European music”.157 Indeed, this apparent oversight on Adorno’s part is curious given that he himself appears to make a similar critique to Bowie’s in his conception of music’s social role, but with particular reference to the musical
“objectivism” movement. In brief, Adorno criticises “objectivism” for failing to recognise that the meaning and significance of past musical forms or styles would change when applied to more recent social contexts. Before addressing the specific details of Adorno’s critique, however, I will first investigate the more general ways in which he conceptualises music’s interaction with society.
155 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 346. 156 Ibid. 157 Ibid. 42
In his investigation of the relationship between music and society, Adorno is primarily concerned with the extent to which “music – insofar as it might intervene in the social process – will be in a position to intervene as art”.158 He generally conceives of the evolution of society and that of music as concurrent phenomena insofar as developments in one will influence, and/or precipitate, those in the other. For reasons I will shortly discuss, Adorno also argues that artworks (including musical works) are inherently social constructs even if they neither consciously “imitate society” nor present an explicit social message.159 He thus claims that the “work of art does not have society in mind in terms of answering its questions, nor even necessarily in terms of the actual choice of those questions”.160
By way of clarification, Adorno emphasises that he is not concerned with what he regards as merely superficial attempts to put art in contact with the social domain. In particular, he argues that “political positions” are of negligible importance in art and may indeed divert our attention from what is more central to art’s relationship with society,161 a subject to which I will soon turn. He would thus be contemptuous of artworks that are used as political propaganda to pander to vested interests. He also critiques investigations of art’s social role that attend solely to “human reactions to artworks”, that is, people’s “reception” to art.162 In his view, such investigations of art’s
158 Theodor W. Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, in Essays on Music, trans. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 393 (emphasis in original). Hereafter cited as “On the Social Situation of Music”. 159 PMM, 132. 160 Ibid. 161 AT, 303. For example, Adorno claims that, “[f]or the most part there is only the most coincidental and insignificant relationship between the private political attitudes of composers and the substance of their works.” (PMM, 130) 162 AT, 299. 43
so-called “effects” on society can provide neither direct nor reliable insights into how social issues actually penetrate art’s very core.163
In contrast with these approaches, Adorno argues that a crucial aspect of art’s ability to actually engage with “social problems” is, paradoxically, its “autonomy” from society.164 However, as I signalled briefly earlier, Adorno also suggests that an artwork’s “refusal of”, or “opposition to”, society is not necessarily a deliberate or explicit act of “resistance” on the part of its artist.165 He argues instead that, by
“crystallizing in itself as something unique to itself, rather than complying with existing social norms and qualifying as ‘socially useful,’ [art] criticizes by merely existing”.166
An artwork can “implicitly criticize” society, Adorno suggests, by simply abiding by
“its own formal laws”.167 In so doing, it thereby counteracts the attempts of undesirable external forces or influences (e.g. the capitalist forces of production) to completely reduce it to a standardised “commodity” with a fixed “exchange” or “market” value.168
According to Adorno, “[i]n such a role of pseudo-isolation, music begins to correspond to a momentous social change.”169
Before discussing the mechanisms behind music’s potential contribution to social criticism and change, I will first examine both Bowie and Higgins’ concerns about the actual applicability of Adorno’s broader claim that art/music ought to resist society.
According to Bowie, Adorno’s contention that “music should critically ‘oppose’ the nature of contemporary reality, rather than functioning as a consolation” primarily
163 Ibid. 164 AT, 296 & Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 393. 165 AT, 296 & PMM, 132. 166 AT, 296. 167 AT, 296 & Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 393. 168 AT, 296 & Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 391. 169 PMM, 131. 44
applies to music that “functions at the level of philosophy, as a form of critique of existing historical reality”.170 Evidently, not all composers would intend their music to be a parallel form of philosophical critique, at least not at all times. As Bowie observes, there are “plenty of contexts in which music can justifiably function as a consolation”.171
Similarly, Higgins questions Adorno’s contention that “we should be dubious of music that promotes a sense of comfort and security” insofar as it thereby “supports a politically undesirable attitude of passive contentment with the status quo”.172 On the one hand, Higgins concurs with Adorno that music, as well as the other creative arts, can motivate people to “reenvision possibilities in the social sphere”.173 On the other hand, Higgins also argues that Adorno overlooks the fact that music’s ability to “shake people up and encourage change” actually presupposes that they already possess an underlying or “basic sense of security”.174 This “basic kind of comfort”, Higgins suggests, stems from our “being a participant within the social world”, that is, a world that we “shar[e]” with others.175 Indeed, she argues that it is precisely music’s capacity to “establish and reinforce feelings of security” within people that constitutes its fundamental “emotional” role in human existence.176 Her key contention is that people must feel like they are firmly anchored in, and “supported” by, the social world before
170 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 315. 171 Ibid. 172 Higgins, The Music Between Us, 147. 173 Ibid. 174 Ibid. 175 Ibid. More specifically, Higgins identifies three main “categories” which demonstrate her claim that “music serves to help establish and reinforce feelings of security”, namely, “ontological security”, “existential security” and a “sense of belonging” (Ibid., 147-48). First, “ontological security” pertains to the “sense of sharing the world with other beings like ourselves” (Ibid., 147). Second, “existential security” pertains to the “sense of being at home in the world” (Ibid., 148). And, lastly, the “sense of belonging” that music provides pertains to the “sense” of our embeddedness in, and “membership” of, a “specific network of relationships in a particular culture and life story” (Ibid., 147-48). 176 Ibid., 147. 45
they are assured of their own ability to explore unfamiliar terrain and, furthermore, are willing to do so.177 In Higgins’ words, “those who can be persuaded to move beyond their comfort zone are individuals who are already deeply secure, and music has the virtue of instilling the security as well as providing the persuasion”.178
However, Higgins is not suggesting here that we can or should avoid musical experiences that destabilise this “basic sense of security”, for example, those that provoke “disturbing emotions” within us.179 I will closely examine some works by
Stravinsky and Schoenberg which produce such emotions later. Rather, she is emphasising the fact that this “basic sense of security” that music provides is a
“cop[ing]” mechanism for, and hence an important precondition of, being able to withstand “disturbing emotions” without being crippled by them.180 Higgins actually suggests that living through these emotions in the musical experience can produce the somewhat counterintuitive effect of reinforcing our “sense of security” by making us more assured of our own strength and capacity to endure such testing situations.181 She states, by “deliberately exposing oneself to emotions that might be disturbing, but savoring their progress and ultimate resolution, one expresses one’s sense of mastery”.
182 Perhaps what we can infer from Bowie and Higgins’ combined criticisms of
Adorno’s conception of music’s role in society is, firstly, that not all musical works automatically express a “social force of resistance”.183 Secondly, our ability to withstand potentially disquieting works that may act as an incitement to resistance presupposes that we already feel assured of having a stable place in the social world.
177 Ibid. 178 Ibid. 179 Ibid., 154. 180 Ibid. 181 Ibid., 155. 182 Ibid. 183 AT, 296. 46
Having addressed these criticisms, I can now return to the more specific question of how music can contribute to social change in Adorno’s philosophy. As I mentioned in passing earlier, Adorno identifies the form of a musical work as the “locus of [its] social content” and therefore as the potential site of this change.184 I will begin by outlining what Adorno means by an artwork’s “social content”. My later analysis of
Schoenberg’s composition, Erwartung, will then closely examine the specific link between an artwork’s social content and its form or structure. An important determining factor behind an artwork’s social content, Adorno suggests, is the “division of labour” that he believes is entrenched in the creative process itself.185 The intervention of the “division of labour” in this process implies that art, for him, cannot and thus should not remain totally divorced from society. Specifically, Adorno argues that an artwork has the “quality of being a thing” in the “empirical” world and its significance is therefore bound up with the particular circumstances surrounding its
“production”, “reproduction” and eventual “consumption” in this world.186 Adorno refers to an artwork’s existence as a “thing” as its fait social, the latter of which he believes maintains a tense relationship with another key aspect of art’s social dimension, that is, its “autonomy”.187
In the context of music, Adorno claims that this tension between art’s autonomy and its fait social is played out in the relationship between the composition (i.e. “production”) of, performance/“interpretation” (i.e. “reproduction”) of, and the reception to (i.e.
184 AT, 301 & Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 393. 185 AT, 298-99. 186 AT, 349 & Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 411. 187 AT, 300 & 349. 47
“consumption” of) musical works.188 From the perspective of musical composition, a work ought to be performed/interpreted in such a way that preserves its
“authenticity”.189 Otherwise put, the “essence” or “true meaning” of this work, as it is embedded in the written score, should also be captured in a performance/interpretation of it.190 From the contrasting perspective of reception or consumption, those who perform/interpret this work should maximise its “comprehensibility […] for the listener”.191
Adorno argues that problems arise when attempts are made to dissolve this tension between art’s autonomy and its fait social. This dissolution occurs when the interpretation or reproduction of a musical work begins to accommodate itself too readily to the demands of either artistic production or consumption.192 On the one hand, if reproduction solely caters for the demands of production, it is likely that “only alienated music”, that is, music that does not appeal to, or resonate with, most mainstream consumers, would be made available to listeners.193 In this case, music would distance itself too much from society by failing to adequately connect with the people that constitute it.194 As Leppert puts it, “[s]ome music escapes complete commodification, but only to be exiled from a society that has no use for it”.195 For example, in recent times, an increasing number of artists/bands (e.g. Sarah Brightman,
Vanessa Mae and Bond) have been performing (Western) Classical pieces in musical styles that are more popular with today’s audiences (e.g. Pop, Techno and Rock).
Hence, if a musician in today’s world plays a piece of (Western) Classical music in
188 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 411-13. 189 Ibid., 411-12. 190 Ibid. 191 Ibid. 192 Ibid., 412. 193 Ibid. 194 Ibid. 195 Leppert, introduction, 332. 48
strict accordance with the specific conventions of this tradition, his/her interpretation may resonate with fewer listeners than in previous years.
On the other hand, if reproduction accommodates itself too readily to the tastes or preferences of mainstream consumers, the “authenticity” of a musical work may be compromised.196 For example, this might occur if a work is interpreted in such a way that deliberately overlooks the social conundrums it embodies for the purposes of increasing its “entertainment value”. In this case, music’s autonomy might be compromised due to its apathy towards the problems/issues that transpire in the social environment with which it is intertwined. When conceived as thus, reproduction becomes the arena where the tensions between artistic production and consumption, and therefore also between art’s autonomy and fait social, are played out in complex ways.197
5. Schoenberg and Stravinsky: a comparative analysis
To demonstrate possible ways in which composers negotiate this complex terrain between art’s autonomy and its fait social, Adorno examines the compositional styles and works of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. While Adorno seems to prefer Schoenberg’s music over Stravinsky’s, he nevertheless regards these composers as “two innovators
[…] deserving of historical priority”198 within the context of modern music. In general,
Adorno claims that Schoenberg’s music, which rose to prominence through his invention of the “twelve-tone composition”, addresses “social antinomies” in a
196 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 412. 197 Ibid. 198 PMM, 4. 49
profound way.199 In contrast, he claims that Stravinsky, a prominent proponent of musical “objectivism”, largely disengages his music from “any social dialectic”.200 It is to a discussion of Stravinsky’s music and musical “objectivism” that I first turn.
Adorno’s main criticism of “objectivist music” centres on what he believes to be its
“intention of diverting attention from social conditions”.201 In his view, this detachment from social conditions is achieved by employing particular “musical forms” that are erroneously assumed by objectivist composers to transcend time.202 In particular, objectivist music employs “older, totally pre-bourgeois musical forms” that are intended to “affirm an original natural state of music”.203 Common examples that Adorno mentions here include the “dance forms” and “rhythms” that objectivism believes can be “elevated above historical change and [are] accessible to every age”.204 He suggests that such forms and rhythms are taken to persist over time because dance necessarily engages our body,205 the latter of which all humans, past, present and future, possess.
By making use of such forms, objectivism, Adorno claims, wrongly infers that its style of music has thereby been rendered “immune to alienation”.206 In other words, objectivism maintains the illusion that music can remain untouched by, and shielded from, “social reality”.207
Adorno pursues his argument against musical objectivism further by claiming that these
“stylistic forms of the past […] cannot be reconstituted within a completely changed
199 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 396 & 399. 200 Ibid., 396. 201 Ibid., 408 (emphasis in original). 202 Ibid., 403. 203 Ibid. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid. 206 Ibid., 396. 207 Ibid., 403. 50
society and through completely changed musical material”.208 He defines “material” broadly here as “everything that artists encounter about which they must make a decision”, including musical “sounds”, “associations”, “techniques” and forms.209 To illustrate Adorno’s point, some seemingly stable features of (Western) Classical music persist over time but are nevertheless given a new meaning when applied in new situations, a meaning that is necessarily socially informed. For example, the use of
(Western) Classical techniques and forms in certain passages of contemporary songs
(e.g. Butterflies and Hurricanes by Muse and Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen) may be considered innovative by some listeners from the twenty-first century due to the unique fusion of past and present musical genres. In contrast, the inclusion of such techniques and forms would probably have gone unnoticed by listeners from the eighteenth or nineteenth century (i.e. during the Classical/Romantic era of Western music), due to the fact that their usage in this historical period was widespread. The above example both recalls and reinforces Bowie’s point that I mentioned earlier about how a musical work/genre/tradition from the past can be reanimated when later used in a different and/or renewed context.
In contrast with his criticism of Stravinsky’s music for being detached from social reality, Adorno praises Schoenberg for engaging deeply with the social dialectic.210 In his view, Schoenberg respects the “musical material” that is available to him by reinterpreting it while simultaneously remaining receptive to the socio-historical legacy that it embodies.211 Schoenberg, Adorno claims, does not manipulate this material to suit his own purposes and thus avoids treating it as a blank slate on which he could
208 Ibid., 396. 209 AT, 194. 210 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 399. 211 Ibid. 51
realise his own “intentions” in an unthinking manner.212 He contrasts Schoenberg’s music with the capricious nature of Stravinsky’s music, likening the latter with a
“game” involving a “seductively arbitrary change of masks”.213 While this game may occasionally take on the appearance of “seriousness”, Stravinsky, Adorno argues, nevertheless does not commit himself to a sustained engagement with existing “social antinomies” through his music.214 Moreover, while Adorno acknowledges that
Stravinsky’s music may appeal to its listeners due to its “virtuosity”, he nevertheless believes that it lacks the “responsible dialectics” that underlies Schoenberg’s music.215
This is because this virtuosity is emphasised over the music’s ability to actually engage with social reality.216
To illustrate the significant differences between Schoenberg and Stravinsky’s music,
Adorno compares their contrasting approaches to musical expression. He suggests that, even in his early works, Schoenberg’s use of expression is more genuine than that used by composers of Western music from the Baroque era through to the Romantic era.217
In particular, he claims that Schoenberg dares to portray the darker or more negative emotions in their complete, and often terrifying, reality.218 In contrast, Adorno suggests that these earlier Western composers, especially those of “dramatic music” (e.g. Verdi), only “presented expression as stylized communication – as the representation of passions”.219 Since they only included the mere “appearance of expressed feelings” in their works, the emotions that these earlier composers expressed ultimately lacked the
212 Ibid. 213 Ibid., 403. 214 Ibid., 406. 215 Ibid., 403. 216 Ibid. 217 PMM, 38. 218 Ibid., 39. 219 Ibid., 38. 52
“immediate presence and reality” of those expressed by Schoenberg.220 Diverging from these traditional composers, Schoenberg, Adorno claims, does not attempt to temper the intensity of the darker emotions (e.g. the “untransfigured suffering of man”) by merely
“simulat[ing]” them in his works.221 Instead, Schoenberg pursues these expressed emotions through to their “logical conclusion”,222 even if this involves dealing with such perturbing issues as human madness. In Adorno’s view, Schoenberg’s portrayal of the “undisguised and uninhibited expression of the psyche and of the unconscious per se” simply would not admit of Stravinsky’s capricious use of “illusion and play”.223 By not trivialising the gravity of his chosen subject-matter, Schoenberg, Adorno suggests, thereby does justice to the musical material with which he works.
To further analyse Adorno’s comparison of Schoenberg and Stravinsky’s use of musical expression, I will now closely examine two compositions, namely, Schoenberg’s
“monodrama Erwartung” and Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (hereafter abbreviated in this thesis as Sacre). Erwartung examines the tumultuous, and often extreme, emotions experienced by a woman upon encountering her lover’s “murdered corpse” during the night.224 It follows the woman’s emotional and psychological journey, which traverses the complex and inhospitable terrain of “hatred and desire, jealousy and forgiveness” and finally madness.225 Importantly, Adorno highlights the fact that the sheer intensity of the “conflicting drives” that Schoenberg’s piece expresses essentially disallows his music from “offering comforting consolation”.226
Schoenberg’s music, he suggests, presents the woman’s ordeal to the listener in an
220 Ibid. 221 Ibid., 38 & 41-42. 222 Ibid., 38. 223 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 398 & PMM, 42. 224 PMM, 42. 225 Ibid. 226 Ibid. 53
almost clinical manner, that is, “in the very same way as a patient is to analysis”.227 For
Adorno, the only point in Erwartung where the “music recalls its right to utter a consoling protest” is when the woman eventually succumbs to her madness.228 Perhaps, from Higgins’ perspective, then, Schoenberg’s Erwartung would be an apt example of a circumstance where the listener needs to have a “basic sense of security” in order to be able to withstand its disquieting effect.
Moreover, the dialectical relationship between the subjective and objective elements of music’s “linguistic character” that I discussed earlier can be illustrated through
Adorno’s analysis of Schoenberg’s use of expression in Erwartung.229 This dialectical interplay is evident in Adorno’s description of how the woman’s “seismographic registration of traumatic shock” is translated by Schoenberg into the “technical structural law of music”.230 The devastating emotional impact of the shock on the woman is expressed through a corresponding failure of “logicality” in the music’s form.
The music henceforth heads neither towards one direction nor the other but is rather torn between both, thereby “forbid[ding] continuity and development” in its structure.231
This, Adorno suggests, is conveyed through a corresponding “polarization” in the work’s “musical language”,232 that is, in its “linguistic character”. He states:
Musical language is polarized according to its extremes: towards gestures of
shock resembling bodily convulsions on the one hand, and on the other towards
227 Ibid. 228 Ibid. 229 Ibid. 230 Ibid. 231 Ibid. 232 Ibid. 54
a crystalline standstill of a human being whom anxiety causes to freeze in her
tracks.233
The above passage encapsulates how Schoenberg’s music operates in a dialectical manner to capture the extremes of the woman’s emotional/psychological state. Through its subjective aspect, the music evokes the ongoing turbulence of the woman’s emotions by employing gestures which resemble intense and paroxysmal bodily movements.
Through its objective aspect, however, the music also evokes paralysis due to the lack of progression in its form. We could suppose that this sense of paralysis arises from the woman’s unconscious awareness of her own incapacity to devise and execute a rational course of action following the devastating discovery that her lover has been murdered. I say “unconscious” here because Adorno claims that this awareness is brought about by
“anxiety”, that is, an emotion, rather than a conscious thought. In his view, Erwartung exemplifies Schoenberg’s remarkable ability to depict the “genuine emotions of the unconscious” in carefully considered and nuanced ways.234 As I will shortly demonstrate, Stravinsky also portrays shock in his compositions, albeit not in the same carefully considered manner as Schoenberg.
More generally, Adorno argues that it is when “social protest” manifests itself in a
“force of expression” that is of a similar intensity to Schoenberg’s that it is at its most effective, being felt the most keenly by us.235 According to him, the “socially critical zones of artworks are those where it hurts” such that artworks effectively become the
“wounds of society”.236 More specifically, he claims that “[m]usic will be better, the
233 Ibid. 234 Ibid., 39. 235 AT, 310. 236 Ibid. 55
more deeply it is able to express – in the antinomies of its own formal language – the exigency of the social condition and to call for change through the coded language of suffering.”237 Leppert suggests that the fact that music can only make itself “heard”, so to speak, through the encrypted language of affect means that Adorno also recognises that its contribution to enacting social change is “principally diagnostic”.238 Leppert thus claims that, for Adorno, “[m]usic itself cannot correct what society has caused or become. Whether music can contribute to progressive social change remains an open question.”239
We can take Leppert’s observations further here by examining Bowie’s claim that this gap between music and the social change that it strives towards, but is ultimately unable to enact, is where philosophy can intervene.240 According to Bowie, while music
“cannot state what this change is” through linguistic means, philosophy, on the other hand, has the ability to “decode” the “coded language of suffering” that music “speaks”.
241 That is, what music expresses by way of affect, philosophy expresses in words that communicate ways in which social change can actually be brought about. Bowie’s comments thus illustrate how Adorno’s philosophical aesthetics suggests one way in which music and philosophy can mutually support each other in their contribution to social change.
I will now compare Adorno’s critical examination of Schoenberg’s Erwartung with his evaluation of Stravinsky’s treatment of musical expression in Sacre. Like Schoenberg’s
237 Adorno, “On the Social Situation of Music”, 393 (emphasis added). 238 Richard Leppert, commentary to part one (“Locating Music: Society, Modernity, and the New”) in Essays on Music, ed. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 95. 239 Richard Leppert, commentary to part three (“Music and Mass Culture”) in Essays on Music, ed. Susan H. Gillespie (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 332. 240 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 342. 241 Ibid. 56
Erwartung, Stravinsky’s Sacre deals with an equally intense and disturbing issue, namely, human sacrifice. Sacre is a ballet about a pagan rite that results in a young girl being sacrificed by dancing herself to death to appease the God of Spring. This sacrifice is performed so that the remaining tribe members can subsequently be protected from his wrath. On the one hand, Adorno recognises that Stravinsky, like
Schoenberg, does not attempt to temper the terrifying nature of the ballet’s subject- matter through “sweetening” the tones of his music. On the other hand, Adorno critiques the way in which he believes Stravinsky’s music disengages itself from the social and ethical conundrums that are embodied in the “atrocities” that occur in the ballet.242 He argues that “[a]trocity is observed with a certain satisfaction, but it is not transformed. It is, rather, presented without mitigation.”243
Adorno’s point here is not that Stravinsky fails to dictate people’s reactions to the events that take place onstage through his music. Rather, Adorno claims that Stravinsky fails to employ the musical material available to him in such a way that exposes the
“antagonisms” or tensions between the tribe’s vested interests in the victim’s sacrifice and the victim’s right to live.244 For example, Stravinsky could have created contrasting musical motifs/themes to differentiate between the tribe and the victim such that the conflictual relationship between them could be played out within Sacre’s form.245 By allowing all traces of these antagonisms to remain hidden, Stravinsky, Adorno suggests, thereby refuses his listeners the actual opportunity to engage with, and interpret, the social and ethical dilemmas that are inherent in Sacre’s controversial subject-matter of human sacrifice. As Adorno puts it, “[j]ust as the musician on the stage of the
242 PMM, 146. 243 Ibid. 244 Ibid., 158-59. 245 Ibid. 57
vaudeville theater causes the beautiful girl to disappear, so the subject in Sacre vanishes
– the subject which has to bear the burden of the religion of nature.”246 In fact, insofar as the music does not provide any “comment” on these dilemmas,247 the audience could even end up being complicit in the cruel actions of the tribe, by being simply made to look on as the atrocities transpire onstage.
It could be argued that Stravinsky provides the listener with an insight into the victim’s plight by inflicting upon him/her the same violent “experience of shock”248 (a concept that I addressed in my earlier analysis of Schoenberg’s Erwartung) that the victim also undergoes. However, Adorno would probably refute this suggestion by pointing out the relative weaknesses of Stravinsky’s treatment of this notion of shock in comparison with Schoenberg’s. More generally, Adorno identifies this notion of shock as an essential element of all modern music.249 Within the social context of “modern industrialism”, shock, he claims, symbolises and expresses the individual’s feelings of insignificance when his/her body is exposed and rendered vulnerable to the “things and forces in technical civilization” whose dominance it is powerless to resist (e.g. the capitalist forces of production).250
Adorno argues that, unlike Stravinsky, Schoenberg expresses the experience of shock in his music in ways that are considerably more sophisticated than simply inflicting violence simultaneously upon the listener and the subject of the musical work. With respect to particular works from Schoenberg’s middle period (e.g. Erwartung), Adorno suggests that his use of the musical material allows the potentially debilitating
246 Ibid., 158. 247 Ibid., 146. 248 Ibid., 156. 249 Ibid., 155-56. 250 Ibid., 156. 58
experience of shock to be “appropriated” and re-formed by the subject in such a way that permits him/her to maintain his/her “self-control” and preserve his/her subjectivity.251 In other words, Schoenberg’s music provides the subject with the opportunity to pre-empt the “anxiety” that the shock will provoke in him/her, thereby making him/her more prepared for its devastating impact.252 Adorno thus suggests that, through his skilful use of the musical material, Schoenberg thereby provides the subject with the means to transform his/her experience of shock into something life-affirming.
In contrast, Adorno argues that the “musical subject” in Stravinsky’s Sacre is simply made to suffer the assault of shock with neither prior warning nor the opportunity to
“assert itself”.253 Hence, unlike the works from Schoenberg’s middle period, the subject in Sacre is not given the opportunity to transform his/her experience of shock into something more manageable.
Adorno even suggests that a “system of domination” actually operates in Sacre254 whereby the music exercises its power over the listener in an equally uncompromising manner as the collective or tribe exercises its power over the victim. One key operating factor in this system, he argues, is Stravinsky’s harsh treatment of the human body in his music. Through the use of the “most complicated rhythmic patterns” (especially those employed in the “sacrificial dance”), Stravinsky, Adorno claims, reduces the bodies of the “conductor”, “ballerina and the listeners” to passive things upon which brute violence is mercilessly inflicted.255 The “convulsive blows and shocks” are administered to their bodies in such a way that they are neither able to pre-empt their
251 Ibid. 252 Ibid. 253 Ibid. 254 Ibid., 158. 255 Ibid., 155. 59
impact, nor given adequate time to recover before the next assault.256 Through the
“rigidity” of such gestures of violence, the music becomes an unyielding, “commanding force” that pushes the dancers and conductor’s bodies to perform at their utmost level of technical skill.257 The music forces their bodies into obedience through the “permanent threat” of additional torture, even refusing them momentary relief by prohibiting them any “expression of pain”.258 It is for these reasons that Adorno believes that
Schoenberg’s treatment of shock in his music is relatively more sophisticated and accomplished than Stravinsky’s. These reasons are also indicative of his wider view that Schoenberg has a more sophisticated grasp of musical expression than Stravinsky.
Chapters three and five of this thesis, that address Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty’s views of music, respectively, will also explore how music engages the body, but in more nuanced and creative ways than those described in Adorno’s analysis of Stravinsky’s
Sacre.
Conclusion
This chapter on Adorno’s philosophy of music has introduced some crucial themes concerning music’s integral place in human existence that I will analyse in detail throughout this thesis. By examining his key notion of music’s/art’s “enigmatic character”, I began this chapter with a discussion of why music resists the approaches and methodologies of conventional philosophical frameworks that attempt to define it.
In particular, I examined Adorno’s contention that music’s simultaneous appeal and resistance to signifying language is a significant factor behind its “enigma”.
256 Ibid. 257 Ibid., 173. 258 Ibid. 60
In the second half of this chapter, I explored how Adorno’s crucial notion of art’s transformative effect helps to suggest ways in which music is deeply embedded in human existence. I began by examining his notion that a musical work is transformed through the continuous dialectical interplay between its subjective aspect (comprising its expressive, mimetic, affective and gestural elements) and its objective aspect
(comprising its rational, logical and structural elements). I then demonstrated how this transformation within the work itself is rendered even more dynamic through its complex relationship with the socio-historical circumstances with which it is intertwined. In particular, I suggested that a significant contributing factor behind this complexity is the tension which exists between music’s autonomy and its fait social.
And it is this tension, for Adorno, that also accounts for music’s simultaneous appeal and resistance to society. The various manifestations of art’s transformative effect, some of which I have already addressed in this chapter, will be explored in the remainder of this thesis. The analysis will encompass manifestations of this effect in the metaphysical, social, corporeal, affective, temporal and spatial dimensions of human existence. It is to art’s metaphysical dimension that I first turn, through an analysis of
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s philosophies of music. 61
Chapter two
Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music”
Introduction
In chapter one, I explored Adorno’s key contention that past philosophical frameworks have thus far been unable to develop an appropriate approach to music (and art in general). In particular, I identified his notion of music’s “enigma” as describing the reasons for why music resists philosophical analysis. This chapter on Schopenhauer’s
“metaphysics of music” signals the beginnings of a response to the question of how a renewed philosophical approach to music could be developed that more adequately expresses its “enigma” than previous approaches.
While Schopenhauer’s writings on music are far from copious, they nevertheless occupy a prominent place in the available philosophical literature on music. Quentin
Taylor remarks that, “[a]ccording to a number of observers (music critics and philosophers alike), Schopenhauer’s discussion of music is not only among the most striking features of his philosophy, but is unparalleled for its serious treatment and profound insight into the musical art.”259 Similarly, Lydia Goehr notes that, “[a]lmost the mere mention of his name has come to stand for an entire worldview about the status, meaning, and value of classical music.”260 Despite such favourable assessments,
Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music” has not been immune to criticism. Indeed,
259 Quentin Taylor, “Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music: Criticism and Retrieval”, Schopenhauer- Jahrbuch 87 (2006): 119. 260 Lydia Goehr, “Schopenhauer and the musicians: an inquiry into the sounds of silence and the limits of philosophizing about music”, in Schopenhauer, philosophy, and the arts, ed. Dale Jacquette (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 200. 62
Taylor claims that Schopenhauer actually has a “paradoxical status as a philosopher of music”, as evidenced by the fact that, “[a]mong scholars writing on the subject, it is far more common to find praise mixed with censure.”261 In this chapter, I will thus also engage with some criticisms of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music, especially those pertaining to what several commentators regard as inconsistencies between his claims about music and his claims about metaphysics. However, my main aim is not to perform a critique of his philosophy but to examine how it could enrich an account of music’s integral place in human existence.
Schopenhauer situates music in metaphysics by making the crucial claim that music is a
“copy of the [W]ill itself”.262 By this, he means that music is the sole art form that can directly express the underlying “ground” of existence (including human existence).
Schopenhauer conceives of music’s essential value in terms of his claim to its ability to transform human existence through the temporary alleviation of our pain and suffering.
This transformation, he suggests, is epistemological because it transfigures a person into what he calls a “pure will-less, painless, timeless subject of knowledge”.263 I will go on to explain what he means by this in section three. My point for now is that, unlike his predecessors (such as Kant), Schopenhauer does much in his aesthetics to invest music with the crucial significance that it had previously lacked in the philosophical tradition.
The intertwining of music and philosophy in his writings is encapsulated in his well-
261 Taylor, “Schopenhauer’s Metaphysics of Music”, 120. Please also see this article for Taylor’s comprehensive evaluation of key criticisms of Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music” that have been made by Lydia Goehr, Lawrence Ferrara, Philip Alperson and Michael Budd. I will examine the criticisms of the first three commentators in section four of this chapter. 262 WWR I, 257 (emphasis in original). To differentiate between Schopenhauer’s notions of the Will and the “individual will”, I will use upper case to designate the former and lower case to designate the latter. The difference between the two will be explained in section one. 263 Ibid., 179 (emphases in original). 63
known assertion that “[m]usic is an unconscious exercise in metaphysics in which the mind does not know it is philosophizing.”264
Unlike the contemporary analytic philosophers of music that I mentioned earlier in the overall introduction to this thesis (e.g. Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson and Stephen
Davies), Schopenhauer does not adhere to what Alperson calls the “object-oriented view of music”.265 In other words, Schopenhauer does not consider music as an abstract object of knowledge whose meaning, properties and value can be definitively determined. Rather, like Adorno, Schopenhauer acknowledges music’s “enigma” by arguing that, while music is still connected with the empirical world (or what he terms the “world as representation”), the exact nature of this connection remains opaque. As I will later demonstrate, this is because, in his view, music only maintains an indirect or analogical relationship with this world. His analogies compare how the musical elements operate in the Western Classical tradition with how the Will manifests itself in the “world as representation” and in human existence in general. Moreover, as we shall see in chapter three, Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music” also forms the foundations of the equally metaphysical account of music that Nietzsche develops in his early philosophy. The combined insights of these two philosophers have contributed much to furthering philosophical discussion of the crucial relationship between music and human existence.
Section one of this chapter provides a brief outline of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics so as to establish the necessary background for my analysis of his key claim that music is a
“copy of the [W]ill itself” in section two. Section three then investigates his overall
264 Ibid., 264. 265 Alperson, “Facing the Music”, 92. 64
notion of how music/art contributes to, and transforms, human existence. This involves attending to his account of how music (and art in general) can temporarily alleviate our suffering, including an evaluation of the role (or lack thereof) that the intellect and body play in this transformation of existence. To further demonstrate how, for Schopenhauer, music is intertwined with life, section four critically evaluates the analogies that are central to his philosophy of music. The analysis will also further examine how music’s
“enigma” poses a challenge to traditional philosophical frameworks, including the implications this has for rethinking the overall relationship between music and philosophy that my thesis investigates.
1. A brief outline of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics
The underlying principle of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics is that the world consists of two “sides”.266 It is “entirely [W]ill”, and simultaneously, “entirely representation”.267
He conceives of the Will in terms of the Kantian notion of “thing-in-itself”, that is, the
“innermost being” of the world whose essential nature is “entirely different from representation”.268 The Will as “thing-in-itself” is a crucial concept in Schopenhauer’s worldview because it signifies the “centrifugal force”269 that drives, and flows through, all forms of existence, ranging from inanimate objects (e.g. plants) to animals and humans. Importantly, Schopenhauer differentiates the Will from the “individual will”.
As I will shortly elaborate, the latter pertains instead to the ways in which the Will manifests itself in the “world of representation”. He characterises the fundamental nature of the Will in terms of “endless flux” because there is essentially no endpoint to
266 WWR I, 4. 267 Ibid., emphases in original. 268 Ibid., 31 & 128. 269 Ibid., 164. 65
its existence.270 While one particular event may cease and another may commence, the
Will itself persists despite these changes.271 Schopenhauer thus claims that the Will’s inexorable flow produces a continuous dovetailing between birth and death such that
“[e]very attained end is at the same time the beginning of a new course.”272 This constant dovetailing between creation and destruction, he explains, is what in turn helps nature to fulfil its key objective of ensuring the continuation of the “species”.273
Schopenhauer goes on to argue that the Will becomes “objectifi[ed]” and rendered
“visib[le]” in individual entities in the “world as representation” (or what he also calls the “phenomenal world” or the “world of perception”).274 This world is governed by what he terms the “principle of sufficient reason”.275 Central to this principle is the notion of “individuation”, which essentially means that each entity can be perceived at a specific “time” and in a specific “place” or position in “space”.276 In Schopenhauer’s view, these entities are subject to constant “change” because they are also governed by the “law of causality”.277 Insofar as every “cause” necessarily results in a particular
“effect” (e.g. sickness could “cause” death), they are always implicated in the process of
“becoming” something else.278 This also applies to human existence. Since we, as humans, also partake in this “world of individual things”, we must confront our own mortality by realising that just as surely as we were born, we will surely die.279
Schopenhauer even seems to suggest that an individual (whether this is a human or another type of living being) is “destined for”, and lured to, its eventual demise by
270 Ibid. 271 Ibid. 272 Ibid. 273 Ibid. 274 Ibid., 128, 169 & 256-57. 275 Ibid., 164. 276 Ibid., 169 & 179. 277 Ibid., 15 & 169. 278 Ibid., 15 (emphasis in original). 279 Ibid., 257 & 276. 66
nature itself.280 Since the death of one organism makes way for the birth of another, an individual’s passing away helps to further nature’s objective of preventing the extinction of the species.281
Schopenhauer regards the Will as a particularly pertinent aspect of human existence in comparison with other forms of existence (e.g. plants, animals, etc.). By virtue of having a body, we ourselves are thereby a physical manifestation of the Will
“objectified” in the “world as representation”.282 Hence, a particular “act of will”, for
Schopenhauer, is synonymous with an “action of the body”, and vice versa.283 Insofar as the Will is synonymous with the “thing-in-itself”, our individualised embodiment of the Will, he claims, also allows the “thing-in-itself” to become “intimately”,
“absolutely” and “immediately known” to us.284 In this way, Schopenhauer departs from Kant by positing that we can progress beyond knowing the “phenomenon” to actually acquire a glimpse of the elusive “thing-in-itself”.285 At first glance, the body would seem to be epistemologically significant for Schopenhauer because it constitutes the aspect of our being that acquaints us most directly with the nature of the Will itself.
However, as I will later demonstrate, he makes the contrasting claim that the valuable
“knowledge” that art produces is only available to a “pure intelligence without aims and intentions”,286 that is, an essentially disembodied being. Schopenhauer’s dismissive attitude towards the body in his metaphysics, aesthetics and epistemology will be an important theme in the remainder of this chapter.
280 Ibid., 276. 281 Ibid., 164. 282 Ibid., 100. 283 Ibid., 100-101. 284 Ibid., 110-11. 285 Ibid., 110. 286 PP 2 § 205: 415. 67
Schopenhauer regards our simultaneous participation in these contrasting worlds of Will and “representation” as the primary cause of human suffering. On the one hand, our undertakings in the “world as representation” involve individual willing, that is, the particular “desires”, “purposes and motives” that we satisfy or accomplish through executing “particular act[s] of will” at specific times and places in the future.287 For example, to fulfil our intention of attaining a Bachelor of Arts, we may endeavour to complete all of our assessment tasks to the best of our ability at a particular university over a three year period. Schopenhauer refers to the undesirable or painful effects of obstructions to our accomplishment of particular objectives as “suffering”.288
Conversely, he calls the desirable or pleasurable effects of their accomplishment
“satisfaction, well-being [or] happiness”.289
On the other hand, neither the “satisfaction” nor the nonfulfillment of these desires or motives is of consequence to the Will itself. As a mere “blind, irresistible urge” or incessant “flux”, Schopenhauer argues that the Will is defined by an “absence of all aim” insofar as a definitive objective cannot be assigned to it.290 Hence, our “striving” to achieve our objectives is ultimately futile because there is no “final goal of willing” through which it could be terminated.291 As soon as one particular desire is met, it is immediately and inevitably replaced by a new one.292 However, for Schopenhauer, if our objectives are too readily satisfied, we are then deprived of new “objects of willing” and are subsequently overcome by a sense of “fearful emptiness and boredom”.293 This continuous and pointless striving that plagues our existence entails that happiness, in his
287 WWR I, 163-64. 288 Ibid., 309. 289 Ibid., emphasis in original. 290 Ibid., 164 & 275. 291 Ibid., 164. 292 Ibid. 293 Ibid., 312. 68
view, is never “genuine [and] lasting”.294 Happiness cannot be produced “originally and of itself” but must instead be formulated in a “negative” sense as a brief moment of redemption from our striving.295 Worse still, this ongoing striving, he claims, is an essential, and hence unavoidable, tendency of human beings in general.296 As he puts it, a person is “concrete willing and needing through and through; he is a concretion of a thousand wants and needs”.297 Schopenhauer thus arrives at his infamously pessimistic conclusion that “essentially all life is suffering”.298 As I will illustrate throughout the rest of this chapter, Schopenhauer situates his aesthetics within the above metaphysical framework by arguing that our engagement with music and the other arts allows us to momentarily escape the immense suffering that permeates human existence. It is thus to a discussion of the intersection between Schopenhauer’s metaphysics and aesthetics that I now turn.
2. Music and metaphysics in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics
Schopenhauer privileges music over the other creative arts (such as painting, sculpture and architecture) because of his claim to its ability to express the metaphysical foundations of human existence. This is encapsulated in his key claim that music is a direct “objectification” or “copy of the [W]ill itself” (that I mentioned earlier) whereas the other arts are merely a “copy of the Ideas”.299 The central message behind this claim is that, in comparison with the other arts, music’s distinct metaphysical significance arises from its ability to completely “embod[y]” the “essence” of existence
294 Ibid., 320. 295 Ibid., 319 (emphasis in original). 296 Ibid., 312. 297 Ibid. 298 Ibid., 310 (emphasis in original). 299 Ibid., 257. 69
(i.e. the Will).300 To draw out the full implications of his claim, I will first examine what Schopenhauer means by the “Ideas”.
The “Ideas”, Schopenhauer claims, are “Platonic” in that they represent the “eternal forms” or “archetype[s]” of specific things in the “phenomenal world”.301 Insofar as the
Ideas are not actually the individual entities themselves, they are not governed by the
“principle of sufficient reason” and therefore cannot be described in terms of time, space and causality.302 Following Plato, Schopenhauer claims that the Ideas allow us to
“apprehend the purely objective inner nature of things” (i.e. their essence) because they represent the “actual being” of existence as opposed to the “apparent, dreamlike existence” of specific things in the “phenomenal world” (which would also include individual artworks).303 Also similar to Plato, Schopenhauer thereby privileges the
Ideas over the particular entities in the “phenomenal world” wherein they inhere. More specifically, he claims that the Ideas represent the “different grades of the [W]ill’s objectification” that manifest themselves in varying degrees and in various forms of natural life in the “phenomenal world”.304 He associates the more fundamental elements of nature, which he refers to as “inorganic nature, the mass of the planet”, with the “lowest grades of the [W]ill’s objectification”.305 While Schopenhauer does not expand on what he means by “inorganic nature”, he does mention elements such as
“gravity” and “chemical properties” that are basic features of the physical world, but
300 Ibid., 257 & 262-63. 301 Ibid., 129 & 169. 302 Ibid. 303 WWR I, 181 & 257; WWR II, 369. 304 WWR I, 129 & 258. 305 Ibid., 258. 70
which are not living creatures, so to speak.306 Conversely, he associates the more sophisticated life-forms (e.g. the “plant and animal worlds”) with the higher grades.307
Importantly, Schopenhauer gives music a privileged place in human existence by positioning it above this “phenomenal world”. By demonstrating that this world is itself the “phenomenon or appearance of the Ideas in plurality” in the above ways,308
Schopenhauer sets up his further claim that the Ideas are connected more closely to the
“world as representation” than music. He emphasises that music, being the direct and complete embodiment of the Will, bypasses the material aspects of this world by bypassing the Ideas.309 In contrast, he claims that, since the other arts are merely a
“copy of the Ideas” (rather than the Will itself), they “objectify the [W]ill only indirectly”.310 For Schopenhauer, music’s direct embodiment of the essence of the world also enables it to connect us directly with the very core of our own “being”.311
This, he claims, accounts for why music has a more intense impact on us than the other arts. 312
This notion that music bypasses the Ideas also helps us to understand Schopenhauer’s rather unusual assertion that, “to a certain extent, [music] could still exist even if there were no [phenomenal] world at all”.313 He does not seem to be suggesting here that the act of playing or listening to music is devoid of any physical phenomena whatsoever
(e.g. sound waves and bodily movements). Rather, and as I will explain further in section four, Schopenhauer’s point is that music only maintains an indirect, analogical
306 WWR II, 448. 307 WWR I, 258. 308 Ibid., 257. 309 Ibid. 310 Ibid. 311 Ibid., 256. 312 Ibid. 313 Ibid., 257. 71
relation with the “phenomenal world” in that it “expresses the metaphysical to everything physical” in it.314 In the next section, I will explore art’s place in
Schopenhauer’s metaphysics further by examining his belief that art can actually transform human existence.
3. The transformative power of art
As I suggested earlier, Schopenhauer argues that art momentarily delivers us from the suffering that pervades existence through epistemological means, that is, by transforming us into what he terms “purely knowing beings”.315 I will explain later why this redemption from suffering is only temporary. My aim for now is to illustrate the centrality of his notion of “aesthetic enjoyment” to this epistemological transformation.316 It is important to note that, for Schopenhauer, “aesthetic enjoyment” is not life-affirming in the conventional sense of the word. In a rather counterintuitive manner, he conceives of it in terms of what he calls the “denial of the will”.317 The individual will that is “denied” in the aesthetic experience is closely related to his notion of the “will-to-live”, that is, the fundamental compulsion to ensure the continued survival of both the individual and the overall “race” or species.318 His concept, the
“will-to-live”, thus does not evoke connotations of the “love of life”319 or the desire to affirm the joys of existence (e.g. sensual pleasures). Rather, what really drives it is the more basic desire for self-preservation that is induced by our “fear of death”.320
Moreover, Schopenhauer construes the will-to-live in corporeal terms. In particular, he
314 Ibid., 262. 315 WWR II, 451 (emphasis in original). 316 Ibid., 368. 317 Ibid., 368-69. 318 WWR I, 327. 319 Ibid., 312-13. 320 Ibid. 72
claims that the “sexual impulse is […] the decided and strongest affirmation of life” insofar as it facilitates the “act of procreation”, which, in turn, ensures the “propagation of the race”.321 Hence, the “affirmation of the will”, in his view, can be equated with the “affirmation of the body”, and vice versa.322 Using the same logic, the “denial of the will” can be equated with the denial of the body, and vice versa.
Before discussing how the aesthetic experience involves the denial of the body, I will first address the broader issue of how it involves the denial of the will. Central to understanding this issue is Schopenhauer’s notion of “aesthetic contemplation”.323 He argues that our engagement in “aesthetic contemplation” requires the “elimination of all willing” through which we approach what he calls the “state of pure objectivity of perception”.324 This complex, yet important, claim is best elucidated through an analysis of his conception of human “consciousness”. In general, Schopenhauer conceives of our consciousness as comprising both a “subjective” aspect and an
“objective” aspect.325 By its subjective aspect, he means that we possess
“consciousness of our own selves” as being immersed in individual willing, including all the “desires, emotions, passions, and cares” with which this willing is intertwined.326
In contrast, by its objective aspect, he means that we possess “consciousness of other things”.327
Significantly, it is in this objective aspect of our consciousness, he argues, that our transformation into “purely knowing beings” in art occurs. More precisely, it is through
321 Ibid., 328-29. 322 Ibid., 327. 323 Ibid., 201. 324 WWR II, 367-68. 325 Ibid. 326 Ibid., 368. 327 Ibid. 73
our “apprehension of objects” by way of “perception” that we are able to acquire a particular type of knowledge of the world which helps to alleviate our suffering.328
Aesthetic contemplation, then, is achieved by concurrently increasing the influence of the objective aspect of our consciousness (i.e. the domain where “pure knowledge” is produced) and diminishing that of its subjective aspect (i.e. the domain of individual willing).329
We should also note that, for Schopenhauer, this epistemological transformation transpires differently in music than it does in the other arts. Since the other arts only provide mediated access to the Will through the Ideas, this transformation, he claims, involves effecting the change from knowing specific things in the world to knowing the
Idea.330 In contrast, since music objectifies the Will directly, it actually produces what he calls “immediate knowledge” of the Will itself (rather than of the Ideas).331 More importantly, however, what unites the “immediate knowledge” and the “knowledge of the Idea” that music and the other arts produce, respectively, is their shared basis in perception.332 In other words, the “immediate knowledge” that music produces can only be accessed through perception rather than conceptual reasoning.333
This distinction between the “pure knowledge” gained in perception and conceptual reasoning is key to understanding what Schopenhauer means by the creative power of art. Owing to its perceptual roots, the Idea, he claims, is the “true and only source of
328 Ibid., 367 (emphasis added). 329 WWR I, 178 & WWR II, 367. 330 WWR I, 178. 331 Ibid., 263. 332 Ibid., 234 & 262-63. 333 Ibid., 263. 74
every genuine work of art”.334 In his philosophy, the Idea is comparable to a “living organism” because it is nourished by the fecundity of “life itself”, “nature” and the
“world” and thus possesses a “generative force” which allows it to continuously evolve of its own accord.335 In contrast with the Idea, Schopenhauer posits that concepts, which are “denoted by words”, can only yield “works of mere talent, merely rational ideas [and] imitations”.336 Concepts, for Schopenhauer, are distanced from perception because they are formulated solely through the “abstract employment of the mind”, that is, through our “faculty of reason”.337 Having been divorced from their perceptual roots, these concepts, Schopenhauer suggests, are “eternally barren and unproductive in art” in that they consist in the mere “forms” or “stripped-off outer shell of things” in the world.338 Lacking the “generative force” of the Idea, concepts are also static by nature because they involve a strict “input-output” relation whereby the information they communicate is directly correlated with, and limited to, that through which they were conceived.339
Schopenhauer also maintains an unfavourable view of the use of conceptual reasoning in art because he believes that this form of “mental activity” is necessarily bound up with individual willing.340 We employ our reason for the purpose of fulfilling particular objectives, for example, for solving difficult mathematical problems. He regards the
“exertion” required by this type of mental activity as undesirable341 because it provokes powerful, and often negative, emotions within us (e.g. frustration) that could contribute further to our suffering.
334 Ibid., 235. 335 Ibid. 336 WWR II, 378 & 449. 337 WWR I, 263 & WWR II, 369. 338 WWR I, 235 & 263. 339 Ibid., 235. 340 WWR II, 369. 341 Ibid. 75
Moreover, given that words express concepts for Schopenhauer, his privileging of the
“pure knowledge” gained in perception over conceptual reasoning also accounts for his privileging of music over words in art forms which combine both of these elements (e.g. songs). As I will demonstrate in chapter three, this is a view that he shares with the early Nietzsche. While not completely dismissing the very notion of combining music and words in an artwork, Schopenhauer nevertheless maintains that music is an
“independent art” which does not require the accompaniment of words to enhance its transformative effect on the listener.342 He states:
The words are and remain for the music a foreign extra of secondary value, as
the effect of the tones is incomparably more powerful, more infallible, and more
rapid than that of the words. If these are incorporated in the music, therefore,
they must of course occupy only an entirely subordinate position, and adapt
themselves completely to it.343
In section four, I will return to expand on the key factors behind music’s potent transformative effect by examining Jerrold Levinson’s notion of the “paradox of music’s appeal”.344
Attaining the “pure knowledge” that art provides, however, is highly challenging.
According to Schopenhauer, this is because it requires us to become “disinterested spectators” of our own existence.345 Following Kant, he claims that attaining this
342 Ibid., 448-49. 343 Ibid., 448. 344 Levinson, Contemplating Art, Essays in Aesthetics, 363. 345 WWR I, 314. 76
“disinterested” state of aesthetic contemplation (i.e. divorcing ourselves from individual willing) necessitates that we liberate ourselves from our desires and other heightened emotional states, by momentarily distancing ourselves from our attachments to particular people and/or things in the world.346 It is only then, he contends, that we may find brief respite from the painful everyday reality in which we must bear witness to, and withstand, the death or disappearance of people and/or things.
Moreover, central to the emancipation from the individual will is the capacity to momentarily divest ourselves of our “corporeality”.347 As I suggested earlier, it is the bodily dimension of our existence that Schopenhauer claims is most closely bound up with individual willing. In general, his aesthetics displays a conflictual relationship between the body and the intellect insofar as these two integral aspects of the self are regarded by him as opposing forces in aesthetic contemplation.348 The antagonism that characterises this relationship originates in a form of mind/body dualism that is entrenched in his notion of human consciousness, whereby he associates the intellect with its objective aspect, and the body with its subjective aspect.349 Attaining the disinterested state of aesthetic contemplation, for Schopenhauer, thus involves increasing the influence of the intellectual aspect of our consciousness while diminishing that of its corporeal aspect.350 More specifically, the more we are aware of our subjectivity (of which our body is an integral part), the “weaker and less perfect” he claims our perception of objects in the “phenomenal world” becomes.351 Conversely, the less we are aware of our subjectivity/corporeality, the more we are able to perceive
346 WWR I, 185 & WWR II, 368. 347 WWR II, 368. 348 Ibid. 349 Ibid., 367-69. 350 Ibid., 367. 351 Ibid., 367-68. 77
this world with “enhanced clearness and distinctness”.352 In short, then, the intellect enables our attainment of the disinterested state of aesthetic contemplation, whereas the body obstructs our attainment of it. In this way, Schopenhauer also privileges the mind over the body in art, an element of his aesthetics that I will shortly critique. Moreover, as I will demonstrate in chapter three, Nietzsche’s rejection of this privileging of the mind over the body is one crucial respect in which he departs from Schopenhauer, particularly in his later aesthetics.
By virtue of situating the intellect in the objective aspect of consciousness,
Schopenhauer thereby also associates the intellect closely with perception (which, as I suggested earlier, also partakes in this objective dimension). Schopenhauer’s conception of perception in art as primarily intellectual here is unusual because it largely subverts the conventional or empiricist notion of perception where the body is taken to play a substantial role insofar as we can only perceive things through our senses. By contrast, Schopenhauer argues that it is the intellectual aspect of perception that provides us with access to art’s valuable repository of knowledge.353 In his view, our senses only feature in the basic, mechanical aspects of artistic perception, as evidenced by his claim that they are “merely the brain’s outlets through which it receives material from outside (in the form of sensation)”.354 Hence, the senses have no creative or transformative power; at best they produce “very defective copies” of natural objects or phenomena.355 Schopenhauer goes on to identify the “imagination” as the particular function of our intellect that acts as the catalyst for artistic creation by
352 Ibid., 368. 353 Ibid., 378. 354 Ibid., 26. 355 Ibid., 379. 78
stimulating our knowledge of the “true nature of life and of existence”.356 The senses, for him, are only “required to lead the imagination on to the right path” by supplying the so-called raw material upon which it then acts.357 Due to the significant transformative function that it plays in artistic creation, Schopenhauer calls the imagination a
“condition of aesthetic effect, and therefore a fundamental law of all the fine arts”.358
The imagination also features prominently in his idea of the person of “genius”, of which he takes the creator of “genuine” artworks to be a prime example.359 Whereas the perceptual process of the person of “genius” is dominated by the use of his/her imagination, the “normal person”, Schopenhauer suggests, only perceives things by using his/her senses.360 The main difference here lies in the relative degree of intellect that each person possesses.361 Whereas the normal person is constituted by “two-thirds will and one-third intellect”, the person of genius, Schopenhauer claims, is constituted by “two-thirds intellect and one-third will”.362 This essentially means that, unlike the normal person, the person of genius is able to engage in aesthetic contemplation insofar as the objective aspect of his/her consciousness outweighs its subjective aspect.363
Generally speaking, Schopenhauer regards the capacity to engage in aesthetic contemplation as the “preeminent ability” of the person of genius.364 However, he also acknowledges that most people are able to at least experience some “pleasure” when
356 Ibid., 379 & 406-407. 357 Ibid., 407. 358 Ibid. 359 WWR I, 186 & 235. 360 WWR II, 377 & 379. 361 Ibid., 377. 362 Ibid. 363 WWR I, 185. 364 Ibid. 79
engaging with artworks.365 For example, they may, for a brief interval of time, be able to discern the Ideas from the individual things in the “phenomenal world” in which they inhere.366 According to Schopenhauer, this task is made easier for these people by the fact that the artist (or person of genius) has already “separated the Idea out from reality” in his/her work.367
However, Schopenhauer also emphasises that a person of genius is rare. The exemplar of a person of musical genius, he suggests, is the composer who possesses the capacity to reveal “all the deepest secrets of human willing and feeling” in his/her melodies.368
Interestingly, he appears to point towards music’s “enigma” here by claiming that the creative process of the composer is governed by an “inspiration” or a type of mysteriousness that resists “all reflection and conscious intention”.369 In the case of the other arts, Schopenhauer proposes that a person of genius is one who is capable of fully instigating the change from knowing specific things in the world to knowing the Idea.370
The exceptional capacity for aesthetic contemplation, Schopenhauer suggests, arises from the fact that the person of genius surpasses the normal person in his/her ability to experience the knowledge of the Ideas “in the far higher degree and more continuous duration”.371 And it is because of this endurance that s/he is able to creatively transfigure aspects of nature into artworks that express something striking or innovative.372 This creative, transformative element, Schopenhauer claims, is distinctly absent from less accomplished works made by mere “imitators [and] mannerists”.373 In
365 Ibid., 194-95. 366 Ibid., 194. 367 Ibid., 195. 368 Ibid., 260. 369 Ibid. 370 Ibid., 194. 371 Ibid., 195. 372 Ibid., 235. 373 Ibid. 80
his view, the producers of such works simply replicate what they regard as appealing and/or emotionally powerful features of other, more genuine works.374
In the context of music, it could also be argued that this difference in the degree of intellect possessed by the person of genius and the normal person produces a further difference in kind between these two individuals. For instance, an accomplished composer may have gained a clear grasp of music’s metaphysical significance due to the sheer power of his/her intellect. This understanding would in turn allow him/her to disclose the “innermost nature of the world” through his/her compositions.375 In contrast, the normal person of considerably less intellect may merely sense music’s transformative power, and perhaps derive some pleasure from it, without being able to grasp its metaphysical significance. In short, then, whereas the normal person may only sense music’s power, the person of genius also grasps its actual source.
Schopenhauer’s emphasis on the composition rather than the performance of music in his account of genius376 is what allows him to downplay the role of the body in his conception of music. On the one hand, performing a musical instrument is necessarily a physical act that transpires in the “world as representation” and thus requires the direct use of one’s body. For example, a violinist makes use of his/her arms and a drummer makes use of his/her feet in order to bring the music to life. On the other hand, since the composer does not necessarily have to play an instrument in order to write music, the role of the body in musical composition would thus, at first glance, seem to be of secondary importance. Hence, by essentially equating music with the act of
374 Ibid. 375 Ibid., 260. 376 In PP 2 § 222, Schopenhauer states that “in music the value of the composition outweighs that of the performance” (PP 2 § 222: 436). 81
composition rather than the act of performance, Schopenhauer is thereby able to overlook the important role that the body plays in music.
Correcting this deficiency in Schopenhauer’s philosophy requires us to consider the possibility that the body might be involved in the compositional process itself, especially if we grant that the acts of composition and performance are interrelated. At a basic level, when deliberating about the particular features of a score (e.g. its tempo, level of complexity, etc.), composers often consider the physical attributes of the musicians who will actually play from this score (e.g. their degree of finger dexterity, vocal flexibility, etc.). For example, to ensure that s/he writes an appropriate vocal part for the performer(s), a composer may take his/her own physical capabilities into account by imagining how it would actually “feel” to sing the piece. S/he may then determine the length of his/her musical phrases by referring back to his/her own breathing patterns. Hence, in contrast with Schopenhauer’s view that the body is relatively unimportant in the aesthetic experience of music, it could be the case that it actually plays a role in shaping the compositional process itself. The body’s crucial role in perception, and the ways in which it contributes significantly to producing music’s transformative power, will be explored in detail in chapter five on Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology. Unlike Schopenhauer, Merleau-Ponty argues that it is the body (rather than the intellect) that is the driving force behind all forms of creative expression, including musical expression. Or, rather, Merleau-Ponty regards the body and intellect as inseparable and intertwined in their contribution to the expressive dimension of music.
82
In addition to his dismissal of the body in music, another potential limitation of
Schopenhauer’s aesthetics pertains to his claim that the “pure knowledge” that art produces cannot be experienced by the artist (i.e. the person of genius) for an extended period of time. According to Schopenhauer, this holds despite the fact that s/he engages with art in a sustained and profound manner. For Schopenhauer, this is not indicative of any deficiency on the artist’s part, but rather arises because the state of aesthetic contemplation is itself of an inherently limited duration. He emphasises the transient nature of this state by portraying it in theatrical terms as the experience of participating in a “play” of one’s own devising.377 While the play or “spectacle” lasts, the artist can
“forget the cares of life” through his/her ability to view the “world as representation” in
“isolation”.378 This, s/he achieves by distancing himself/herself from individual willing.379 However, as the play progresses towards its final act, s/he must come to realise that s/he cannot remain a disinterested spectator of his/her own existence for long. As Schopenhauer puts it, s/he must ultimately endure the “cost of producing that play”.380 As with the case of his/her fellow human beings, the artist is himself/herself an objectification of the Will in the “phenomenal world”.381 His/her “aesthetic enjoyment” is thus of a limited duration because s/he must once again suffer from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. In the next section, I will analyse
Schopenhauer’s account of how music in particular expresses both pain/suffering and pleasure. This will form part of a more general analysis of his fascinating and complex views of music’s transformative power.
377 WWR I, 267. 378 Ibid., 266. 379 Ibid. 380 Ibid., 267. 381 Ibid. 83
4. A critical evaluation of Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music
At first glance, Schopenhauer’s notion of music’s transformative effect appears to contain a noticeable contradiction. Jerrold Levinson refers to this as “the paradox of music’s appeal”.382 Two seemingly inconsistent claims in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics of music constitute the core of this apparent “paradox”. The first claim is that music “acts directly on the will, i.e., the feelings, passions, and emotions of the hearer, so that it quickly raises these or even alters them”.383 The second claim is that “music never cause[s] us actual suffering, but still remains pleasant even in its most painful chords”.384 The key question that emerges from these two seemingly inconsistent claims is: How can music continue to be “pleasant” for us if it puts us in direct contact with the tumultuous “feelings, passions, and emotions” that are responsible for our suffering? Or, as Paul Guyer puts it, “how can a copy of the Will offer relief from the will?”385 Levinson explains this conundrum in the following way:
Music confronts a listener most directly with the awful inner nature of the world,
being in effect a direct copy of the cosmic Will, the source of universal
suffering, while at the same time offering no Ideas with which to engage
objective contemplation and thus afford the subject momentary relief from
willing. How, then, can music be even tolerable to us, much less immensely
appealing? How can music gratify us, if what it centrally offers is the unfiltered
spectacle of the root of all evil?386
382 Levinson, Contemplating Art, Essays in Aesthetics, 363. 383 WWR II, 448. 384 Ibid., 451. 385 Paul Guyer, “Pleasure and knowledge in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics”, in Schopenhauer, philosophy, and the arts, ed. Dale Jacquette (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 127. 386 Levinson, Contemplating Art, Essays in Aesthetics, 363. 84
Schopenhauer provides an intriguing response to this apparent paradox between the supposedly painful nature of what music expresses and its pleasurable effect on us. He argues that music does not express “particular and definite” emotions (or the “motives” that produce them) but rather these emotions “themselves” in their more “abstract” sense, that is, in what he calls their “extracted quintessence” or “essential nature”.387 In other words, through music, we only become acquainted with the “substitutes” of particular emotions in the form of a “picture or image” of “actual pain and actual pleasure”.388 By taking the previous discussion about Schopenhauer’s mind/body dualism into account, we could say that he also establishes a distinction here between two different dimensions of emotional experience. Whereas he associates the corporeal aspect of this experience with “actual pain and actual pleasure”, he associates the
“picture or image” of actual pain and actual pleasure with its intellectual aspect.389
Hence, while music distances and thereby protects us from the painful corporeal dimension of emotional experience, it facilitates the intellectual dimension of that experience. As I will discuss in chapters three and five, both Nietzsche and Merleau-
Ponty would contest this strict division between the corporeal and intellectual dimensions of emotional experience. I will argue later in this thesis that they thereby develop more constructive accounts of music’s transformative effect than Schopenhauer by demonstrating how the body and affect are inextricably intertwined in the musical experience.
Schopenhauer’s analysis of music and the emotions is understandable if we note that it essentially relies on his fundamental distinction between the Will and the individual
387 WWR I, 261 (emphasis in original). 388 WWR II, 451 (emphasis in original). 389 Ibid. 85
willing that transpires in the “world as representation” (that I discussed in section one).
To recapitulate, Schopenhauer argues that it is individual willing that is responsible for our suffering whereas the Will itself causes us neither pain nor pleasure because it is merely a “blind, irresistible urge”. It thus remains neutral to the specific emotions provoked by particular human undertakings in the “phenomenal world”. According to
Schopenhauer, music, being a direct objectification of the Will, expresses the “inner nature, the in-itself, of every phenomenon” (i.e. the essence of the emotions) rather than the “phenomenon” itself (i.e. the emotions in their actuality).390 In this way, music’s transformative effect, for him, is unique in its capacity to allow us to bypass the emotional turmoil associated with individual willing while nevertheless giving us an insight into the core of these emotions themselves. Indeed, Schopenhauer regards the fact that music “reproduces all the emotions of our innermost being, but entirely without reality and remote from its pain” as being responsible for its “inexpressible depth”.391
As chapter three will demonstrate, like Schopenhauer, the early Nietzsche also claims in
BT that music expresses a paradoxical mix of pain and pleasure. However, I will argue that he improves Schopenhauer’s account of music by claiming not so much that music temporarily alleviates human suffering but that it provides the means of affirming life.
While Schopenhauer’s treatment of the emotions in music may rely on problematic distinctions, his wider account of music nevertheless provides a helpful preliminary framework for analysing music’s mysterious relationship with the “phenomenal world” as well as the overall nature of its transformative power. Music’s extensive expressive range in his philosophy can be illuminated by examining the particular analogies that he establishes as justification for his key claim that music is a “copy of the [W]ill itself”.
390 WWR I, 261. 391 Ibid., 264. 86
His contention that music only has an indirect or analogous relationship with particular things/phenomena also helps to explain his earlier claim that music is only indirectly related to the emotions in that it expresses their essence rather than the ways in which they actually manifest themselves in the “phenomenal world”.392 In what follows, I will first outline the key features of Schopenhauer’s analogies before moving on to discuss the ways in which they have been both praised and criticised by commentators. A detailed analysis of these analogies is warranted here because they do much to bring out the more intricate details of how he conceives of the relationship between music and human existence.
Schopenhauer mainly focusses on the musical elements of melody and harmony to demonstrate how music embodies the essence of existence. One fundamental analogy that he provides with respect to harmony concerns the parallel between the “four grades in the series of existences” in nature (i.e. the “mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms [and] man”) and the “four voices or parts” in Western music (i.e. the “bass, tenor, alto, and soprano” “voices” and the “harmonic intervals” designated by the “fundamental note, third, fifth, and octave”).393 He makes this parallel by ranking both the parts in music and the grades in nature according to the various “grades of the [W]ill’s objectification”, that is, the Ideas they contain.394 Importantly, he situates humans at the apex of this hierarchy and thereby privileges human existence over all other forms of existence (e.g. plants, animals, etc.). In contrast, at the bottom of this hierarchy, for Schopenhauer, are the most fundamental aspects of nature (i.e. “inorganic nature”) that he claims are manifestations of the “lowest grades of the [W]ill’s objectification”.395 He compares
392 Ibid., 261. 393 WWR II, 447. 394 WWR I, 258. 395 Ibid. 87
these basic aspects of nature with the most basic element of harmony, namely, the
“ground-bass”.396 To pursue this analogy further, he appeals to the theory of Western musical harmonics which is grounded in Pythagorean rules.397 In general terms, this theory describes the phenomenon whereby, whenever a “low note” is played, certain
“high notes” of related frequencies (i.e. “harmonics”) also “sound” “automatically and simultaneously”. 398 Just as particular high notes originate in a particular low note,
Schopenhauer claims that “all the bodies and organizations of nature” (that represent the relatively higher “grades of the [W]ill’s objectification”) also originate in the “mass of the planet” (that represents the “lowest grade of the [W]ill’s objectification”).399
Schopenhauer relies on other basic analogies pertaining to harmony to help illuminate the fundamental characteristics that the individual will possesses in human existence.
For example, he draws a parallel between the “two fundamental chords” of Western music (i.e. the “harmonious triad” and the “dissonant chord of the seventh”) and the two basic states of the individual will (i.e. “satisfaction” and “dissatisfaction”).400 Similarly, he equates the “two general keys” in Western music (i.e. the “major and the minor”)
396 Ibid. 397 These Pythagorean rules, Lawrence Ferrara claims, provided the “seminal structure in Western tonal music” throughout the nineteenth century. (Lawrence Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, in Schopenhauer, philosophy, and the arts, ed. Dale Jacquette (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 187.) 398 WWR I, 258. Musical “harmonics” can be defined as “[s]ets of musical notes whose frequencies are related by simple whole number ratios.” (Guy Oldman, Murray Campbell & Clive Greated, “Harmonics”, Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press, accessed April 20, 2014, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/50023.) For example, when the note, middle C, is played, the notes of the C Major triad (i.e. C, E and G) can also be heard by the human ear. Specifically, we can hear a C (that is an octave above the keynote, C), a G (that is an octave plus a fifth above the keynote, C), another C (that is two octaves above the keynote, C) and, finally, an E (that is two octaves plus a major third above the keynote, C). 399 WWR I, 258. 400 WWR II, 456. 88
with the “two universal and fundamental moods of the mind” (i.e. “serenity” or
“vigour” and “sadness” or “anguish”).401
Another distinctive feature of Schopenhauer’s analogies is the way that he attributes a privileged place to melody in (Western) music. He claims that melody is analogous to one’s “intellectual life” insofar as both embody the “highest grade of the [W]ill’s objectification”.402 His analysis of melody thus reinforces a prominent aspect of his aesthetics, namely, the idea that the highest and most sophisticated aspect of human life pertains to a person’s intellect (rather than his/her body). Schopenhauer claims that, with its “unrestrained freedom” of movement and “continuity of progress”, the “upper voice” that carries the melody is able to follow one line of “thought” through to its conclusion.403 The melody, he suggests, thereby expresses the meaning of this thought as an unfragmented “whole”.404 Analogously, by using our “faculty of reason”, we are able to turn our intellectual life into a cohesive narrative by establishing fluid interconnections between past events, our present circumstances and future
“possibilities”.405 Moreover, just as a melody can follow the progress of a particular line of thought, these interconnections, that integrate our past, present and future, also allow us to evaluate our “course of life” in its entirety.406
Schopenhauer even makes the strong claim here that melody is the unique musical element that can capture the “deepest secrets of human willing and feeling” by
401 Ibid. 402 WWR I, 259. 403 Ibid. 404 Ibid. 405 Ibid. 406 Ibid. 89
“portray[ing] every agitation, every effort, every movement of the will”.407 By capturing states and movements of the individual will that he believes to be common to all human experience, melody, for Schopenhauer, thus provides us with a profound insight into what it essentially means to be human. This capacity to comprehensively capture “every movement of the will” is something he believes the underlying “bass- notes” of harmony distinctly lack.408 These “bass-notes”, Schopenhauer claims, are usually characterised by their unwieldy, “slow movement”, more often than not in
“large intervals”.409 In contrast, he suggests that a melody is agile and malleable enough to portray all the modulations between “desire and satisfaction”, including
“suffering” (i.e. the nonfulfillment of “satisfaction”) and “boredom”/“languor” (i.e. the
“empty longing for a new desire”).410 More specifically, he argues that satisfaction is conveyed by the unobstructed and swift reversion back to a “harmonious interval” (e.g. the “third” or “dominant”) or the “keynote”.411 Conversely, suffering is conveyed by disharmonious “deviation[s] from the keynote” (e.g. the “dissonant seventh”) which prevent this reversion from progressing smoothly and swiftly.412 Having made these basic connections between the movements of a melody and those of the individual will,
Schopenhauer goes on to suggest that “rapid melodies without great deviations [from the keynote] are cheerful”.413 In contrast, he claims that “[s]low melodies that strike painful discords” over an extended duration are “sad” because they express “delayed and hard-won satisfaction”.414
407 Ibid., 259-60. 408 Ibid., 259. 409 Ibid. 410 Ibid., 260. 411 Ibid. 412 Ibid. 413 Ibid. 414 Ibid. 90
More generally, what underlies Schopenhauer’s analyses of melody and harmony is the assumption that musical “consonance” and “dissonance” are analogous to the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the individual will, respectively.415 Schopenhauer justifies this assumption by revealing its origins in music’s “physical and arithmetical basis”.416 Importantly, by linking music with mathematics, he is thereby able to demonstrate that music is not completely divorced from the empirical world. In his view, the fact that mathematics is usually regarded as a reliable and concrete way of carving up the world endows music with a “certain infallibility”.417 Hence, while
Schopenhauer stresses that music is a fundamentally non-representational art form, he also avoids situating it in a realm deemed too mystical or ethereal to be the subject of philosophical scrutiny. This is not to say that he thinks that music can be completely reduced to its mathematical properties. He claims instead that the “numerical ratios” and “definite rules” that constitute the basis of music’s structure are incapable of capturing its essence, that is, its ability to disclose the metaphysical foundations of the world.418 For him, these ratios and rules represent the means of conceiving of music
“merely externally and purely empirically”.419
To demonstrate the intertwining of music, mathematics and philosophy, Schopenhauer establishes a connection between the metaphysical and arithmetical elements of music by drawing further on the Pythagorean rules of harmony. In accordance with these rules, Schopenhauer claims that satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the individual will find their mathematical counterparts in “rational and irrational numerical relations”,
415 WWR II, 451. 416 Ibid. 417 WWR I, 256. 418 Ibid. 419 Ibid., 265. 91
respectively.420 Musical dissonance, he suggests, can be associated with an “irrational relation” between the “vibrations of two tones” that is “expressible only in large numbers”.421 Conversely, he suggests that musical consonance can be associated with a
“rational relation” between these vibrations that is only “expressible in small numbers”.422
Schopenhauer further reinforces this link between music and mathematics by pointing out the “universality” that is common to both.423 I will first discuss how music and mathematics are both universal for him before examining his more specific notion of music’s universality in more detail. He compares the universality of “geometrical figures and numbers” with that of music to demonstrate how the relationship between mathematical constructs and perceivable objects (in the “world as representation”) is similar to the relationship between music and these objects.424 He argues that, while mathematical constructs are “applicable” to “all possible objects of experience”, they are nevertheless the “universal forms” of these objects rather than being these objects themselves.425 For example, we could count the oranges in a particular room at a particular time using the number “five”. Nevertheless, the number “five” is a mathematical construct that applies not only to these particular oranges but also to other objects such as apples. Similarly, music, for Schopenhauer, expresses the essence rather than the particular features of perceivable objects by only maintaining an indirect analogical relationship with them.
420 WWR II, 450-51. 421 Ibid., 450. 422 Ibid. 423 WWR I, 262. 424 Ibid. 425 Ibid. 92
Elaborating this notion of music’s universality, Schopenhauer argues that music is an
“entirely universal language” that is immediately comprehensible to everyone, despite any differences between time periods, cultures and/or geographical regions.426 This broad assertion would seem to originate in his key metaphysical claim (that I have discussed throughout this chapter) that music is the sole art form that can directly express the underlying “ground” of existence that is common to all humans (i.e. the
Will). According to him, this universality is unique to music427 because the other arts only have mediated access to this shared “ground” of existence. By putting forward a primarily metaphysical understanding of Schopenhauer’s conception of music’s universality, I am thereby challenging the idea that he understands it in strictly empirical terms. In other words, I do not believe he is claiming here that particular features of particular musical pieces (e.g. Stravinsky’s Sacre or Schoenberg’s
Erwartung) resonate with, and are understood by, everyone.
Indeed, if understood in this strictly empirical sense, Schopenhauer’s claim about music’s universality would be highly questionable. Countless musical genres and styles proliferate in the “world as representation”, not all of which would be immediately understood, at least not by all people. For example, the particularly intricate system of tonality used in Indian Classical music would probably be initially opaque to a musician who is mostly familiar with the predominantly “diatonic” melodies of the Western tradition. In fact, if understood in this empirical sense, Schopenhauer sometimes even appears to argue against the notion that music is universal in his aesthetics. For instance, he states that his key claim about music’s ability to reveal the “inner nature of
426 WWR I, 256 & PP 2 § 218: 429. 427 WWR I, 262. 93
the world” does not apply to all types of music.428 He is particularly critical of what he calls “imitative music” (e.g. Haydn’s The Seasons), declaring that this type of music should be “entirely rejected” because of its highly representational nature.429 In his view, composers of “imitative music” subvert music’s proper function of expressing the
“passions” embedded in the movements of the individual will by merely replicating or mimicking aspects of the “world as representation” in musical tones.430 He is also critical of this music because he believes that the act of replication that it involves necessitates the use of conceptual reasoning.431 Hence, he claims that works of
“imitative music” are actually divorced from the crucial knowledge of perception from which he believes all genuine artworks are derived. 432
Notwithstanding the fact that Schopenhauer does not seem to regard music as universal in a strictly empirical sense, we should further evaluate whether his analogies are universal from this empirical perspective to develop a more comprehensive critical examination of his philosophy of music. These analogies are actually quite restrictive in their scope because they draw largely from the musical conventions of Seventeenth to
Nineteenth-Century Western music with which Schopenhauer would have been familiar. Thus, some of the assumptions that he makes about the usual employment of the musical elements may not necessarily apply to all types of music across different cultures and time periods.
Schopenhauer’s claim that musical consonance and dissonance express the satisfaction and nonfulfillment of the individual will, respectively, is regarded as especially
428 WWR I, 263-64 & PP 2 § 218: 430. 429 WWR I, 263 & PP 2 § 218: 430. 430 WWR I, 263-64 & PP 2 § 218: 430. 431 WWR I, 263. 432 Ibid. 94
contentious amongst commentators. Before evaluating the broader links that
Schopenhauer establishes between musical consonance/dissonance and the individual will, I will first assess the validity (or lack thereof) of his conception of consonance/dissonance in isolation. In this respect, Higgins’ writings on music point towards one way in which musical consonance/dissonance might be a more complex notion than Schopenhauer sometimes suggests. While not referring in particular to his philosophy, she raises the pertinent point that “perceptions” of consonance (and its opposite, dissonance) are often wrongly assumed to be uniform across different musical traditions throughout the world.433 This misguided assumption that such “perceptions” are “universal”, Higgins argues, relies on the idea that consonance can be explicated through “acoustic principles” that are in turn grounded in the universal laws of the
“physics of sound”.434
It is this basic assumption of uniformity to which Schopenhauer also seems to adhere in his aesthetics of music. This is because his claims about musical consonance and dissonance are intended to be universal in two main ways. First, they apply to states of the individual will that, as I mentioned earlier, he takes to be common to all human experience. Second, as Lawrence Ferrara notes, the “Pythagorean principles of sound vibrations and laws of ‘harmonics’” that Schopenhauer employs in his explanations of consonance and dissonance are based on “natural law”.435 These principles and laws would have therefore been taken by him as “immutable”436 and universal because they are assumed to govern all forms of existence (including human existence).
433 Higgins, The Music Between Us, 38. 434 Ibid. 435 Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, 183 & 186-88. 436 Ibid., 183. 95
Like Schopenhauer, Higgins also considers the possibility that music is a “universal language” from the perspective of affect. In particular, she argues that, in human existence, “one of music’s crosscultural emotional functions is to evoke and reinforce feelings of security” (a notion that I discussed in chapter one).437 However, unlike
Schopenhauer, she also emphasises that a proper analysis of this crucial role played by music in existence must include “aspects of music perception” that transcend cultures as well as those that are “culturally specific”.438 Against Schopenhauer, Higgins argues that perception of “consonance is highly context dependent” and would thus differ across various cultures and even within the same musical tradition itself.439 For example, she observes that intervals which are currently considered consonant in
Western music (e.g. the perfect “fourth”) were actually considered dissonant at certain points during the evolution of the Western musical tradition itself.440
Higgins’ claim that “perception of consonance” is contextual is also pertinent to another key development in Western music that I explored in chapter one, namely, the rise of
“modern music” in the twentieth-century. The blurred boundary between consonance and dissonance that characterises modern music could render Schopenhauer’s analogy between musical consonance and dissonance and the satisfaction and nonfulfillment of the individual will, redundant. This is because this analogy relies on traditional notions of tonality that were either dissolved or transformed in various ways by composers of modern music. For example, the introduction of atonality and alternative systems of tonality (e.g. Schoenberg’s “twelve tone row” and Debussy’s “whole tone scales”) in the twentieth-century might pose a challenge to the applicability of Schopenhauer’s
437 Higgins, The Music Between Us, 144. 438 Ibid., emphasis added. 439 Ibid., 38. 440 Ibid. 96
claim that the “two universal and fundamental moods of the mind” (i.e. “serenity” or
“vigour” and “sadness” or “anguish”) are analogous to the “two general keys” in music
(i.e. the “major and the minor”).
Moreover, Lawrence Ferrara observes that some of Schopenhauer’s claims about music may actually be inconsistent with the musical conventions of his own time.441 For example, in Ferrara’s view, Schopenhauer’s “low opinion of the bass line” in “vocal music” is curious given the existence of “countless low-voice arias by Bach, Mozart and
Beethoven”.442 He also makes the more general criticism that, “[w]hile interesting, many of his analogies between music and nature are little more than myth or lore.”443
In particular, Ferrara challenges the explanatory power of Schopenhauer’s “comparison of ‘impure discords’ (musical dissonance) to ‘monstrous abortions between two species of animals, or between man and animal”’ by questioning whether this analogy actually
“discloses anything of import concerning musical dissonance or the other”.444
On a broader level, commentators like Alperson also question the internal consistency of Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music” by casting doubt on whether some of his claims about the musical elements are actually aligned with his metaphysical claims. In particular, Alperson challenges Schopenhauer’s contention (that I mentioned earlier) that melodies are predominantly characterised by their eventual resolution in consonance by remarking, “[b]ut surely the pervasive tendency of melodies to ‘find a harmonious interval’ and to return ultimately to ‘the keynote’ is at odds with what is the most basic characteristic of the [W]ill, irrational and ceaseless striving, variance with
441 Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, 194-95. 442 Ibid., 194. 443 Ibid., 186. 444 Ibid. 97
itself.”445 For Alperson, this is one of several “dysanalogies between music and the phenomenal world, many of which Schopenhauer touches on himself, but disregards”.446
More importantly, however, Ferrara suggests that such inconsistencies and/or inaccuracies in Schopenhauer’s views of music may not be an oversight or an indication of negligence on his behalf. He posits that, “Schopenhauer’s idiosyncratic censure may be more a function of his need to press music into conformity to his metaphysical position than his lack of a musical ear.”447 In other words, Schopenhauer himself may be aware of the peculiar, and sometimes inconsistent, nature of his musical views but nevertheless attempts to align these with his own metaphysical framework. In Ferrara’s view, the more problematic aspect of these analogies concerns what he considers as
Schopenhauer’s questionable endeavour to use music’s “physical” foundations (i.e. the mathematical origins of its “acoustics”) as a “logical basis” with which to buttress his
“metaphysics of music”.448 This endeavour falls short, Ferrara argues, mainly because
Schopenhauer insists on the fact that music is “ineffable” and, as a consequence, impermeable to any form of logical analysis.449 As I will shortly elaborate, this last point is crucial because it highlights the key issue that this thesis addresses, namely, the significant challenge that music’s “enigma” (or ineffability) poses to philosophical frameworks that seek to define it.
445 Philip Alperson, “Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation”, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40, no. 2 (Winter 1981): 160-61. 446 Ibid., 160. 447 Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, 194. Ferrara’s critique here is echoed by Bowie, who claims that, “[t]he appeal of Schopenhauer’s position would seem to lie in its elevation of music to real philosophical dignity. In many respects, however, he does precisely the opposite, subordinating music to the limiting effects of a highly contentious metaphysical vision.” (Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 200) 448 Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, 190. 449 Ibid. 98
On the one hand, Ferrara acknowledges that “Schopenhauer readily admits that his metaphysical conception of music as the embodiment of the Will cannot be logically demonstrated.”450 Indeed, Schopenhauer himself concedes that the exact nature of music’s “imitative relation to the world” is actually “very obscure”.451 He states:
I recognize, however, that it is essentially impossible to demonstrate this
explanation, for it assumes and establishes a relation of music as a representation
to that which of its essence can never be representation, and claims to regard
music as the copy of an original that can itself never be directly represented.452
On the other hand, despite Schopenhauer’s own recognition of the potential fallibility of his analogies, Ferrara still considers this inability to construct a pathway between the physical and metaphysical aspects of music to be a significant limitation of his account.453
Alperson expresses a similar frustration at the absence of a more substantial description in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics of what music actually discloses about the Will. That is, he seeks a more concrete response from Schopenhauer as to how “music is uniquely capable of affording an intuition, glimpse, or immediate awareness of a reality behind the world of appearance”.454 According to Alperson, this deficiency significantly puts into question what he regards as Schopenhauer’s endeavour to provide a ‘“revelation’ theory of the meaning of music”’.455 Central to this dilemma, Alperson suggests, is
450 Ibid., 183. 451 WWR I, 256-57. 452 Ibid., 257. 453 Ferrara, “Schopenhauer on music as the embodiment of Will”, 190 & 197. 454 Alperson, “Schopenhauer and Musical Revelation”, 159. 455 Ibid. 99
Schopenhauer’s stringent view that “music is not expressible as specific ideas in a body of propositions (or by some other means)”.456 From this, he concludes that the promise of a “revelation” is ultimately left unfulfilled in Schopenhauer’s aesthetics of music because its content is inherently “inexpressible”.457 Schopenhauer, he claims, becomes entangled in a paradox whereby “he wants to say that musical revelation is otherwise ineffable and yet he wants to philosophize about it”.458
Ferrara and Alperson’s critiques of Schopenhauer’s “metaphysics of music” are significant to my thesis because they raise the broader question of whether, given music’s inherent ineffability or “enigma”, philosophers can actually say anything meaningful about music at all. As I discussed in the overall introduction to this thesis,
Bowie suggests that this challenge that music poses to philosophy, that is, the fact that music is seemingly impermeable to philosophical analysis, signifies a call to rethink the very nature of philosophising itself. Schopenhauer’s philosophy could prove helpful in this respect because he points out the fundamental roles that music and philosophy might play in human existence. In general, he argues that both disciplines provide us with the means of developing a more profound understanding of the meaning of existence. As I discussed earlier, he believes that one is emancipated from the emotional turmoil and bodily afflictions provoked by individual willing when participating in the aesthetic experience. As a result, Schopenhauer suggests that one is given a clearer vision of, and is brought closer to, the “true nature of life and of existence” through artistic means.459 Art, in his view, thus offers a potential response to
456 Ibid., 160. 457 Ibid., 160 & 162. 458 Ibid., 162. 459 WWR II, 406. 100
the crucial “question, ‘What is life?’”.460 More importantly for my analysis, he also claims that, insofar as music directly and completely embodies the Will, it also responds to this question “more profoundly” than do the other arts.461 Music and philosophy are alike in this respect, he argues, because they are both equally comprehensive expressions of the Will.462 Hence, we could suppose that both disciplines are able to offer equally insightful responses to this cardinal question about human existence.
Nevertheless, Schopenhauer also suggests that music and philosophy express the Will in different ways. As I mentioned earlier, music draws from perception and thus expresses the Will through “mere tones”.463 In contrast, philosophy, for him, draws from
“reflection” and thus expresses the Will through “concepts”.464 Hence, while both music and philosophical concepts express the universal rather than the particular, they are nevertheless vastly different from each other insofar as they are grasped by contrasting means. In Schopenhauer’s view, this, in turn, produces a further difference in terms of the types of “wisdom” that these two disciplines are able to provide.
According to Schopenhauer, philosophical “wisdom” is a “firm and abiding possession” because it has already been concretised in fully formed concepts and is thus not amenable to change.465 As he puts it, philosophy’s response to the question, ‘“[w]hat is life?”’, is “permanent and satisfactory for all time”.466 In contrast, he argues that the wisdom that artworks impart remains latent or implicit in them, awaiting their actualisation by a particular “beholder”.467 Since this wisdom would be actualised in varying degrees by different people over time, it would thus diverge from philosophical
460 Ibid. 461 Ibid. 462 WWR I, 264. 463 WWR I, 264 & WWR II, 406. 464 Ibid. 465 WWR II, 406-407. 466 Ibid. 467 Ibid., 407. 101
wisdom by virtue of its malleable rather than fixed nature.468 These variations,
Schopenhauer claims, would in turn depend on the particular “resources” that each beholder possesses, such as his/her “culture” and the strength of his/her imagination.469
By taking these fundamental interconnections between music, philosophy and human existence into account, Schopenhauer suggests that if we were able to provide a thorough, “perfectly accurate and complete explanation of music” in conceptual terms, we would thereby arrive at the “true philosophy”.470 Nevertheless, his suggestion that music can be translated into philosophy is curious because it is difficult to imagine how it could be actualised. Schopenhauer’s strict dichotomy between perception and reflection could suggest that he intends his suggestion about transforming music into philosophy via conceptual means to remain a hypothesis rather than an actionable thesis. Indeed, as I discussed earlier, he believes that music essentially resists conceptual definition because the “immediate knowledge” that it provides about the
Will cannot be accessed through reflection.
Commentators like Lydia Goehr suggest that Schopenhauer himself is aware of this dilemma. She states:
The hope, however, that Schopenhauer might actually provide what he has just
called a “perfectly accurate and complete explanation of music” is immediately
thwarted. Could it be otherwise? Necessarily not. Schopenhauer’s argument is
based on a supposition he knows cannot be sustained471
468 Ibid. 469 Ibid. 470 WWR I, 264. 471 Goehr, “Schopenhauer and the musicians”, 209. 102
However, she also considers Schopenhauer’s refusal to let music “be translated to, or fully described by, a rational, conceptual, empirical language”,472 as an appropriate response to this conundrum. Unlike Ferrara and Alperson, she identifies
Schopenhauer’s approach of describing music “indirectly by analogy” (as opposed to giving a more direct and concrete description of music) as a strength,473 arguing that he thereby pays due respect to music’s “enigma”. By taking this fitting approach,
Schopenhauer, Goehr suggests, thereby prevents music from being “perhaps forever corrupted by […] mundane and empirical description”.474
While not referring in particular to Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Bowie also regards the fact that music offers a different type of response to philosophical conundrums from that offered by philosophy itself as its strength rather than its weakness.475 In his view, it is precisely by virtue of being different from philosophy that music can offer new insights into philosophical questions.476 Music, then, is not simply philosophy’s mouthpiece but acts as a powerful catalyst for furthering its development. Bowie states:
Music does not describe or give discursive answers to philosophical problems
because its relationship to philosophy is not representational. It is to be regarded
rather as a resource for responding to how certain kinds of philosophical issue
impinge on our lives. Precisely because a musical response is generally not
discursive and representational it may capture or influence aspects of these
issues which philosophy may not. Music is no doubt irrelevant to many
472 Ibid. 473 Ibid., 215. 474 Ibid., 216-17. 475 Bowie, Music, Philosophy, and Modernity, 415. 476 Ibid. 103
philosophical debates, but nothing is good for everything, and, given the striking
absence of music from so much contemporary philosophical discussion, it is
more interesting to reflect on the implications of that absence than to contribute
to its continuation.477
Goehr provides a particularly insightful and interesting analysis of Schopenhauer’s views of the music-philosophy relationship in terms of the various ways in which the notion of “silence” could manifest itself in his philosophy.478 First, she conceives of the
“purpose of the musical art […] to express the inexpressible” as the “meaningful silence of the musical language”.479 Second, while acknowledging that this is not
Schopenhauer’s primary aim in his aesthetics of music, Goehr argues that he helps to expose “philosophy’s own theoretical limits” or what she refers to as a “meta- or philosophical silence”.480 Faced with the “meaningful silence of the musical language”, philosophy, she suggests, is silenced by its own “inability [...] at least in its traditional forms – to adequately describe the musical art”.481
Goehr’s claims here resemble Adorno’s view (that I examined in chapter one) that past philosophical frameworks have been unable to “grasp the totality of the real”. This,
Adorno claims, is because “reality” itself (of which music/art is an important part) is too disparate and complex a script for the conventional philosophical resources of “thought” and “reason” to decipher. In response to this apparent impasse, like Adorno, Goehr seems to call for a different approach to philosophising that is more appropriate to addressing the challenging yet significant issue of music’s “enigma”. For her, the onus
477 Ibid. 478 Goehr, “Schopenhauer and the musicians”, 202. 479 Ibid. 480 Ibid., 202 & 218. 481 Ibid., 202. 104
lies not with music to accommodate itself to conceptual ways of thinking but rather with philosophy to develop a better way of approaching music that is more receptive to the latter’s inherent ineffability, a prime example of which she perceives in Schopenhauer’s analogical account of music. In light of the above, this thesis aims to investigate how a meaningful philosophical account of music could be developed in such a way that acknowledges the contradictions and subtleties involved in discussing the
“inexpressible” or “enigmatic” nature of music. It will do this by providing a detailed examination of the integral place of music in human existence in relation to such themes as corporeality, affect, intersubjectivity, temporality and spatiality.
Conclusion
Instead of dismissing music because of its inherently “enigmatic” nature, Schopenhauer does much in his aesthetics to renew philosophical interest in it. As this chapter has shown, music, for him, possesses a profound metaphysical significance in that it embodies the underlying “ground” of existence. In particular, he believes that music plays an especially important role in human existence due to its remarkable ability to transform it. Moreover, by establishing analogies between music and nature,
Schopenhauer provides a preliminary framework for analysing music’s relationship with the “world as representation”. Nevertheless, he also preserves music’s “enigma” by acknowledging that the exact nature of this relationship can never be fully determined.
By conceiving of music in the above ways, Schopenhauer thereby presents a renewed philosophical approach to music that differs from its analytic counterpart. As I 105
suggested earlier, contemporary analytic philosophers of music usually attempt to establish criteria by which music’s meaning, value and properties could supposedly be precisely characterised and subsequently known. While Schopenhauer does indeed express music’s transformative power in epistemological terms, he does not espouse the view that its value can be ascertained by any external criteria that privilege rational, conceptual and/or logical forms of reasoning/analysis.
Despite Schopenhauer’s efforts to refigure philosophy’s approach to music, I believe that his overall conception of art as involving the “denial of the will-to-live” contains two questionable aspects. The first aspect concerns his dismissive attitude towards the role that the body plays in music’s transformative power, which stems from the wider mind/body dualism that shapes his key notion of aesthetic contemplation. The second aspect concerns his rather counterintuitive suggestion that we must become disinterested spectators of our own life if we are to access music’s transformative power. These two aspects are interrelated in Schopenhauer’s philosophy because he argues that our adoption of a disinterested standpoint necessitates the denial of our own corporeality. Overall, then, his account does not suggest that music encourages or enables us to affirm life, for example, by allowing us to appreciate the sensual/bodily pleasures that are available to us in existence.
In the following chapter, I will explore how Nietzsche’s alternative life-affirming account of music helps to address these potential weaknesses in Schopenhauer’s account. First, unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche neither frames music’s transformative power in predominantly intellectual terms nor ascribes to the notion of mind/body dualism in his aesthetics. Second, in contrast with Schopenhauer’s idea that art 106
necessitates the “denial of the will-to-live”, Nietzsche argues that music is a creative, driving force that immerses us into the corporeal, affective and intersubjective dimensions of existence. As I will argue for in the next chapter, Nietzsche therefore simultaneously acknowledges Schopenhauer’s pessimistic conclusion that “all life is suffering” and offers the means through which this pessimism could be transcended through the life-affirming power of music. 107
Chapter three
Music’s life-affirming power in Nietzsche’s early aesthetics
Introduction
Nietzsche takes up and continues Schopenhauer’s investigation of the metaphysical dimension of music, especially in his early works such as BT and several unpublished essays. This chapter examines these early works so as to draw out how Nietzsche overcomes some of the limitations of Schopenhauer’s approach and also how he may enhance my examination of music’s integral place in human existence. There are two broad similarities between the early Nietzsche and Schopenhauer’s views of music.
First, both argue that music ought to occupy a privileged position amongst the creative arts due to its ability to embody the Will or the underlying “ground” of existence.
Second, they both value music’s remarkable ability to transform human existence.482
However, this chapter mainly focusses on the important ways in which the early
Nietzsche departs from Schopenhauer. There are two points of difference between
482 Numerous Nietzsche scholars have emphasised the importance of music’s/art’s transformative power to Nietzsche’s early and more mature writings. For example, Daniel W. Conway, Ivan Gaskell & Salim Kemal claim that, “[m]ore so than any other philosopher, [Nietzsche] understands art as the basic transformative impulse known to human experience.” (Daniel W. Conway, Ivan Gaskell & Salim Kemal, “Nietzsche and art”, in Nietzsche, philosophy, and the arts, ed. Daniel W. Conway, Ivan Gaskell & Salim Kemal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2.) They claim that the early Nietzsche regards art as central to one’s “personal transformation” (Ibid.). They also argue that, for the more mature Nietzsche, art’s transformative force begins to extend beyond the personal realm to also encompass the “ethical and political dimensions of human existence” (Ibid., 2-3). In terms of these broader dimensions, they suggest that, art, for Nietzsche acts as the “unacknowledged catalyst of social change, growth, and transfiguration” (Ibid., 3). Similarly, and in relation to music in particular, Higgins argues that, for Nietzsche, a crucial aspect of music’s “meaning” is “its power to transform one’s perspective”. (Kathleen M. Higgins, “Music or the Mistaken Life”, International Studies in Philosophy 35, no. 3 (2003): 123.) Higgins suggests that, “Nietzsche is concerned with music’s power to heal and simulate personal growth, and this is another way in which he sees music contributing to life’s significance” (Ibid.).
108
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s conceptions of music’s transformative power that account for Nietzsche’s more constructive assessment of music’s role in existence.
First, Nietzsche does not privilege the mind over the body and affect in his views of music. As we saw in chapter two, Schopenhauer argues instead that the temporary alleviation of suffering that music (and art in general) effect occurs in the state of “pure disinterested contemplation”. While, for him, the engagement of our intellect enables us to attain this state, the intervention of our body obstructs our attainment of it. As is well-known, Nietzsche’s later repudiation of this notion of “pure disinterested contemplation” formed part of his wider admonishment of his younger self for following Schopenhauer and Kant’s ideas too closely with the detrimental effect of compromising the originality of his own.483 Although, at times, the early Nietzsche appears to agree with Schopenhauer’s notion of “pure disinterested contemplation”,484 I will demonstrate in this chapter that he had already begun to conceive of the experience of music as primarily corporeal and affective rather than intellectual at this time.
Specifically, he argues that music facilitates a shared corporeal and affective transformation amongst humans that dissolves the barriers that exist between them.
Second, in his examination of Greek tragedy, Nietzsche brings to light the fundamentally life-affirming role that music plays in human existence that is distinctly
483 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 6: 24. As Walter Kaufmann observes in a footnote to BT, “[t]his conception of contemplation devoid of interest, as well as much else that is indebted to Schopenhauer, was later expressly criticized by Nietzsche” (BT 5: 48). Notably, in GM III, the more mature Nietzsche explicitly critiques Schopenhauer for his purportedly erroneous belief that he had adhered strictly to Kant’s notion of “beauty” as a form of “‘pleasure without interest”’ (GM III 6: 104-105, emphasis in original). Nietzsche argues instead that Schopenhauer had actually understood Kant’s notion of the “beautiful” from the “very strongest, most personal interest” (GM III 6: 105). He justifies this claim but positing that Schopenhauer’s main motivation for recommending the “liberation from the ‘will’” in “aesthetic contemplation” was his own aversion towards “sexuality” which, according to Nietzsche, he regarded as a “personal enemy” (GM III 6-7: 104-106). 484 For example, in BT 5, Nietzsche states, “throughout the entire range of art we demand first of all the conquest of the subjective, redemption from the ‘ego,’ and the silencing of the individual will and desire; indeed, we find it impossible to believe in any truly artistic production, however insignificant, if it is without objectivity, without pure contemplation devoid of interest”. (BT 5: 48) 109
absent from Schopenhauer’s aesthetics. These two points of difference are interconnected in my analysis insofar as I will argue that, for the early Nietzsche, the body and affect are crucial sources of music’s life-affirming power. By conceiving of music as fundamentally life-affirming, Nietzsche also transcends Schopenhauer’s pessimism by arguing that music’s transformative effect extends beyond the brief alleviation of human suffering. This last point is emphasised by commentators like
Béatrice Han-Pile, Martha C. Nussbaum and Walter Kaufmann. Han-Pile challenges what she believes to be an opposing position held, whether “implicitly” or explicitly, by scholars like Julian Young.485 Young, Han-Pile suggests, is unable to fully understand
Nietzsche’s conception of the “redemptive power of human art” because he assumes that this notion directly follows the “Schopenhauerian idea that redemption should be equated with an absence of pain”.486 She argues instead that, “in the Birth true salvation lies in our willingly accepting pain and finding the strength, not only to bear it passively, but to actively transmute it into pleasure through artistic creation”.487 It is through the lens of this metamorphosis of pain into pleasure that I will examine
Nietzsche’s conception of music’s transformative effect in BT.
Likewise, Nussbaum and Kaufmann suggest that Nietzsche’s development of a position that simultaneously affirms life and acknowledges the gravity of human suffering signals a significant moment in his early philosophy where he explicitly distances himself from Schopenhauer. For example, Nussbaum claims that this “most fundamental break with Schopenhauer” is evident in “Nietzsche’s complete rejection of the normative ethics of pessimism, in favor of a view that urges us to take joy in life, in
485 Béatrice Han-Pile, “Nietzsche’s Metaphysics in the Birth of Tragedy”, European Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 3 (2006): 388. 486 Ibid., emphasis in original. 487 Ibid. 110
the body, in becoming – even, and especially, in the face of the recognition that the world is chaotic and cruel”.488 In very similar terms, Kaufmann states:
Nietzsche’s very first book, The Birth, constitutes a declaration of independence
from Schopenhauer: while Nietzsche admires him for honestly facing up to the
terrors of existence, Nietzsche himself celebrates Greek tragedy as a superior
alternative to Schopenhauer’s “Buddhistic negation of the will.”. From tragedy
Nietzsche learns that one can affirm life as sublime, beautiful, and joyous in
spite of all suffering and cruelty.489
Given this widespread acknowledgement of music’s power to transcend pessimism in
Nietzsche’s early philosophy, it is surprising that Nietzsche scholars, and to some extent, even Nietzsche himself, often underplay music’s essential life-affirming role in
Greek tragedy. Indeed, this is even more curious when we consider that the original title that Nietzsche attributed to BT was The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.
In light of the above, this chapter also reassesses the role that music is said to play in
BT. The conventional reading of BT suggests that both the Apollinian “plastic” arts and
Dionysian music contribute equally to tragedy’s remarkable capacity to incite us to embrace and renew life. In contrast, my alternative reading suggests that music (as opposed to the “plastic” arts) plays a primary role in generating tragedy’s transformative, life-affirming potential. To better appreciate music’s transformative power in BT, this chapter closely examines the intersection of Nietzsche’s views of art, language and metaphysics in two early unpublished essays, “The Dionysian
488 Martha C. Nussbaum, “The transfigurations of intoxication: Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Dionysus”, in Nietzsche, philosophy, and the arts, edited by Daniel W. Conway, Ivan Gaskell & Samil Kemal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 56. 489 Walter Kaufmann, introduction to The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner by Friedrich Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 11. 111
Worldview” (1870) and “On Music and Words” (1871), which have largely been overlooked by Nietzsche scholars.490 While the ideas expressed in these essays are somewhat experimental and fragmented, they were both written in preparation for BT.
They therefore offer crucial insights into Nietzsche’s thinking at the time.491
Significantly, they pave the way towards formulating a more comprehensive account of music’s essential role in tragedy as well as in the broader, interrelated phenomenon of cultural renewal. In general, Nietzsche argues that the evolution of art and that of culture are concurrent phenomena insofar as the advancement of one precipitates that of the other. More specifically, he designates tragedy in BT 21 as the “tremendous power that stimulated, purified, and discharged the whole life of the people”.492 And, for him, music is central to this renewal of life. According to Nietzsche, the reanimation of tragedy’s “tremendous power” through its “rebirth” necessitates the simultaneous revival of the “spirit of music”.493 Equally, he claims that music’s disappearance from tragedy would essentially precipitate the latter’s downfall.494 Commentators like
Michael Allen Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong highlight this symbiotic relationship
490 Notable exceptions include David B. Allison’s article, “Some Remarks on Nietzsche’s Draft of 1871, ‘On Music and Words”’ and Claudia Crawford’s article, “‘The Dionysian Worldview’: Nietzsche’s Symbolic Languages and Music”, both of which provide a detailed exploration of Nietzsche’s early views of music and language in these essays. (Please see the citations for both of these articles in the footnotes below.) Both Carl Dahlhaus and Allison estimate that Nietzsche wrote “On Music and Words” around 1871. According to Allison, it was written as a “preliminary stud[y]” for BT. (David B. Allison, “Some Remarks on Nietzsche’s Draft of 1871, ‘On Music and Words’”, New Nietzsche Studies 1, nos. 1 & 2 (Fall/Winter 1996): 15.) According to Dahlhaus, Nietzsche intended it either as a “section of The Birth of Tragedy which he decided to omit on publication, or as part of a projected book on ancient Greece which he never completed”. (Carl Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism: Four Studies in the Music of the Later Nineteenth Century, trans. Mary Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 19.) 491 Commentators such as Claudia Crawford highlight the important contribution of these essays to an examination of the origins of Nietzsche’s early aesthetics despite their preparatory nature. Crawford claims that “The Dionysian Worldview” represents the “first text in which he clearly distinguishes the aesthetic categories of the apollinian and dionysian” which later become fundamental to BT. (Claudia Crawford, “‘The Dionysian Worldview’: Nietzsche’s Symbolic Languages and Music”, Journal of Nietzsche Studies 13 (Spring 1997): 72.) 492 BT 21: 125. 493 BT 16: 99. 494 Ibid. 112
between the increased acknowledgement of music’s transformative power and the acceleration of desirable forms of cultural transformation in Nietzsche’s philosophy.
Gillespie claims that Nietzsche envisages a potential “transformation of the West, a renewal of European political culture and of humanity itself” through music.495
Similarly, Strong argues that, for Nietzsche, the “experience of music provided both a paradigm of philosophical activity and an insight into the workings of a healthy culture”.496 My overall argument in this chapter, which draws on insights from both BT and the two unpublished essays, is that music is a creative, life-affirming force for
Nietzsche due to its powerful corporeal and affective expression of the metaphysical and intersubjective dimensions of human existence. I begin with a discussion of the conventional reading of music’s role in BT as well as the points of difference between this and my own alternative reading of this text.
1. Two different interpretations of music’s role in BT
According to the conventional reading of BT, Nietzsche’s key message is that tragedy’s life-affirming potential arises from the equal contribution of two opposing artistic and cultural principles, namely, the Apollinian and the Dionysian. The tumultuous relationship between them is characterised by “perpetual strife” that is occasionally punctuated by “reconciliations”.497 This paradoxical mix of both “antagonism” and compromise in turn acts as a potent catalyst for creative, transformative activity which
495 Michael A. Gillespie, “Nietzsche’s Musical Politics”, in Nietzsche’s New Seas: Explorations in Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Politics, ed. Michael A. Gillespie & Tracy B. Strong (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), 143. 496 Tracy B. Strong, “The Tragic Ethos and the Spirit of Music”, International Studies in Philosophy 35, no. 3 (2003): 83. 497 BT 1: 33. 113
allows them to “continually incite each other to new and more powerful births” in art.498
To set the context for my alternative reading of BT, I will briefly outline the contrasting aesthetic objectives and approaches to human existence that the Apollinian and
Dionysian principles signify.
Nietzsche claims that Apollinian culture is governed by the “principle of individuation”
(or the principium individuationis), a concept that he adopts from Schopenhauer.499
Central to this Apollinian principle is the stringent demarcation of the “boundaries of the individual”, by advocating “measure” and repudiating all forms of “excess”.500 This principle also manifests itself more broadly in the demarcation of the borders between the various socio-political and cultural institutions within the state, as well as between the various states themselves.501 Particularly pertinent to my analysis of Nietzsche’s early philosophy is the influence that this Apollinian principle of “individuation” has on the domains of both art and language. In this respect, he suggests that individual
“representations” or instantiations of the Apollinian principle feature in both the imagistic arts (e.g. painting and sculpture) and the words and concepts of language. It is also important to note that, for him, these manifestations of the Apollinian principle have a positive effect on lived experience. Our participation in Apollinian culture through both aesthetic and linguistic means allows for the transformation of the pessimistic aspects of our existence (e.g. suffering, boredom and dissatisfaction) into
“beautiful” “dream images” that “make life possible and worth living”.502 In his view, the “profound delight” that these “dream images” or “illusions” inspire within us arises
498 Ibid. 499 BT 1: 36. 500 BT 4: 46. 501 BT 21: 124. 502 BT 1: 34-35. 114
from the fact that they “glorify” aspects of our own cultural understanding with which we are already familiar.503
Nietzsche then claims that what allows us to temper the sense of futility and/or meaninglessness that pervades existence is the recourse we have to these expressions of what Schopenhauer had described as the “principle of individuation”.504 In addition to permitting the differentiation between individuals, socio-political institutions and states, this principle also describes a fundamentally human way of finding meaning and order in the world by carving it up into comprehensible components according to stable categories like “time, space, and causality”.505 It is the dissolution of this sense of order and stability, Nietzsche argues, that exposes us to the Dionysian principle of culture506 to which I now turn.
In contrast with the Apollinian principle of individuation, Nietzsche associates
Dionysian culture with “intoxication”.507 This involves a “state” of “mystical self- abnegation”, or what David B. Allison calls a “state of disindividuation”, wherein the
“ordinary bounds and limits of existence” are transgressed.508 In its most extreme and primitive or “barbari[c]” form, Nietzsche claims that Dionysian culture manifested itself in Ancient Greece as “festivals centered in extravagant sexual licentiousness, whose waves overwhelmed all family life and its venerable traditions; the most savage natural
503 BT 1: 34-35 & BT 3: 44. 504 BT 4: 45-46. 505 BT 4: 45. 506 BT 1: 36. 507 BT 2: 38. 508 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 34, BT 2: 38 & BT 7: 59. 115
instincts were unleashed, including even that horrible mixture of sensuality and cruelty which has always seemed to me to be the real ‘witches’ brew’.”509
According to Nietzsche, the main effect of this transgression of the “ordinary bounds and limits of existence” is transformative. The Dionysian principle, he argues, counteracts the individuating force of the Apollinian principle. Not only does it eliminate the “gulfs” between individual people, but it also undermines the apparently strict distinctions between the socio-political institutions that carve up the “state and society” in general.510 For example, Nietzsche claims that the “Dionysian liberation from the fetters of the individual finds expression first of all in a diminution of, in indifference to, indeed, in hostility to, the political instincts”.511 However, despite being resistant to all forms of socio-political organisation and constraint, the Dionysian element of tragedy, Nietzsche stresses, also symbolises a transformative force that drives and exists “behind all civilisation”.512 This principle thus accounts for a dynamic historicity of existence. Its force persists regardless of the passing of time, that is,
“despite the changes of generations and of the history of nations” in which individual people, societies and states are implicated.513 In sections two and three, I will further explore the corporeal, affective and intersubjective dimensions of this Dionysian “state of disindividuation” in both music and language.
In contrast with the way that the Apollinian principle can be represented in a multiplicity of forms of art and language, Nietzsche claims that the Dionysian principle is exclusively expressed by music. In this way, he marks the crucial contribution of
509 BT 2: 39. 510 BT 7: 59. 511 BT 21: 124. 512 BT 7: 59 513 Ibid. 116
music to a healthy culture by endowing it with the uniquely Dionysian capacity to dissolve the boundaries between individuals and nature, as well as between these individuals themselves.514 In BT, Nietzsche does not seem to differentiate between the capacity to dissolve the boundaries between individuals and the capacity to dissolve those between humans and nature. In other words, music, in this text, seems to perform both functions simultaneously. By contrast, in the earlier essay, “The Dionysian
Worldview”, he seems to suggest that music only intervenes in this process of disindividuation after the point where the more fundamental boundaries between humans and nature are dissolved. I will expand on this last point in section three. What
I want to emphasise here is that my arguments in this chapter pertain to an important claim that is common to both of these early texts. This is that, in comparison with the
Apollinian art forms and elements of language, music is the predominant contributing factor to this process of disindividuation.
Nietzsche’s key claim about music in BT is that it is able to (re)connect all individuals with what he calls the “mysterious primordial unity” or the “inmost ground of the world”.515 Here, he conceives of this “mysterious primordial unity” that music symbolises in terms of the Will, that is, the “blind, irresistible urge” that Schopenhauer claims underlies all forms of existence.516 Like Schopenhauer, then, Nietzsche suggests that music (rather than the plastic arts) expresses the metaphysical foundations of existence. In particular, he argues that music exposes us to the devastating Dionysian
“truth” that existence is grounded in suffering, which is revealed most acutely in
Silenus’ “wisdom”: ‘“[w]hat is best of all is utterly beyond your reach: not to be born,
514 BT 1: 37. 515 BT 1: 37 & BT 2: 38. 516 BT 16: 99-100 & WWR I, 275. 117
not to be, to be nothing. But the second best for you is – to die soon.”’517 What this suggests is that the suffering that pervades human existence is so great that it is preferable for us to have never lived. Given that this decision is/was not ours to make, our next best option would be to hope for an early death. Once apprised of this terrifying “knowledge” of the gravity of human suffering, Nietzsche suggests that the
Dionysian individual, like Hamlet, is “nauseated” by his/her impotence to “set right a world that is out of joint”.518 However, as I will shortly reveal, Nietzsche also begins to contest this pessimistic worldview that is adopted by philosophers like Schopenhauer.
In section three, I will also show how the extent to which even the most basic elements of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics actually influenced Nietzsche’s early aesthetics remains a subject of debate amongst commentators.
Nietzsche goes on to argue that the merging of the Apollinian and Dionysian principles in tragedy results in the “apex” of both their contrasting artistic objectives being achieved.519 As I suggested earlier, the “birth of tragedy” thus signifies for him a highly important development in cultural advancement. In tragedy, the protection provided by
Apollinian illusions is crucial because our direct exposure to Dionysian truth has the capacity to “break” us.520 Nietzsche argues that Dionysian intoxication by itself (i.e. if unaccompanied by the Apollinian principle) is terrifying because it dissolves any sense of meaning, order, certainty and stability that we may have with regards to our own existence. He thus challenges “genuine musicians” as to “whether they can imagine a human being who would be able to perceive the third act of [Wagner’s] Tristan and
Isolde, without any aid of word and image, purely as a tremendous symphonic
517 BT 3: 42 & BT 4: 46 (emphases in original). 518 BT 7: 60. 519 BT 24: 139. 520 BT 21: 127. 118
movement, without expiring in a spasmodic unharnessing of all the wings of the soul?”521 For Nietzsche, by offering “continuous redemption” from Dionysian intoxication, the beautiful Apollinian images in “tragic myth” paradoxically assign music its “highest freedom”.522 They allow us access to intoxication without completely delivering us over to the potentially devastating truth about human existence that the Dionysian principle expresses. Hence, Nietzsche concludes that it is this
“fraternal union” of the Apollinian and Dionysian that accounts for the achievement of the “highest goal of tragedy and of all art”.523
From elements of Nietzsche’s account of tragedy as an art form, we may receive the impression that it is the redemptive capacity of the Apollinian principle that gives tragedy its life-affirming aspect. However, the conventional interpretation of BT also goes on to posit that the merging of both principles in tragedy ultimately results in their roles being reversed. This less examined aspect of the interpretation is significant because it brings to the fore the transformative process whereby the Apollinian principle comes to represent suffering and the Dionysian principle comes to signify life- affirmation. This reversal of the source of suffering in tragedy entails that its essentially life-affirming message is grounded in the Dionysian capacity to simultaneously express the pessimistic content of Silenus’ wisdom and transform it into a perspective that allows us to embrace life. Even as early on as BT 5, Nietzsche claims that the new
“symbolic dream image[s]” that are created in the hybrid Apollinian-Dionysian art form of lyric poetry are more profound than mere Apollinian illusions because they possess a distinctly Dionysian essence.524 That is, they represent the fundamental connection
521 BT 21: 126-27. 522 BT 4: 45 & BT 21: 126-28. 523 BT 21: 130. 524 BT 5: 49-50 (emphasis in original). 119
between the “Dionysian artist” and the “primordial pain” that lies at the core of existence.525 In this context, then, the individual artist is himself/herself only an
Apollinian “symbol” or representation of this pain.526 Moreover, as I will expand on later, it is this Dionysian capacity to express the underlying “ground” of existence that endows hybrid Apollinian-Dionysian art forms like lyric poetry with their creative, transformative power.
Significantly, at the height of tragedy’s transformative power, this pain is transfigured into the “higher pleasure” of recognising the “indestructibly powerful” flux of life that persists despite the continual “destruction of [Apollinian] phenomena”.527 By realising that the destruction of one entity facilitates, and overlaps with, the creation of another, we may come to appreciate nature’s insatiable desire to create new entities despite the death or elimination of others. This recognition of the “eternal life beyond” and
“behind” Apollinian phenomena is what Nietzsche terms the “metaphysical comfort” that tragedy provides.528 The Apollinian principle of individuation, if unaccompanied by the Dionysian principle, becomes the source of suffering at this point. Its painful expression of human mortality is symbolised by the eventual death of the “tragic hero”.529 More significantly, the Apollinian principle, if operating alone here, would actually have the effect of obstructing this transformation of pain into pleasure. This is due to the tendency of its static forms and meanings to resist change. By contrast, if both principles operate together, this transformation is facilitated through an ongoing process whereby existing Apollinian forms and meanings are dissolved to then partake in renewed cultural forms and meanings. In this process of cultural renewal, then, it is
525 BT 5: 49. 526 BT 5: 50. 527 BT 7: 59, BT 17: 104 & BT 21: 125. 528 BT 16-17: 104. 529 BT 16: 104. 120
Dionysian music rather than the Apollinian plastic arts that saves us from falling prey to
Schopenhauerian pessimism through its life-affirming effect.
It is this ultimate reversal of the source of suffering that suggests more about the role that music plays in Nietzsche’s conception of tragedy, and in the related phenomenon of cultural renewal, than commentators usually allow. By going on to argue for music’s life-affirming contribution to tragedy, I am not disputing that music must be combined with the plastic arts, and the words and concepts in language, for culture to remain life- affirming. Rather, my point is that this usual interpretation of BT underestimates the creative, transformative power of music by positing that the Apollinian and Dionysian principles contribute equally to tragedy. Indeed, music’s transformative potential is particularly striking in BT 8, where Nietzsche describes how its disindividuating effect dissolves both the barriers between the participants in the “chorus” as well as the
“fourth wall” between these participants and the “spectators”.530 Due to music’s capacity to bring people together, tragedy, he claims, ultimately “represents not
Apollinian redemption through mere appearance but, on the contrary, the shattering of the individual and his fusion with primal being”.531 What is somewhat lacking in BT, however, is a comprehensive account of the origins of music’s transformative power for the early Nietzsche. In the remainder of this chapter, I suggest that the unpublished essays help to address this omission by showing how music is transformative in ways that are metaphysical, corporeal, affective and intersubjective.
530 BT 8: 62-64. 531 BT 8: 65. 121
2. Music and language in “The Dionysian Worldview” and “On Music and Words”
In his discussion of the relationship between music and language in “The Dionysian
Worldview” and “On Music and Words”, Nietzsche establishes a crucial connection between music’s life-affirming force and the body, affect and intersubjectivity. This emphasis on the body and affect helps to explain the communicative and expressive potential of the two key elements that comprise his early conception of the relationship between language and existence, namely, Dionysian “tone” (Ton) and Apollinian
“gestures” (Geberde). And, as I will illustrate later, it also accounts for music’s creative, transformative power. Nietzsche’s attribution of a crucial role to the body and affect in human communication also renders his theory of language unique. Unlike traditional epistemological and metaphysical theories or approaches, Nietzsche, in his linguistic theory, does not espouse the view that the body and affect are inferior substitutes to cognitive ways of existing in, and knowing about, the world. Rather, for reasons I will discuss later, he privileges the “nonconscious” dimension of language (i.e. its corporeal and affective aspect) over its “conscious” dimension that manifests itself in
“thought”, the latter of which he conceptualises as a “chain of concepts”.532
Moreover, the role he assigns to the body in communication is not the widespread view that so-called “body language” is simply the expression of pre-existing mental states or attitudes through non-verbal means. In contrast, as Nietzsche suggests in other texts that he wrote around the same time as BT and the unpublished essays (e.g. “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”, hereafter TL), the body is precisely what allows words and concepts to come into existence. In TL, Nietzsche claims that the production of
532 DW 4: 92 & 95. 122
words and concepts is made possible through the construction of “metaphors” that stem from our sensory capacities of hearing and vision.533 As I will demonstrate in chapter five, like Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty also emphasises the integral role played by the body and affect in generating the transformative power of both language and music.
In “The Dionysian Worldview”, Nietzsche posits that Dionysian “tone” and Apollinian
“gestures” partake in what he calls the “double being of feeling”.534 In this “double being”, tone symbolises the “will” and gestures symbolise “representation”.535 The notion of “will” that tone symbolises in this essay refers to Schopenhauer’s concept of the “individual will”, that is, the Will objectified in the “world as representation”.536
Before venturing too deeply into this discussion of gestures and tone, some clarifying remarks need to be made concerning Nietzsche’s overall notion of “feeling” in these early unpublished essays. In “The Dionysian Worldview”, Nietzsche bases “feeling” partly in affect, that is, in “pleasure or displeasure”, and partly in cognition.537
“Feeling” has a cognitive aspect, he argues, because it can be partly “translated into”, and explicated in terms of, “thoughts” or “conscious representations”.538 He thus uses the term “representations” loosely here to describe the imagistic aspects of both cognitive and corporeal forms of language, including words (which he believes originate in the image).
533 More specifically, Nietzsche suggests in TL that the production of words involves passing through two stages of “metaphor” (TL 1: 82). First, the “nerve stimulus” that is produced in our bodies by a particular object/phenomenon in the external world is “transferred into an image” (Ibid.). Second, the “image, in turn, is imitated in a sound” (Ibid.). Nietzsche argues that the “concept” subsequently appears when a particular word ceases to designate a “unique and entirely individual original experience” (that begins with the provocation of a “nerve stimulus”) and comes to designate something of wider significance (TL 1: 83). This change occurs when the word comes to signify “countless more or less similar cases” of the “original experience” (Ibid.). 534 DW 4: 92 (emphasis in original). 535 Ibid., 92-93. 536 Nietzsche claims in “The Dionysian Worldview” that he has derived his notion of the “double being of feeling” from Schopenhauer’s notion of “feeling” as a “complex of nonconscious representations and states of will” (Ibid., 92). 537 Ibid. 538 Ibid. 123
In “The Dionysian Worldview”, music is implicated in Nietzsche’s notion of the
“double being of feeling”. For him, music is derived from tone (for reasons I will explain later), and tone, as I have just discussed, is in turn part of this “double being of feeling”. However, by the time he comes to write “On Music and Words”, Nietzsche seems to have largely dissociated music from his notion of “feeling”. To clarify his use of the term “feeling” in “On Music and Words”, I will later make use of Allison’s helpful distinction between “feelings (Gefühle) and emotions (Affekte)” that he claims features in this essay.539 In brief, Allison suggests that, while the “emotions (Affekte)”, for Nietzsche, have the capacity to produce the Dionysian-musical “state of disindividuation”, the “feelings (Gefühle)” do not.540 This is due to Nietzsche’s claim in
“On Music and Words” that “feelings” already contain representations and can thus only provide us with indirect rather than direct access to the (distinctly non- representational) realm of music.541 I will expand on these various conceptions of affect in Nietzsche’s early philosophy, in conjunction with Allison’s analysis of them, in section three.
I can now proceed with the earlier discussion of gestures and tone. When considered as a whole, the insights that these essays offer about Nietzsche’s early linguistic and aesthetic views suggest that tone is central to his notions of both language and music.
Whereas this section focusses on the relationship between tone and language, in section three, I will explore how, under certain conditions, tone actually produces music in the
“dionysian dithyramb”. My overall suggestion is that music’s basis in tone means that
539 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 31. 540 Ibid. 541 MW: 111-12. 124
its transformative effect in tragedy could be derived from its intertwining with the metaphysical, intersubjective, corporeal and affective dimensions of human existence.
Similar to the disindividuating effect of music, tone possesses the distinctly Dionysian capacity in language to merge people in the “flux” of existence by symbolising their shared basis in the “inmost ground of the world”. Insofar as it is able to connect people with the underlying “ground” of existence, tone, for Nietzsche, is metaphysically significant. These fundamental aspects of tone’s role in existence can be deduced from three specific claims that he makes in these essays. First, tone symbolises the
“stirrings” or “strivings” of the individual will.542 Second, these “stirrings”/“strivings” are in turn symbolised by the various “types of pleasure and displeasure”.543 Third, tone is “universal” because these “sensations of pleasure and displeasure” are essentially
“expressions of one primeval ground” of existence in which all humans partake,544 that is, the “mysterious primordial unity” to which he refers in BT.
Due to its basis in the “universal language” of affect, so to speak, tone is “intelligible” across different languages.545 Its ability to transcend linguistic barriers is what allows it to unite people in the “flux” of existence through the creative act of communication.
Nietzsche argues that it is this powerful disindividuating force that makes tone the primary source of the richness of language. He contrasts this with the hollowness and sterility of the “concept” and “thought”. Being completely divorced from tone, these cognitive aspects of language, he argues, are thereby also separated from the origin of
542 DW 4: 92-93. 543 Ibid., 93. 544 MW: 108 (emphasis in original). 545 Ibid. 125
language’s fecundity.546 Nietzsche’s characterisations of the “concept” and “thought” thus recall Schopenhauer’s description of the “concept” as “eternally barren and unproductive in art” 547 because it has been divorced from its perceptual roots.
Due to its fundamental role in language, tone, Nietzsche suggests, forms the basis of gestures.548 According to him, gestures feature in both language and the plastic arts. In language, gestures refer to “consonants”, “vowels” and the words they form.549 In art, they mainly refer to the imagistic aspects of painting and sculpture.550 Gestures, he claims, are Apollinian because they carve the world up into isolated images.551 While, for Nietzsche, gestures may also partake in music, this only occurs under particular circumstances that I will return to discuss in section three. In comparison with tone, he argues that gestures are of secondary importance, because, as I mentioned earlier, they can only symbolise the “accompanying” or “all other representations” in language.552
For example, he claims that painting and sculpture represent individual human beings.553 The latter are themselves images or representations of the “inmost essence” of the world.554 In this way, gestures, in his view, are twice removed from the underlying “ground” of existence.
To highlight the diminished communicative and transformative power of gestures in language, Nietzsche contrasts their largely reactive, mimetic, fragmented and variable qualities with the active, on-going capacity of tone to unite people through the
546 DW 4: 94-95. 547 WWR I, 235. 548 MW: 108. 549 Ibid. 550 DW 4: 93. 551 DW 4: 92-93; MW: 116. 552 DW 4: 93; MW: 108. 553 DW 4: 93. 554 MW: 107. 126
“universal language” of affect. To demonstrate their fragmented and reactive nature, he describes these “symbols” in the “gesture language” as “wholly incomplete, partial image[s]” that are “produced as reflex movements”.555 These mimetic gestural symbols,
Nietzsche suggests, are widely understood amongst people through corporeal,
“instinctive” means, provoking “sympathetic” bodily movements in those who view them, sometimes being mirrored directly in the “same facial part or limbs”.556
Furthermore, although a particular gesture may be widely recognised, it is nevertheless
“arbitrary” because, for Nietzsche, it is merely a “sign that hints” at something to be understood.557 Hence, its meaning is contingent and variable rather than fixed. He argues that the arbitrary and variable nature of gestures is evidenced by the existence of a “multiplicity of languages”.558 By this, he means that a particular combination of consonants and vowels in a particular word may not designate the same object in, or aspect of, the world across different languages.559 For example, the word “encore” means “again” in French but signifies a request for a repeated performance in English.
While, in these unpublished essays at least, Nietzsche does not seem to regard the variable and arbitrary nature of words as contributing to the creative power of language, this is not always the case in his other works. For example, in TL, Nietzsche actually regards this lack of fixity in language as producing its creative and artistic potential.
There, he appeals to the existence of many different languages and the arbitrary nature of words and concepts to illustrate their actual distance from the “question of truth”, if
“truth” is understood in its traditional sense of being “pure”, absolute and
555 DW 4: 92. 556 Ibid. 557 DW 4: 92; MW: 108. 558 MW: 107-108. 559 Ibid. 127
incontestable.560 He argues that the “anthropomorphic” and social origins of both words and concepts entail that so-called “truths” (which are derived from concepts) are actually mere constructs fabricated by humans to facilitate their own self-preservation within a society.561 By suggesting that truth, words and concepts are but arbitrary human constructs, Nietzsche seems to draw both truth and language closer to the notion of art (which would include music). For him, art, truth and language are united by their nature as a creative enterprise insofar as their goal is not to reproduce reality or describe the way the world “really” is, but rather to present a particular interpretation of it. His unconventional view that both truth and language are inherently creative is reinforced in his description of the origin of the concept as the “artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images”.562 Similarly, as I will demonstrate in chapter five, Merleau-
Ponty also argues against the traditional notion that language merely translates absolute and eternal truths that are taken to be direct representations of nature. Like Nietzsche, he also suggests that the inherent creativity of language makes it analogous to art, including music.
In these particular unpublished essays, however, Nietzsche’s preference for Dionysian tone over Apollinian gestures suggests that he thereby favours the communal, uniting function of language in existence (as signified by tone’s reference to the shared
“primeval ground”) over the individuating one fulfilled by gestures. His view of language here thus largely diverges from the traditional notion of language. The latter usually privileges the Apollinian principle of individuation by emphasising the capacity of separate words or concepts to represent, and differentiate between, particular things in the world. Hence, Higgins argues that Nietzsche’s privileging of the disindividuating
560 TL 1: 82. 561 Ibid., 80-81 & 83. 562 Ibid., 85. 128
function of tone over the individuating function of gestures reminds us that the “human use of language presupposes our implicit recognition that we share a common biological ground of experience with other human beings”.563 She locates this “common biological ground” in the sensations of pleasure and pain that Nietzsche claims tone expresses.564 Higgins emphasises that it is only by virtue of having this “common biological basis for experience” that our “words” (i.e. our gestures) can be understood by, and resonate with, people other than ourselves.565 It is also this notion of a
“common” foundation for collective experience that Strong regards as essential to understanding the role that music (which is based in tone) plays in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Strong claims that “music provides for Nietzsche a foundation of commonality – of that which we have in common with some other and of which we have a share”.566
Crucially, a parallel can be established between Nietzsche’s preference for Dionysian tone over Apollinian gestures in language and his preference for Dionysian music over the Apollinian plastic arts in tragedy. Consistent with the traditional interpretation of
BT where both the Apollinian and Dionysian elements are required to produce tragedy’s life-affirming potential, these essays suggest that they also need to coexist in language in order to enhance its communicative and expressive power. The inseparability of tone from gestures is reinforced in Nietzsche’s claim that they usually accompany each other in the “dionysian dithyramb” whereby “every gesture is paralleled by a tone”.567 As I will later reveal, tone only exists in isolation (i.e. unaccompanied by gestures) during
563 Kathleen Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music”, Journal of the History of Ideas 47, no. 4 (October-December 1986): 666. 564 Ibid., 665. 565 Ibid., 666. 566 Strong, “The Tragic Ethos and The Spirit of Music”, 84. 567 DW 4: 94. 129
the most extreme affective states. The complete separation of gestures from tone in art thus cannot be sustained for extended periods of time.
Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s description of the finer details of this interaction between tone and gestures is also consistent with my alternative interpretation of BT where the
Apollinian principle only plays a secondary, facilitating role in tragedy as opposed to being an equal contributor to the tragic transformation of existence. In language, gestures, while certainly not to be overlooked, only support tone by tempering the metaphysical force that tone expresses through their symbolic powers of representation.
In the same way that Apollinian images (when unaccompanied by Dionysian music) lack transformative power in tragedy, gestures without tone would be empty and lifeless in language. Conversely, without gestures, people would be crippled by their extended exposure to tone just as they would be crippled by their direct exposure to music in tragedy.
Significantly, by basing music in Dionysian tone, Nietzsche thereby also suggests that music is more fundamental than Apollonian words, concepts and images. As Higgins observes, even though “music lacks the particular referential power of words, […]
Nietzsche does not regard this as an indication of a lack of power on the part of music”.568 In BT 5, Nietzsche thus aligns himself with Schiller’s “psychological observation” that the “musical mood” is more essential than, and generated prior to, the
“poetical idea” in lyric poetry.569 By suggesting that music is more fundamental than
568 Higgins, “Nietzsche on Music”, 671. In “Music or the Mistaken Life”, Higgins posits that Nietzsche essentially “holds that music is both developmentally and ontologically prior to language” (by which she means its Apollinian aspects), a “position” that she argues aligns him with “earlier evolutionary thinkers” like Darwin (Higgins, “Music or the Mistaken Life”, 119-20). 569 BT 5: 49. 130
the Apollinian elements of language, Nietzsche thereby also departs from the more traditional view that music is based on, and emulates, language. Music’s various structural elements are typically taken to mimic those of language, for example, musical cadences are said to resemble phrasing and punctuation. In contrast, he makes the unconventional claim that, “in the poetry of the folk song, language is strained to its utmost that it may imitate music”.570 Indeed, he argues that Apollinian images, words and concepts will never quite be able to approximate the profound metaphysical significance that music embodies and must therefore rely on music’s “power” because they cannot generate their own.571 This, Nietzsche argues, is because they lack music’s powerful “Dionysian content”, which, as I suggested earlier, is constituted by the
“primordial contradiction and primordial pain” that he claims expresses the underlying
“ground” of existence.572 Since this “ground”, for him, constitutes a “sphere which is beyond and prior to all [Apollinian] phenomena”, it is thereby inaccessible to the words and concepts of language which are, after all, themselves merely the “organ and symbol of phenomena”.573
Due to its powerful “Dionysian content”, Nietzsche also advocates protecting music’s position of “absolute sovereignty” over the Apollinian aspects of art and language.574
This is a view he inherits from Schopenhauer. As I suggested in chapter two,
Schopenhauer regards music as an “independent art” which does not require the accompaniment of words to enhance its transformative effect on the listener.575
Nietzsche goes even further than Schopenhauer by making the bold claim that music
570 BT 6: 53 (emphasis in original). 571 BT 6: 54. 572 BT 6: 54-55 (emphasis in original). 573 BT 6: 55. 574 Ibid. 575 WWR II, 448. 131
“does not need the image and the concept, but merely endures them as accompaniments”.576 Indeed, Nietzsche challenges the very prospect of employing music as a “means” for the “intensification and clarification” of Apollinian images and concepts.577 In metaphorical terms, he believes that it would be as if a “son desired to beget his father”.578 It is not surprising, then, that he views “bad music” as that in which the influence of the Apollinian element has overwhelmed that of the
Dionysian.579 In particular, he argues in “On Music and Words” that music compromises its inherently “self-sufficient” nature in opera by lending its services to
Apollinian images and words.580 Music does so, he claims, by “remind[ing]” the audience of particular things that will enable them to better comprehend the events that are unfolding onstage, such as the inclusion of “noisy drums and bugles” as a signal for war.581
The great value that Nietzsche attributes to music also brings to light a potential connection between his philosophy and Adorno’s. While Nietzsche does not refer to music’s inherent ineffability in his aesthetics, two parallels can nevertheless be drawn between his idea of music’s disindividuating effect and Adorno’s idea of music’s
“enigma”. First, for Nietzsche, music’s disindividuating effect means that it cannot designate particular things/phenomena in the world. Similarly, Adorno argues that this inability to pick out particular things/phenomena is the primary reason for why music is particularly “enigmatic”. Second, Adorno considers music’s particularly “enigmatic
576 BT 6: 55 (emphases in original). This echoes Schopenhauer’s relatively less earnest claim (which I also mentioned in chapter two) that if words are “incorporated in the music, therefore, they must of course occupy only an entirely subordinate position, and adapt themselves completely to it” (WWR II, 448). 577 MW: 115-16. 578 Ibid., 109. 579 Ibid., 117. 580 Ibid., 117-18. 581 Ibid., 118. 132
character” as its defining feature rather than a weakness that would make it relatively inferior to language and the visual arts. Analogously, Nietzsche argues that music’s disindividuating effect does not make it any less valuable as an art form or inferior to language. Indeed, as I have just suggested, he posits that it makes music even more valuable than the Apollinian individuating features of both art and language.
Having examined Nietzsche’s early conception of language, I now turn to a more detailed examination of the relationship between music and the two key linguistic elements of gestures and tone with respect to two main claims that I have signalled at various points in this chapter. The first claim concerns the potential metaphysical, intersubjective, corporeal and affective origins of music’s transformative power in tragedy. The second concerns Nietzsche’s apparent privileging of Dionysian music over the Apollinian plastic arts in the context of generating tragedy’s life-affirming potential. These two claims will be examined in terms of the relationship between art and language in Nietzsche’s conception of the “dionysian dithyramb”. I do this for two reasons. First, since the “dithyramb” is an art form that is a direct precursor of tragedy, a discussion of music’s crucial role in generating the transformative potential of the
“dithyramb” could bring us closer to discovering how Nietzsche conceives of music’s transformative potential in tragedy. Second, since the “dithyramb” represents the nexus of art and language for Nietzsche, an analysis of it could permit further examination of the potential parallel between the dynamics of the Apollinian-Dionysian relationship in language and those in tragedy.
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3. The transformative power of music
As I suggested in section one, our experience of music’s life-affirming power transforms how we perceive the more pessimistic aspects of human existence that are encapsulated in Silenus’ wisdom. Here, I draw out the possible mechanisms behind, and stages of, this transformative process mainly from Nietzsche’s portrayal of the
“dithyramb” in “The Dionysian Worldview”. In his view, the “dithyramb” represents the intersection of language and art because it merges his linguistic notions of
Apollinian gestures and Dionysian tone. As I mentioned earlier, in contrast with BT,
Nietzsche suggests in this essay that music only intervenes in the process of disindividuation after the point where the more fundamental boundaries between humans and nature are dissolved. To explain how this is so, the following discussion will show how Dionysian tone (from which music is derived) rather than Apollinian gestures (from which the plastic arts are derived) acts as the main catalyst for, and contributor to, producing the state of disindividuation in which this life-affirming transformation of existence takes place.
In “The Dionysian Worldview”, Nietzsche claims that gestures (e.g. in dance) in the dithyramb only institute the process of producing the state of disindividuation. They do so by symbolising the dissolution of the boundaries between people. Or, as Nietzsche puts it, gestures symbolise the transformation of a mere individual amongst other individuals into a “species-man” belonging to a “race”.582 While it seems odd to say that gestures can contribute to the state of disindividuation, we shall shortly see that, for him, the distinction between the Apollinian and Dionysian elements is occasionally
582 DW 4: 94 (emphasis in original). 134
blurred in the generation of art’s transformative power. Nietzsche’s description of this process in “The Dionysian Worldview” pre-empts and closely resembles his later depiction in BT of this transformation within the “dithyrambic chorus” as “magic[al]”, collective and corporeal.583 In BT 8, he suggests that a “whole throng” of people in the
Dionysian state of intoxication start to behave as though they have “actually entered into another body, another character”.584 Nietzsche does not seem to be referring here to the anthropological definition of particular races (e.g. White, Asian, Hispanic, etc.).
Rather, “race” here seems to refer to a “community” of people who, through a
“surrender of [their] individuality”, begin to experience a profound “metamorphosis” through art.585 In this “aesthetic phenomenon”, he argues, the participants in this
“higher community” are initiated into an extraordinary realm where the mundane aspects of their individual lives (e.g. their “social status” within a particular sector of society) assume little importance.586
However, Nietzsche stresses that it is really with tone that the transformative power of art that gestures have begun to invoke intensifies and comes to the fore when this metamorphosis in the Dionysian state of disindividuation approaches its completion. In keeping with its uniting function in language, tone, and its accompanying sensations of pleasure and displeasure, expresses a human being’s merging with nature to partake in the “original oneness” (i.e. the “mysterious primordial unity”) that underlies existence.587 The central role that tone (rather than gestures) plays in this process of disindividuation lies in its unique ability to give birth to music in the dithyramb.
583 BT 8: 64. 584 Ibid. 585 Ibid. 586 BT 1: 37 & BT 8: 64. 587 DW 4: 94. 135
According to Nietzsche, music is born at the point where tone becomes “pure tone”.588
This, for him, in turn occurs when the corporeal and affective transformation reaches its peak amongst a group of people. In his view, the “gesture language no longer suffice[s]” at this point because of its inability to capture the “extreme conditions of pleasure and displeasure of the [individual] will” that only “pure tone” can express.589
Specifically, Nietzsche argues that music (or “pure tone”) manifests itself most noticeably in the “powerful and unmediated” nature of the human “cry” that expresses the “ecstasy of the feelings” peculiar to the Dionysian state of intoxication.590
When Nietzsche associates the human cry with “pure tone”, he seems to be referring to the purity of the “naked” human voice, that is, the voice unaccompanied by words and instruments and which is used spontaneously rather than within the specific context of a musical performance. In making this assumption, I am diverging from the conventional notion of “pure tone” in music. This concerns a tone that only possesses one frequency and thus produces no overtones. In contrast, the human cry that is produced during the
Dionysian “ecstasy of the feelings” would probably not generate such an unwavering, refined sound, but rather a raw, raucous and perhaps richer one.
If interpreted as thus, Nietzsche’s association of music with “pure tone” is unusual because it also challenges the conventional definition of “music” as “organised sound”.
A spontaneous human cry would probably be considered too unrefined to be subsumed under this conventional definition because its indeterminacies and/or inconsistencies in pitch, duration, timbre, etc. would condemn it to the realm of “mere noise”. However,
Nietzsche’s subversion of this conventional definition also seems to be curiously
588 Ibid. 589 Ibid. 590 Ibid., emphasis in original. 136
consistent with another widespread view that music’s largely non-representational and a-conceptual nature allows it to express what words are unable to. Nietzsche could be evoking the idea that, during the extremes of human corporeal and affective experience that music expresses, we utter sounds rather than words - we laugh, cry, scream, etc.
The Dionysian realm of music thus emerges from the shadows at the moment when the light of the Apollinian world of images begins to wane. Music speaks for us where words cannot and are thereby dissolved into silence.
In “On Music and Words”, Nietzsche makes the rather obscure claim that music’s
“origin” “lie[s] in the lap of the power that in the form of the ‘will’ generates a visionary world”.591 I will shortly return to discuss the particular sense in which he might be using the term, “will”, here. In so doing, I will also address possible reasons for why Nietzsche situates music’s origin in the “lap of the power” that assumes the
“form of the ‘will”’ rather than directly in the “will” itself. First, however, I want to examine the overall meaning of Nietzsche’s claim. While this claim seems to be unrelated to the augmented affective states mentioned in “The Dionysian Worldview”,
Allison’s analysis of “On Music and Words” helps to illuminate how, for Nietzsche,
“affect” constitutes music’s foundations. Allison argues that affect, in Nietzsche’s early aesthetics, is the driving force that “occasions the artist’s state of dispossession” that music symbolises.592 However, he also clarifies here that Nietzsche only links a particular type of affect with music in “On Music and Words”. As I mentioned earlier, he suggests that Nietzsche only associates the “emotions (Affekte)” rather than the
591 MW: 111. 592 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 30-31. 137
“feelings (Gefühle)” with the ability to produce the Dionysian-musical state of disindividuation.593
Several assertions that Nietzsche makes in “On Music and Words” help to illuminate the reasons behind this distinction between the two types of affect that Allison proposes.
In this essay, Nietzsche defines the “feelings (Gefühle)” as the sensations of pleasure and displeasure that are “already permeated and saturated by conscious and unconscious representations”.594 Inasmuch as they already contain representations, these “feelings”, for Nietzsche, would also seem to partake in the Apollonian realm of individuation.
This helps to explain his further claim that feelings can neither produce, nor provide us with direct access to, the Dionysian-musical state of disindividuation.595 At most, he claims that they can only ever put listeners in indirect contact with music via a
“symbolic intermediate realm that can give them a foretaste of music while at the same time […] exclud[ing] them from its inmost sanctuaries”.596 Examples of “feelings” that he provides here include “love, fear, and hope”.597 While he does not really go into detail about how/why such feelings provide us with a “foretaste of music”, we could suppose that they are evoked by certain gestures (i.e. what he regards as the representational aspect of language) such as a tender embrace (“love”) or a widening of one’s eyes (“fear”) that may offer us a glimpse of music’s transformative power.
In contrast with the “feelings”, Allison claims that the “emotions” that lie at music’s core for Nietzsche are fundamentally non-representational because they involve an
“emotional dissociation or detachment of affective states (Affekte) from specific object
593 Ibid., 31. 594 MW: 110-11. 595 Ibid., 111-12. 596 Ibid., 112. 597 Ibid., 111. 138
relations”, that is, from individual representations.598 He explains this claim further by suggesting that, in the “state of extreme excitement” that tone institutes, these “intense emotional states lose their conventional associations and tend toward reinvesting their objects of pleasure with more immediate, hallucinatory cathexes”.599 For example, during such “hallucinatory” episodes, where one would ordinarily see shadows on a wall, one might instead see large, fearsome, mythical creatures. Due to its radical subversion of so-called “ordinary experience”, Allison associates this Dionysian state of disindividuation with “madness, hysterical conversion, or psychosis”.600
Similarly, Richard Schacht also observes that music’s remarkable capacity to subvert
“ordinary experience” is a theme that persists throughout Nietzsche’s philosophy. For example, he claims that, “Nietzsche had begun, in BT, by associating music with the psychophysiological phenomenon of intoxication, and by conceiving of it as a kind of ecstatic outburst into both sound and movement, tending to shatter artificial constraints and forms of all kinds”. 601 However, Schacht also goes on to argue that:
[Nietzsche] also came to be greatly interested in the contrasting features of
music, without which it would not be music at all, but rather mere chaotic noise
and frenzy: rhythm and harmony. These are ordering features, seemingly more
Apollinian than Dionysian; and yet they are the keys to the transformation of
noise and frenzy into music and dance. And it is precisely the imbalance of
598 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 31 (emphasis in original). 599 Ibid., 31-32. 600 Ibid., 32. 601 Richard Schacht, “Nietzsche, Music, Truth, Value, and Life”, International Studies in Philosophy 35, no. 3 (2003): 140. 139
these features, intensifying stimulation at the expense of regulation, that he
found so dangerously seductive in Wagner.602
While Nietzsche had yet to completely break from Wagner at the time of writing BT,603 he even seems to challenge his notion that music is purely Dionysian as early on as
“The Dionysian Worldview”. In this essay, he demonstrates that the necessary inseparability of Apollinian gestures and Dionysian tone entails that they can sometimes even coexist with, and interpenetrate, each other in music. Indeed, he appears to suggest that, in some respects, music involves both Dionysian tone and Apollinian gestures.604 This, he argues, is because musical “rhythm and dynamic are to a certain extent the exterior of the [individual] will” manifested partly as “individual appearance”, that is, as representation.605 It is presumably due to this partial manifestation of music as “appearance” that Nietzsche makes the uncharacteristic claim that, “from this side music can be developed as the art of [Apollinian] illusion”.606
While Nietzsche does not really offer an explanation of this claim, he does mention how certain “unpleasurable feelings” symbolised by particular musical rhythms attain the most clarity when expressed through gestures.607 He refers in particular to the feelings associated with the “pain of sudden shock, of ‘beating, drawing, palpitating, stinging, cutting, biting, even tickling’”.608 We could suppose that such violent manifestations of pain would lend themselves to being expressed by percussive rhythms that are more
602 Ibid. 603 Dahlhaus claims that, even though “On Music and Words” was “written at a time when Nietzsche’s friendship with Wagner was still unclouded”, it contains an “implicit polemic against some of the fundamental theses of Wagner’s aesthetic theory” (Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism, 19). In particular, he thinks that the early Nietzsche critiques the key argument in Wagner’s Opera and Drama that “music must be a means at the service of drama” (Ibid., 27). As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, Nietzsche argues instead that music ought to be privileged over the events that occur onstage in drama. 604 DW 4: 93-94. 605 Ibid., 94. 606 Ibid., emphasis in original. 607 Ibid., 93. 608 Ibid. 140
Apollinian than Dionysian in nature. For instance, they would most likely contain sharp accents that emphasise individual notes, beats or off-beats as opposed to long, sustained notes whose boundaries are less clearly defined.
In contrast with rhythm and dynamic, Nietzsche claims that “harmony” is the unique element that is completely non-gestural because it symbolises the “pure essence of the
[W]ill”.609 This suggests that harmony, for him, is the sole aspect of music that directly and completely symbolises the underlying “ground” of existence. Just as the Will is the force that unites all forms of existence, harmony, Nietzsche claims, is the musical element that unites all the different voices or parts of a musical piece. Furthermore, just as the Will is fundamentally opposed to “appearance” or representation, harmony, as its
“symbol”, also cannot manifest itself as “appearance” or representation.610
Admittedly, it is difficult here to reconcile Nietzsche’s claims that music as “pure tone” dispenses with gestures whereas music that contains rhythm and dynamic is partly gestural and thus not completely Dionysian. Nevertheless, such curious contradictions are not unusual when considered within the broader context of his overall corpus of works. After all, he infamously states in section 381 of The Gay Science (hereafter GS),
“[o]ne does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood.”611 In this circumstance, however, further exploration of this apparent contradiction in Nietzsche’s account of music could give rise to a more interesting and richer interpretation of BT and the early unpublished essays.
609 Ibid., 94. 610 Ibid. 611 GS V: 381; 343 (emphasis in original). 141
On this interpretation, his challenge to the Apollinian/Dionysian distinction could reflect his view that human experience is rendered more complex (e.g. in terms of our affective and corporeal states) at the height of the transformative power of art. As such, theoretical explorations of this power must also capture these complexities and extremes of human experience. A parallel can be established between the occasional lack of distinction between Apollinian gestures and Dionysian tone in the dithyramb (as apparent in “The Dionysian Worldview”) and the similar interpenetration of the
Apollinian plastic arts and Dionysian music in tragedy (as apparent in BT). In “The
Dionysian Worldview”, Nietzsche claims that the intensification of the transformative power of art in the dithyramb results in the “collective release of all the symbolic powers” (including those of music) because the “world of the [W]ill longs for an unheard of symbolic expression” through the “powers of harmony” (i.e. tone) as well as
“dynamic and rhythm” (i.e. gestures and tone).612 Similarly, at the height of tragedy’s transformative power, pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, creation and destruction are intermingled to such an extent that the roles played by the Apollinian and Dionysian principles necessarily become less determinate. As I suggested in section one, these roles are ultimately reversed in tragedy such that the Apollinian principle of individuation represents human suffering whereas the Dionysian principle of disindividuation signifies life-affirmation.
612 DW 4: 95. This description of the “collective release of all the symbolic powers” in the dithyramb in “The Dionysian Worldview” is later expressed in very similar terms in BT 2. There, Nietzsche states:
In the Dionysian dithyramb man is incited to the greatest exaltation of all his symbolic faculties; something never before experienced struggles for utterance – the annihilation of the veil of māyā, oneness as the soul of the race and of nature itself. The essence of nature is now to be expressed symbolically; we need a new world of symbols; and the entire symbolism of the body is called into play, not the mere symbolism of the lips, face, and speech but the whole pantomime of dancing, forcing every member into rhythmic movement. Then the other symbolic powers suddenly press forward, particularly those of music, rhythmics, dynamics, and harmony. (BT 2: 40) 142
While the Apollinian/Dionysian distinction may sometimes be blurred in Nietzsche’s account of art/tragedy, I do not believe that this observation detracts from my overall argument in this chapter that music’s transformative power is the primary source of the generation of tragedy’s life-affirming potential by virtue of its powerful “Dionysian content”. The suggestion that the roles of the Apollinian and Dionysian principles are sometimes indistinct does not override the fact that music’s origins are fundamentally
Dionysian for Nietzsche nor does it eliminate the essential differences between them.
The claim that Nietzsche privileges Dionysian music over the Apollinian plastic arts could thus still be maintained. In fact, Nietzsche suggests in BT that the fragility of
Apollinian illusions is ultimately exposed in the “total effect of tragedy” when their very presence is undermined by the sheer force of “Dionysian wisdom”.613 Hence, tragedy’s essential nature would seem to be revealed most clearly and potently for him when Dionysian music’s transformative force, that manifests itself in ways that are metaphysical, corporeal, affective and intersubjective, threatens to overwhelm the
Apollinian realm of individuation.
Conducting a closer examination of these interrelated dimensions of music’s transformative force requires me to address an important debate surrounding
Nietzsche’s philosophy. Central to this debate is the question concerning the type of role (or lack thereof) that Schopenhauer’s notion of the Will plays in Nietzsche’s early writings on music. This debate, in turn, raises the broader and more significant issue of the extent to which his early aesthetics were actually influenced by Schopenhauer’s metaphysics at all. It is in the following passage from “On Music and Words” that
Nietzsche signals his departure from Schopenhauer most explicitly. He states:
613 BT 21: 129-30. 143
Even the whole realm of drives, the interplay of feelings, sensations, emotions,
and acts of will, is known to us when we examine ourselves most closely – as I
must interpose against Schopenhauer – only as representation and not according
to its essence. We may add that even Schopenhauer’s “will” is nothing but the
most general manifestation of something that is otherwise totally indecipherable
for us.614
By “something that is otherwise totally indecipherable for us”, Nietzsche is referring to the underlying “ground” of existence that music symbolises.615 Curiously, however, whereas Nietzsche associates this “ground” with the Schopenhauerian Will in both “The
Dionysian Worldview” and BT, he appears to challenge this association in this and other passages in “On Music and Words”. For example, Nietzsche claims in “On Music and
Words” that the Schopenhauerian Will is itself only the “most general” or “primordial manifestation” of this “ground”.616 He does not go on to explain what he actually means by “manifestation” here. However, one observation we can make is that, although Nietzsche does not explicitly call the Will a “representation”, he nevertheless appears to suggest that the Will partakes in representation inasmuch as our access to, and hence knowledge of, this “ground” is limited to the representations.617 In this essay, then, it seems that the Schopenhauerian Will, for him, can only be understood as the
Will as objectified in the “world as representation” (i.e. the individual will) rather than the “thing-in-itself”. Given that, in his view, the Schopenhauerian “will” appears to be, to a certain extent, representational, it would also seem to be related to the Apollinian
614 MW: 107-108. 615 Ibid., 108. 616 Ibid., 108-109 (emphasis added). 617 Ibid., 107-108. 144
realm of individuation. Hence, at least in “On Music and Words”, then, this connection of the “will” with individuation would seem to preclude it from constituting music’s foundations. This could help to explain why, as I mentioned earlier, Nietzsche situates music’s origin in the “lap of the power” that assumes the “form of the ‘will’” rather than directly in the “will” itself.
The ambiguous role that the “will” plays in “On Music and Words” could suggest that
Nietzsche’s views of the relationship between music and Schopenhauer’s metaphysics had changed in between writing the two unpublished essays. Indeed, the broader issue of how/why/the degree to which Nietzsche’s attitude towards Schopenhauer’s metaphysics evolved between his early and later works is still debated amongst commentators. For example, Christoph Cox remarks that, “[f]rom the perspective of
Nietzsche’s mature work, The Birth of Tragedy is often seen as a problematic text. Its rich philological insights notwithstanding, the text seems to endorse a Kantian-
Schopenhauerian dualism of appearance and thing-in-itself that, in his mature work,
Nietzsche virulently repudiates.”618
With respect to this debate, Allison suggests that the early Nietzsche had already begun to distance himself from Schopenhauer’s metaphysics. For example, in “Some Remarks on Nietzsche’s Draft of 1871, ‘On Music and Words’”, he responds to the passage from
“On Music and Words” that I cited earlier by claiming that, “[t]his is surely one of the earliest (and strongest) critiques Nietzsche had yet made against metaphysical speculation, and it effectively closes the door to metaphysics’ intrusion into
618 Christoph Cox, “Nietzsche, Dionysus, and the Ontology of Music”, in A Companion to Nietzsche, ed. Keith Ansell Pearson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 497. 145
aesthetics”.619 This, Allison argues, is because the Will becomes, for Nietzsche, a
“representation that is shorn of explicitly metaphysical claims, i.e., it is henceforth metaphysically neutered”.620 Allison’s main justification for making this bold claim is that the Dionysian state of disindividuation, being fundamentally “experiential”, affective and “psychological”, is thereby firmly situated within the “domain of natural life” rather than in the “positively stated noumenal reality” that the Schopenhauerian
Will symbolises.621 In his earlier article, “Nietzsche Knows no Noumenon”, Allison also makes a similar claim, but in relation to BT as opposed to “On Music and Words”.
There, he also argues against a metaphysical reading of the Dionysian principle in BT by positing that it should not be aligned with a “‘deeper reality’” that corresponds with the “Schopenhauerian world will or the Kantian noumenal reality”.622
I agree with Allison that Schopenhauer’s metaphysics appears to assume less importance in “On Music and Words” due to the ambiguous role that his notion of the
Will seems to play in this essay. Nevertheless, I also find Allison’s conclusion that a metaphysical dimension is thereby absent from Nietzsche’s early works, even starting from the final passages of “The Dionysian Worldview”,623 a little hasty. My alternative suggestion is that, even if we grant the waning influence of Schopenhauer’s philosophy
619 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 24. 620 Ibid., 24-25. 621 Ibid., 19 & 29. 622 David B. Allison, “Nietzsche Knows no Noumenon”, boundary 2 9/10 (Spring-Autumn 1981): 296- 98. In relation to the Dionysian principle, Allison claims in this article that:
Even by the time Nietzsche composed The Birth of Tragedy, his use of conventionally metaphysical language was strained to the point of breaking, in order to accommodate this experiential order of affectivity and passion. Not only would the borrowed vocabulary of “will” soon pass over into the antimetaphysical vocabulary of “will to power,” with its “multiplicities of forces,” its “perspectival” coherences, and the prospect of its “eternal recurrence,” but the collective formations of what he still termed “will” were already defined empirically as “phenomena” and “sensations” (which, he noted, are not possible without objects), i.e., as substantial, bodily, and material unities. (Ibid., 304) 623 Allison, “Some Remarks”, 19. 146
on Nietzsche’s, the Dionysian principle of disindividuation that music symbolises could still be regarded as metaphysical in a non-Schopenhauerian sense. As I will shortly discuss, the locus of this non-Schopenhauerian metaphysics in BT could lie in tragedy’s fundamentally life-affirming message, to which, as I have argued, Dionysian music (as opposed to the Apollonian plastic arts) is the main contributor. This, however, would not seem to be a viable possibility for Allison. He claims that, “unlike Schopenhauer, the account of disindividuation is not frustrated by a metaphysical impenetrability; rather, it is opened up by Nietzsche’s exploration of a psychological understanding”.624
Moreover, Allison argues that Nietzsche’s privileging of the Dionysian-musical realm of disindividuation over the Apollonian realm of individuation “signals a certain logical priority of the structuring character of representational experience, not one of metaphysical priority”.625
On the one hand, as is apparent in my previous discussion of music’s origin, I agree with Allison that Nietzsche’s notion of the Dionysian state of disindividuation is fundamentally “experiential”, affective and “psychological”. On the other hand, I do not believe that this is necessarily inconsistent with claiming that this state is also metaphysical. In his later re-evaluation of BT in “Attempt at a Self-Criticism”,
Nietzsche, even in retrospect, suggests that aesthetics and metaphysics are intertwined in BT, by stating that a primary theme in this early text is that art is the “truly metaphysical activity of man”.626 To explain this claim, he posits that an examination
624 Ibid., 29. 625 Ibid., 33. 626 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 5: 22 (emphasis in original). While this concept of an “artists’ metaphysics” (Ibid.) formed part of the “romanticism” that Nietzsche later renounced, he still acknowledged it to be an important aspect of BT. In GS V: 370, Nietzsche describes “romanticism” in the following terms: “[e]very art, every philosophy may be viewed as a remedy and an aid in the service of growing and struggling life; they always presuppose suffering and sufferers.” (GS V: 370; 328) In BT, this idea that art serves as a “remedy” for suffering could be identified in the capacity of the Dionysian principle to offer us a “metaphysical comfort” that temporarily 147
of the “psychological question”, “what is Dionysian?”, lies at the very “origin of tragedy” and is thus crucial to understanding the Ancient Greeks’ perspective of the
“value of existence”.627 Nietzsche also expresses interest in whether certain
“psychological” and “physiological”, and hence experiential, characteristics of the
Dionysian state of disindividuation (i.e. “Dionysian madness”, “strength” and
“overflowing health”) could help to explain how the Ancient Greeks were able to affirm even the most terrifying aspects of existence without succumbing to despair.628 He refers to this phenomenon as a “pessimism of strength” to differentiate it from the
Schopenhauerian pessimism that he later came to associate with “weary and weak instincts”.629 This suggests that, in BT, the Dionysian “phenomenon”630 for both the early and more mature Nietzsche is simultaneously psychological, experiential and metaphysical, casting doubt on Allison’s claim that Nietzsche’s early aesthetics, especially from “On Music and Words” onwards, is non-metaphysical. I now conclude my analysis of Nietzsche’s early aesthetics with a discussion of his views of music’s crucial contribution to the broader cultural significance that he attributes to tragedy’s life-affirming potential.
Conclusion
According to Nietzsche, music is culturally significant because it provides a means of responding to nihilism that avoids life-denying approaches to existence such as is apparent in Schopenhauerian pessimism. Moreover, unlike the “degenerate” Socratic
protects us from the devastating force of Silenus’ wisdom. For example, in relation to this “metaphysical comfort”, Nietzsche claims in BT 7 that “art approaches as a saving sorceress, expert at healing” when the individual is exposed to the “tenderest and deepest suffering” (BT 7: 59-60, emphasis in original). 627 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 1 & 4: 17 & 20-21 (emphases added). 628 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 4: 20-22. 629 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 4: 17 (emphasis in original). 630 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 1: 18. 148
culture of his times,631 music’s life-affirming power, he claims, does not stem from its ability to provide us with a definitive solution to human suffering. As a paradoxical expression of both pleasure and pain, of both creation and destruction, music does not transport us to an “otherworldly realm” where suffering is dissolved. Rather, it is only by immersing ourselves into the often unbearable tension of this paradox that we are able to access tragedy’s “metaphysical comfort”.
Nietzsche thus envisages in the “artistic reawakening of tragedy and the tragic world view” a means of counteracting what he diagnoses as the “desolation and exhaustion of contemporary culture” (or what he also calls “Socratic-Alexandrian” culture) and of thereby precipitating cultural renewal.632 Unlike music’s poignant expression of both pleasure and pain, Socratic culture, he argues, is plagued by an unwarranted “optimism”, maintaining a “profound illusion” that “it can correct the world by knowledge, guide life by science, and actually confine the individual within a limited sphere of solvable problems”.633 In his view, Socratic culture thus erroneously supplants music’s embodiment of a “metaphysical comfort [with] an earthly consonance”.634 In so doing, it fails to acknowledge music’s paradoxical expression of both pain and pleasure and is thereby also unable to capture the essence of human existence. Nietzsche issues a strong warning here that the inability of science and logic to “correct” existence will someday be exposed, giving way to “tragic resignation and destitute need for art” as a
“protection and remedy” for human suffering.635
631 BT 17:107. 632 BT 17: 106 & BT 20: 123. 633 BT 15: 95, BT 17: 109 & BT 18: 111 (emphasis in original). 634 BT 17: 109. 635 BT 15: 97-98. 149
In particular, this paradox that is contained in tragedy’s fundamentally life-affirming message finds its most fitting parallel in Nietzsche’s similarly paradoxical notion of
“musical dissonance”.636 This parallel can be explained in the following way: in order to experience the pleasure that the inexhaustible flow of music provides we must first withstand the nausea provoked by its dissonant sounds. Pleasure is made available to us because the “flux” of this music persists beyond dissonance without necessarily resolving it into consonance.637 Similarly, we must have the strength to withstand the pessimistic content of Silenus’ wisdom in order to recognise the inexorable, creative flow of life that persists despite the destruction of individual Apollinian phenomena.
Just as Heraclitus’ “child” plays at continually creating and destroying “sand hills”,
Nietzsche suggests that we should approach this continual cycle of “construction and destruction” in life with an equal amount of playfulness and “primordial delight” rather than despair.638 By realising that the destruction of one entity facilitates, and overlaps with, the creation of another, we may come to realise that there is still pleasure to be found in nature’s insatiable desire to create new entities despite the death or passing away of others. Recognising music’s cultural significance in tragedy thus allows us to appreciate why Nietzsche originally called his “audacious book”639 The Birth of
Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music.
636 BT 24: 141 (emphasis in original). 637 In “Nietzsche’s Attempt at a Self-Criticism: Art and Morality in The Birth of Tragedy”, Daniel Came uses this notion of “musical dissonances” to elucidate what he regards as Nietzsche’s “radical” claim that the Ancient Greeks “saw life as good precisely because of its problematic aspects”. (Daniel Came, “Nietzsche’s Attempt at a Self-Criticism: Art and Morality in The Birth of Tragedy”, Nietzsche-Studien 33 (2004): 56. Emphasis in original.) Similar to my above description of “dissonance”, Came argues that what is evident in Nietzsche’s parallel notions of “musical dissonances” and the “problematic aspects of existence” is the suggestion that “pleasure [is] taken in the dissonance itself, not its resolution” (Ibid., 57). These “problematic aspects”, Came claims, are “held to be necessary and ineradicable features of existence” by Nietzsche, and, as such, “can receive no resolution” (Ibid., emphasis in original). 638 BT 24: 142. 639 BT “Attempt at a Self-Criticism” 2: 19. 150
In the latter half of this thesis, I will move beyond dependence on the metaphysics of
Will that features, at least to some extent, in both Schopenhauer and the early
Nietzsche’s philosophies of music. To do so, I will explore music in terms of lived experience through the lens of Schutz and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological philosophies. This will involve conducting a detailed examination of some themes that were introduced in this chapter, namely, the roles that intersubjectivity, corporeality and affect play in the musical experience. Moreover, my analysis of the points of difference between Schutz and Merleau-Ponty’s views of music will also serve to further illustrate how a well-conceived account of the musical experience that emphasises its corporeal and affective dimension (such as that found in Nietzsche’s philosophy) improves an account of music that overemphasises the role played by the mind (such as that found in
Schopenhauer’s philosophy). 151
Chapter four
Music, temporality and intersubjectivity in Schutz’s phenomenology
Introduction
Although Schopenhauer and the early Nietzsche do much to illuminate the role that music might play in human existence, their reliance on a metaphysics of Will means that the actual experience of music generally remains under-examined in their accounts.
In Schopenhauer’s philosophy, this is because music is situated largely beyond the material aspects of the empirical or “phenomenal world”. The early Nietzsche begins to distance himself from this Schopenhauerian metaphysics of Will by showing increasing interest in the experiential aspects of the musical state of disindividuation (e.g. its corporeal, affective, intersubjective and psychological dimensions). However,
Nietzsche’s account is nevertheless lacking in terms of providing a comprehensive analysis of how music actually interacts with the elements of everyday lived experience
(e.g. time, space, etc.).
Picking up where Nietzsche left off, I will, in the second half of this thesis, examine music more closely in terms of lived experience and in such a way that is receptive to music’s “enigma”. To do so, I will explore the works of the phenomenologists, Schutz and Merleau-Ponty. By focussing on the actual experience of music, both theorists thereby distinguish themselves from contemporary analytic philosophers of music (e.g.
Jerrold Levinson, Jenefer Robinson and Stephen Davies) by adopting an approach that does not treat our relation to music as an abstract object of knowledge. Taking this 152
perspective, Schutz shows little interest in investigating the objective “physical qualities” of sounds and their affiliation (or lack thereof) with “mathematical proportions”.640 He argues that these elements are irrelevant to forming an understanding of the experience of music insofar as the listener “responds neither to sound waves, nor does he perceive sounds; he just listens to music”.641 The aspect of
Schutz’s phenomenological account of music that is particularly important to my analysis of music’s integral place in human existence is his notion that the musical experience is grounded in, and draws its vitality from, the interrelated temporal and intersubjective dimensions of our life. Commentators like Luigi Muzzetto consider
Schutz’s examination of the interconnections between time, subjectivity and sociality to be the profound hallmark of his thought. He states:
Perhaps no other sociological thinker has given time such a prominent place as
Alfred Schütz: in his thought, the various dimensions of both subjectivity and
sociality are immediately, structurally and radically connected to time; time is a
constitutive part of meaning and of the molecular dimension of the social world,
as it is part of the material of which subjectivity and the social world are
woven.642
In taking up these ideas, my analysis of Schutz’s account will draw on insights from both his specific writings on music (i.e. the texts, “Making Music Together: A Study in
Social Relationship” and “Fragments on the phenomenology of music”, hereafter
640 Alfred Schutz, “Fragments on the phenomenology of music”, in In Search of Musical Method, ed. F. J. Smith (London: Gordon and Breach, 1976), 26. Hereafter cited as “Fragments”. 641 Ibid. 642 Luigi Muzzetto, “Time and Meaning in Alfred Schütz”, Time and Society 15, no. 1 (2006): 5. 153
“Making Music Together” and “Fragments”)643 as well as his broader conceptions of temporality and intersubjectivity that feature in his wider philosophy. Since Schutz’s account is grounded in the theories of Edmund Husserl, Henri Bergson and William
James, this chapter will also address some key concepts from their writings, but only insofar as they are pertinent to Schutz’s views of music.
This chapter also consolidates and elaborates several themes already introduced in this thesis with respect to the relationship between music and human existence. Furthering my analysis of the roles that music and language might play in existence (that I began with respect to Adorno’s philosophy), section one examines how Schutz’s conception of musical meaning departs from the conventional linguistic notion of meaning as conceptual, semantic and representational. To enhance my investigation of the social aspect of the musical experience (that I began with respect to Nietzsche’s philosophy), sections two and three will then explore the intersubjective dimension of music from a temporal perspective. In particular, I attend to Schutz’s key notion of the “mutual tuning-in relationship”, which he claims underlies all forms of human communication.
He argues that the musical manifestation of this fundamental relationship describes the ways in which participants in the musical experience (i.e. the composer, listener and
“coperformers”) meet in overlapping dimensions of time.
643 According to Fred Kersten, “Making Music Together” was initially published in the journal, Social Research, in 1951, and was later reprinted in Volume II of Schutz’s Collected Papers. (Fred Kersten, preface to “Fragments on the phenomenology of music” by Alfred Schutz, in In Search of Musical Method, ed. F. J. Smith (London: Gordon and Breach, 1976), 6-7.) “Fragments” is an unpublished manuscript initially written in 1944 and later published in edited format in F. Joseph Smith’s In Search of Musical Method (Ibid., 6). Kersten adds that “Fragments” has “been edited from a manuscript written in Lake Placid during the week of July 16th to July 23rd, 1944. The manuscript consists of 65 hand-written pages, in English. Written as a first draft, it was clearly not intended for publication in the form in which Schutz left it. Unfinished in the elaboration of its content, the manuscript contains but few revisions which seem to have been made at the time of writing. Some sections, announced in the text, such as those on rhythm, are missing altogether; other, and very short sections, seem incomplete.” (Ibid.) 154
However, my analysis also suggests that a potential weakness of Schutz’s account of music concerns the strict distinctions that he relies on between the mind and body, and, accordingly, also between time and space. These dualisms pave the way for his privileging of the mind over the body in his examination of music in a manner that limits his account. I argue that he thus fails to recognise that the body, and the spatial dimension in which it is embedded, might actually play a more influential role in his own conception of the musical experience than he sometimes suggests. I begin with a discussion of the key differences that Schutz identifies between musical meaning and conventional linguistic notions of meaning.
1. Music, language and meaning
One of Schutz’s main aims in both “Making Music Together” and “Fragments” is to establish the precise manner in which music is a “meaningful context [that] can be communicated”.644 He begins with the overall claim that some kind of a meaningful message is communicated between participants in the musical experience (i.e. the composer, listener and “coperformers”) when playing and/or listening to music.645
Indeed, if nothing was disclosed in this experience, it would be difficult to explain how musical performers could remain synchronised not only in pitch and time, but also in their interpretation of the musical score. As we shall see in section three, Schutz takes the unusual view that the listener is also an active participant in, rather than a mere passive observer of, the musical experience.
644 Schutz, “Fragments”, 23 & Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 159. 645 Ibid. 155
More importantly, however, Schutz also argues that the conventional linguistic notion of meaning is inconsistent with the type of meaning that is actually disclosed in the musical experience.646 He thus calls for a more comprehensive analysis of what he considers as the highly distinctive characteristics of musical meaning, an undertaking that he himself assumes and which I will examine in detail throughout this chapter.
Unlike the conventional notion of linguistic meaning, musical meaning, Schutz argues, is inherently a-conceptual and non-representational insofar as it is not directly connected to external “objects” (or their “properties and functions”) to which
“concepts” usually refer.647 Schutz’s claim here echoes Adorno’s contention (which I discussed in chapter one) that music bears a less direct connection with the “visually or conceptually determined world of objects” than both language and the visual arts.648
On the one hand, Schutz acknowledges that, in art, this a-conceptual characteristic is not unique to music inasmuch as painting, sculpture and architecture do not always relate to a “conceptual scheme”.649 On the other hand, he also stresses that, unlike music, these other arts are still representational in that they isolate a particular “sector of the world” to bring to light in creative ways.650 For example, a landscape painting of a tree would usually refer to the actual physical existence of a tree in the external world. In contrast, it would be more difficult to determine what object or aspect of the world the first four notes of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony depict. Schutz lists “abstract painting” as a particular exception here by suggesting that it translates musical “technique” into spatialised form.651 By this, he seems to imply that, like music, abstract painting is a-
646 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 159 & Schutz, “Fragments”, 23-24. 647 Schutz, “Fragments”, 23-24. 648 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 138-39. 649 Schutz, “Fragments”, 25. 650 Ibid. 651 Ibid. 156
conceptual and non-representational. However, unlike music, the content of painting is presented through spatial rather than temporal means. As we shall see throughout this chapter, this temporal dimension of music is crucial to Schutz’s account.
Although Schutz is also aware of the potential similarities between music and language, he remains wary of overemphasising them. Notably, while acknowledging that the “set of rules governing the musical form” approximates the “syntax of language”, he nevertheless emphasises that these “rules” (which he calls the “syntax of the musical form”) are not strictly “operational”.652 For him, there are two main reasons for this.
First, unlike “nouns, adjectives [and] verbs” in language, the various components of this so-called musical “syntax”, such as common chord progressions and musical structures
(e.g. “binary” or “ternary” form), do not fulfil predetermined roles in the formation of musical meaning.653 Second, unlike linguistic “propositions”, musical “themes” or phrases cannot be definitively classified as either “true or false” and thus also cannot be subjected to either “verification or falsification”.654 For example, while many Jazz compositions employ the standard “twelve-bar blues” chord progression, it is not usually claimed that there is a “true” or “correct” way of improvising based on these chords. Rather, we are more likely to say that one improvisation is relatively more accomplished or sophisticated than another. However, as I will demonstrate in chapter five, this conventional view that language conveys “truths” that can be validated (to which Schutz appears to adhere) is challenged by Merleau-Ponty.
Owing to the reasons described above, Schutz argues that the application of so-called musical “rules” in performances will necessarily be flexible (and hence unpredictable)
652 Ibid., 24. 653 Ibid., 23-24. 654 Ibid., 24. 157
because score interpretation itself is not an exact science. Indeed, he claims that “all musical notation remains of necessity vague and open to manifold interpretations”.655
First, it is “vague” because, agreeing with the “composer and critic” Virgil Thompson,
Schutz claims that the markings in the score are not intended as inflexible directions to be strictly obeyed but are rather a “hint” or suggestion from the composer to the performer(s) as to how to play the piece.656 Second, “manifold interpretations” of a
“composer’s text” are possible because this text is played or performed in a variety of contexts.657 Expanding on this last point, Schutz cites the conductor, Wilhelm
Furtwängler’s claim that “every forte and every tempo has to be modified in practice in accordance with the place of the performance and the setting and the strength of the performing group”.658 For example, the marking, ad lib., requires musicians to play at a tempo (i.e. speed) of their own discretion. Interpretations of this marking would differ amongst musicians from various musical backgrounds (e.g. Classical, Rock, Jazz, etc.) and would also depend on their respective views about the emotional/expressive potential of the musical material. Moreover, musicians playing together in an ensemble would probably be more vigilant about arriving at a general consensus amongst themselves about how to interpret ad lib. in the final rehearsal than in the first few rehearsals. Arguably, such diversity is not limited to musical interpretation inasmuch as more mundane activities, such as following instructions in recipes and other “how-to” manuals, would also be interpreted in different ways by different people. However, as I will discuss in section two, Schutz does claim that the process of interpreting musical meaning (as opposed to the meaning of a “scientific thought” in a book, for example) is peculiar due to its special temporal dimension.
655 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 166. 656 Ibid. 657 Ibid. 658 Furtwängler quoted by Schutz in “Making Music Together”, 166. 158
His view that musical meaning is flexible rather than fixed also mirrors Adorno’s claim that music resembles speech in terms of its “concrete structure” but ultimately lacks
“absolute signification”, by which Adorno means an unequivocal meaning or a fixed
“system” of meanings.659 As I discussed in chapter one, Adorno acknowledges that some aspects of musical notation may fulfil similar functions to punctuation in signifying language. For instance, a perfect cadence is analogous to a full stop in that it signals the end of a musical phrase. Nevertheless, Adorno also maintains that the so- called “meaning” of a particular musical work is malleable because it evolves alongside the particular social and historical situations in which it is composed (i.e. produced), performed (i.e. interpreted or reproduced) and/or heard (i.e. consumed).
Unlike Adorno, however, Schutz does not consider the particular ways in which music is socially and historically mediated as an essential part of actually understanding the musical experience. This is not because Schutz overlooks the fact that the musical experience will vary amongst people from different historical periods and socio-cultural backgrounds. He recognises that, when confronted with a musical work, a person will, whether intentionally or unintentionally, refer back to his/her own “bulk of musical knowledge”.660 This knowledge, Schutz claims, would be informed by his/her past musical experiences, which, in turn, would reflect the particular socio-cultural circumstances of his/her time.661
In particular, he acknowledges that an individual’s repository of knowledge already contains a social dimension in two main ways. First, this knowledge is “socially
659 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 113-14. 660 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 168. 661 Ibid. 159
derived” because it has been informed by other people, for example, his/her “teachers”, and, by association, his/her teacher’s teachers.662 Second, this knowledge is also
“socially approved” because it has been shaped by an awareness of how particular interpretations of a musical piece are generally regarded as more “authentic” than others. 663 These interpretations have been endorsed by those with “authority” in the musical community, such as the “great masters among the composers and the acknowledged interpreters of their work”.664
While recognising that one’s musical experiences are necessarily informed by the social, cultural and historical circumstances in which one is embedded, Schutz nevertheless emphasises that the “peculiar features” of one’s approach to a particular piece (which would be informed by these circumstances) are insignificant to a preliminary account of the musical experience.665 This is because his ultimate aim is to establish a “general theory of musical experience” from a phenomenological perspective.666 According to him, this “general theory” just requires a person to have basic “knowledge of some type or style” of the “musical culture”, the “individual composer” and/or the particular piece to which s/he listens.667 For example, when listening to a “modern composition written in the twelve-tone system”668 for the first time, Schutz might suggest that some degree of familiarity with the basic characteristics
662 Ibid. 663 Ibid., 168-69. 664 Ibid., 168. 665 Schutz, “Fragments”, 45-46 (emphasis in original). 666 Ibid., 45 (emphasis added). In contrast with Adorno’s views of music, Schutz claims that the particular differences between the “means for the production, the reproduction and conservation” of musical pieces would be of little relevance to this “general theory of musical experience” (Ibid., 27). Examples he provides of these means include: “[m]usical instruments in the broad sense, including the human voice, the technical possibilities and limits of musical instruments, the way to use them, musical notation, mechanical devices such as records”, etc. (Ibid.). 667 Ibid., 45 (emphasis in original). 668 Ibid. 160
of “modern music” (e.g. its departure from traditional forms of tonality) would suffice.
In other words, knowledge of the particular characteristics of the “twelve-tone system” itself would probably be unnecessary in this instance. Schutz’s main point here is that this basic knowledge would still enable a person to adequately “follow the flux of the music” and to make reasonable “anticipations” about its future progression, regardless of whether these will or will not be realised.669 For example, it would be reasonable for a listener to predict that a sombre funeral march would not suddenly mutate into a celebratory trumpet fanfare. Schutz claims that it is only after this preliminary
“phenomenological analysis” has been performed that the more specific/idiosyncratic characteristics of different musical works/genres (e.g. the particular socio-historical conditions from which they have emerged) can then be examined.670
Schutz argues that central to this analysis is an investigation of the fundamental components of the “experience of music as a phenomenon of our conscious life”.671 As this chapter will explore in detail, this essentially involves investigating how the “flux” of music unfolds alongside the “flux” of our “stream of consciousness” and that of others, in and across various dimensions of time. To explore the intertwining of our own “conscious life” and that of others, Schutz examines a fundamental type of “social interaction” called the “mutual tuning-in relationship” which he believes underlies the musical experience, together with similar forms of collective activity (e.g. playing sport together, “marching together, dancing together”, etc.).672 He describes this fundamental relationship as a “kind of social interaction which […] is an indispensable condition of
669 Ibid. 670 Ibid., 44. 671 Ibid., 44-45 (emphasis in original). 672 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 161-62. 161
all possible communication”.673 More specifically, Schutz claims that the “mutual tuning-in relationship” is “founded upon the partaking in common of different dimensions of time simultaneously lived through by the participants”.674 This “common experience”,675 he suggests, is what forges an essential connection between individuals who had hitherto been separate from each other. Insofar as this “mutual tuning-in relationship” also underlies other types of “social intercourse” (e.g. “marching together, dancing together”, etc.), Schutz believes that a comprehensive analysis of how it unfolds in the “musical process” could also enhance our understanding of similar forms of collective human activity.676
Crucially, by designating the “mutual tuning-in relationship” as the “indispensable condition of all possible communication”, Schutz thereby challenges the prevailing view that it is language which fulfils this essential role.677 For him, the prominence of this commonly-held view is evidenced by the “strong tendency in contemporary thought to identify meaning with its semantic expression and to consider language, speech, symbols, significant gestures, as the fundamental condition of social intercourse as such”.678 In contrast, Schutz argues that language merely represents the
“communicative process” or mechanism through which meaning is transmitted and its very possibility thus rests on the existence of the “mutual tuning-in relationship”.679 For him, language is only the mechanism for transmitting meaning because, as I will elaborate later, he situates the locus of meaning in general (which would also include musical meaning) in thought or the mind. Schutz thus appears to take what Merleau-
673 Ibid., 161. 674 Ibid., 177. 675 Ibid., 175. 676 Ibid., 159 & 162. 677 Ibid., 160-61. 678 Ibid. 679 Ibid., 161. 162
Ponty calls the “intellectualist” view that thought need not be expressed in words/speech to acquire its meaning because it is already meaningful in itself. The role that language plays in communication, for Schutz, would therefore seem to be limited to the translation of a pre-existing meaning that already resides in thought. Moreover, inasmuch as one individual is connected to another via his/her stream of consciousness, thought could be considered as the binding agent, so to speak, of the “mutual tuning-in relationship”. Developing a comprehensive analysis of this fundamental relationship requires an examination of the interaction between Schutz’s notions of “inner” and
“outer time”. It is to a discussion of the key roles that these two notions play in his overall account of temporality that I now turn.
2. Music and temporality
There are several key points about the crucial temporal dimension of music in Schutz’s philosophy that I want to mention upfront in order to signal the direction that the following discussion will take. First, Schutz both distinguishes between “inner time” and “outer time” and privileges the former over the latter in his account of music.
Second, he makes the more specific claim that music is to be characterised primarily as a dynamic lived experience in “inner time” rather than a “thing” that can be divided up into separate units of “outer time” (seconds, minutes, hours, etc.). Last but not least, by associating music with “inner time”, Schutz thereby situates music in a temporal dimension that he believes captures the actual human experience of temporality. In order to set the background needed to understand these points, it is to an outline of the general characteristics of, and differences between, inner and outer time that I first turn.
163
Schutz’s notion of “outer time” is closely aligned with conventional linear accounts of time because it is “measured by metronomes and clocks” according to the standardised hours, minutes and seconds that we typically use to dissect each day into “homogeneous parts”.680 It also governs what he calls the “outer world”, that is, the “spatial world with its fixed entities”, including “physical objects”.681 An example of a description of how physical objects exist in this “spatial world” of “outer time” is the fact that deciduous trees will shed their leaves during a particular season every year. By counting our body amongst these objects, Schutz also designates “spatialized outer time” as the temporal dimension in which our bodily movements and actions transpire.682
However, for reasons I will shortly explain, he seems to suggest that outer time is a practical but deficient way of conceiving of temporality. He uses outer time specifically to describe the acts undertaken in the “pragmatic” domain of “everyday life”, where we regard both objects and other people primarily as the potential means through which the ends of our “projects”, that is, our “plans for life, for work and leisure”, can be achieved.683 For example, earning a living as a plumber would usually involve using particular tools and engaging with potential customers with the aim to repairing their broken pipes, taps, etc. at a later date. Schutz refers to such routine acts undertaken in the outer world as “working”.684 Influenced by Bergson’s notion of “[a]ttention à la vie” (or “attention to life”), Schutz claims that “working” requires a “state of full
680 Ibid., 171. 681 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 175 & Alfred Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations: Selected Writings, ed. Helmut R. Wagner (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1970), 60. Hereafter cited as On Phenomenology and Social Relations. 682 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 175 & Alfred Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, trans. Helmut R. Wagner (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), 193. Hereafter cited as Life Forms and Meaning Structure. 683 Alfred Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, in Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 213 & 222 (hereafter cited as “On Multiple Realities”) & Schutz, “Fragments”, 42. 684 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 212. 164
awakeness” (or “wide-awakeness”) whereby we maintain a “degree of high tension in our consciousness” so as to focus our “attention” solely and “active[ly]” on actualising our everyday projects.685 As I will discuss further later, he believes that becoming engrossed in the musical experience requires that we decrease the amount of “tension in our consciousness” from that maintained in everyday life.
What governs the “intersubjective” aspect of our “working acts” is Schutz’s notion of
“civic or standard time”.686 This notion also helps to explain his belief that outer time is neither coextensive with, nor fully captures, the actual human experience of temporality.
That Schutz specifically calls “civic or standard time” a “single supposedly homogeneous dimension of time”687 suggests that he thereby recognises that it does not actually provide a conclusive and all-encompassing description of how time is experienced by all of us. Rather, it seems to be a necessary human construct that allows the routine aspects of our “social life” to be synchronised with those of others.688 For example, parents may arrange a mutually beneficial situation whereby they each collect their children from school on days which best suit them. As such, “civic or standard time” cannot actually assimilate “all the individual time perspectives of each of us”
685 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 212-13 & Schutz, “Fragments”, 42 (emphasis in original). Bergson’s notion of “attention to life”, as Schutz describes it, is the “basic regulative principle of our conscious life [that] defines the realm of our world which is relevant to us” (Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 212). According to this principle, “action represent[s] our highest interest in meeting reality and its requirements, dream being complete lack of interest” (Ibid.). These differences in the amount of “interest” or “attention” that we direct towards our life in turn correspond with “different degrees of tension of our consciousness”, with the “plane of action showing the highest, that of dream the lowest degree of attention” (Ibid.). 686 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 222 (emphasis in original). 687 Ibid., emphasis added. 688 Ibid. While, for Schutz, “civic or standard time” relates primarily to the “outer world” of “everyday life”, it is still located at the “intersection” of inner and outer time (Ibid.), which, as I will explain later, Schutz calls the “vivid present”. Specifically, “civic or standard time” relates to the point at which outer time overlaps with a “peculiar aspect of inner time […] in which the wide-awake man experiences his working acts as events within his stream of consciousness” (Ibid.). The discussion in the following pages will explain this link between one’s stream of consciousness and inner time. 165
under a single temporal framework689 but rather serves as a common reference point on which we can rely for the sake of convenience and practicality. For instance, when we arrange to meet friends at “four in the afternoon”, we need to ensure that our own understanding of the phrase, “four in the afternoon”, matches that of all our friends such that this meeting can actually ensue.
In contrast with outer time (and the closely related notion of “civic or standard time”),
Schutz argues that “inner time” is a more fundamental temporal dimension that actually embodies the “most primitive and original experience of man”.690 In other words, for him, inner time captures how humans actually experience time. He develops this concept from Henri Bergson’s notion of durée, defined as the “inner time of our stream of consciousness” that transpires in our “mental life”.691 Outer time, Schutz argues, actually presupposes the existence of inner time because we must first “go beyond” our own mental life before we can access the spatial world of physical objects (that is governed by outer time).692 In my later discussion of his notion of the “vivid present”, I will explain how it is the body that provides us with access to both inner and outer time because it inhabits both temporal dimensions simultaneously.
The key differences between inner time and outer time can be revealed by examining the contrasting conceptions of “movement” to which these two temporal dimensions give rise. A detailed discussion of these differences is warranted here because, as I will shortly demonstrate, they help to elucidate why Schutz associates music almost exclusively with inner time and also why/how he thereby gives it a privileged place in
689 Ibid. 690 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 192-93. 691 Schutz, “Fragments”, 31 & 38. 692 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 192-93. 166
human existence. First, whereas “movement” is fragmented in outer time, it is experienced by us as “one single event in inner time”.693 For example, from the perspective of inner time, we would perceive the journey of a car that travels from one end of the road to the other as one uninterrupted movement. Following the completion of this journey, however, we may then calculate that the car travelled three hundred metres in terms of several distinct units of outer time (e.g. eighteen seconds). Second, unlike the “homogeneous” nature of outer time wherein one segment of time is essentially the same as another, our experiences in inner time are “differentiated”.694
Or, to be more exact, Schutz characterises these experiences as paradoxically both
“unitary” and “manifold”.695 These experiences are “manifold”, he claims, because they are subject to “constant change” and would therefore differ in terms of “quality, quantity, and possibly also in intensity”.696 However, what integrates these experiences is the fact that they all ultimately partake in the stream of consciousness of the same person.697
By distinguishing between inner and outer time in the above ways, Schutz also seems to locate the transformative aspects of human experience within the realm of inner rather than outer time. In inner time, Schutz claims, the individual experiences his/her “world
[as] a world of open anticipations” rather than one wherein the horizons are already fixed.698 For him, the self that dwells fundamentally in inner time would thus seem to immerse itself into a dynamic realm of possibilities by partaking in activities that are constantly transfiguring the world in which it lives. As Schutz puts it, as an
693 Schutz, “Fragments”, 30. 694 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 31. 695 Ibid. 696 Ibid. 697 Ibid. 698 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 216. 167
“experiencing I” that dwells in inner time, “I may take the world into myself, without cognitively objectifying it, simply as stuff of my being-here and as material of my existence: accepting, processing, and transforming it”.699 He contrasts this transformative activity of the “experiencing I” in inner time with one’s relatively sterile existence in the pragmatic world of outer time. In outer time, Schutz claims, we think back on past experiences in terms of conscious “objects of reflection”.700 For example, by employing this capacity for reflection, I might calculate that, over the past five hours,
I have written at a rate of approximately five hundred words per hour. Unlike the transformative activity that occurs in inner time, then, these experiences in outer time have already been “lived through” and thus can no longer be transformed.701
Importantly, by going on to associate music with inner rather than outer time, Schutz thereby connects music with the dynamic, transformative aspects of human experience rather than the more sterile and pragmatic aspects of that experience. More precisely, following Bergson, he situates the “ongoing flux of music” fundamentally in inner time, by claiming that “no revelation of our being is so closely related to our true inner duration as music”.702 One way of explaining this connection between music and inner time is through Schutz’s analogy between the “continuous and manifold” nature of
“melody” and the similar nature of our experiences in inner time.703 These experiences, for Schutz, are both “continuous and manifold” because, as I have just discussed,
699 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 31. 700 Alfred Schutz, The Phenomenology of the Social World, trans. George Walsh & Frederick Lehnert (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1972), 70. Hereafter cited as The Phenomenology of the Social World. 701 Ibid. 702 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 170 & Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 194. 703 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 192. 168
despite being diverse, they are nevertheless “lived through” by us in our stream of consciousness in an uninterrupted manner.704
The privileged place that Schutz attributes to melody in music (due to its close relationship with inner time) also helps to explain his critique of certain works of
“modern music” such as “Stravinksi’s ‘Firebird’”.705 With respect to such works, he claims:
The essence of this music consists in the attempt to strip music of its melodic
function, of its belonging to inner duration. This unheard-of process of
rationalization took place and spread; in it, associative events of the outer world
were imputed to the phenomenon of music. Elements which belong to the outer
world are treated as if they would belong to inner duration and the lines of
melody.706
The above passage illustrates Schutz’s belief that elements of the outer world (of which the body and space are prime examples) should not penetrate music’s core aspects, that is, melody and the inner time in which melody unfolds. It is this belief that also accounts for his further claim that music ought to assume a privileged role in hybrid art forms that combine both music and language. Like both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche,
Schutz suggests that the “word” (in language) must fully accommodate itself to music’s
704 This analogy between melody and inner time is one Schutz adopts from Bergson. In “Concerning the Nature of Time”, Bergson suggests that we can grasp a sense of “pure duration” by perceiving a melody solely in terms of its “fluid continuity in time”. (Henri Bergson, “Concerning the Nature of Time”, in Duration and Simultaneity: with reference to Einstein’s theory, trans. Leon Jacobson (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965), 49.) This, he claims, is achieved by casting aside any notion of space, that is, by momentarily eliminating any thoughts of the spatial layout of the “notes” on an “imaginary keyboard” and/or in a musical score from our minds (Ibid.). 705 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 195. 706 Ibid. 169
essential nature, that is, its basis in inner time.707 Particular attention needs to be paid, he suggests, when combining music with “drama” in art forms like “opera” where the
“word” is used as the main “means of expression”.708 In drama, Schutz explains, the word acts as a means of “communication”709 whereby participants are required to actively engage their bodies in the “spatialized outer world”. Specifically, the word is
“destined to be heard, understood, and interpreted” by other people, such as the
“audience”, the “co-actors”, etc.710 It thus requires the performers to move their mouths and lips because it must be “spoken to someone” in order to be subsequently heard, understood, etc.711
In contrast with drama, Schutz makes the curious claim that music “does not call for interpretation”.712 By this, he seems to suggest that music’s vitality, that is, the fact that it is “something genuinely alive”,713 need not be discussed or communicated between people in order for it to be brought to light. Rather, this sense of vitality can already make itself present to the self-contained mind of a single individual when s/he experiences music in inner time. However, I will also go on to question the above claim in this chapter in two main ways. First, Schutz’s portrayal of the musical experience as a largely solitary affair here is curious given the substantial amount of attention that he actually devotes to exploring the intersubjective dimension of that experience. It is this social aspect of music that I will focus on in section three. Second, I will also challenge his idea that music’s vitality resides in the mental life of a single person. To do this, I
707 Ibid., 193. 708 Ibid., 184 & 197. 709 Ibid., 184. 710 Ibid. 711 Ibid. Schutz claims that the word is still used as a form of communication in a dramatic “monologue” (Ibid.). This is because, the performer, he suggests, is still conveying a message to the spectator(s), “for whose understanding he hopes” in order to “gain clarity about himself” (Ibid.). 712 Ibid., 192. 713 Ibid. 170
will demonstrate how the body greatly contributes to music’s transformative power, even in Schutz’s own account of the musical experience.
Following this general discussion of music and temporality, I can now proceed with a more detailed examination of how Schutz distinguishes between inner and outer time in both a musical and non-musical context. In terms of music, he demonstrates how the outer time of two pieces may be exactly the same, whereas the musician’s lived experiences of them in inner time may be significantly different.714 For example, one minute of the so-called “silence” in John Cage’s 4’33” would probably seem to last a lot longer to the performer or listener than one minute of Mozart’s lively A Little Night
Music. (I will return to explain the ways in which Cage’s 4’33” could be regarded as
“silent” in section three.) To help clarify this distinction, Schutz provides a non-musical analogy which illustrates the difference between two separate experiences of inner time, namely, an engaging dialogue with an acquaintance and the “waiting period” before a consultation with a doctor about the outcome of a significant medical operation.715
While both scenarios may have lasted for thirty minutes in outer time, the actual lived experience of the engaging dialogue would have seemed considerably shorter to a person than that of the anxious waiting period in terms of inner time.716 Analogously,
Schutz suggests that two contrasting musical works, or even two contrasting movements within the same work, would not give rise to the same experiences in inner time despite having the same duration in outer time.717 Due to the uniqueness of the lived experience of music in inner time, Schutz concludes that this temporal dimension is more fundamental to an analysis of musical temporality than outer time.
714 Schutz, “Fragments”, 37. 715 Ibid. 716 Ibid. 717 Ibid. 171
Schutz further reinforces the importance of inner over outer time through his notion of the “constitution” of a musical work, a concept which directly informs his view of musical meaning. He classifies a musical work in Husserlian terms as an “ideal object”, which he defines as “any of the so-called social and cultural objects which are meaningful” and whose meaning is also disclosed in “thought”.718 This designation of thought as the locus of musical meaning is the key means by which Schutz privileges the mind over the body in his account of music. And it is this aspect of his account that
I will critique later in this chapter. Examples of other “ideal objects” for Schutz include: the “concept of number and the whole system of numbers with which arithmetic and algebra deal; or the content of the Pythagorean theorem as a meaningful entity; or the meaning of a sentence or a book”.719 Schutz differentiates “ideal objects”, which only exist abstractly, from what he calls “real objects”, that is, the “visible or audible objects” that populate the spatial, outer world.720 Although they are still connected with “real objects”,721 ideal objects do not have an actual physical existence in the world (because they reside only in the mind) and are thereby unavailable to our sensory perception.
In the context of music, Schutz argues that real objects (e.g. the musical score or performance) do not actually bring the ideal object (i.e. the “musical thought”) into existence but rather represent the mere mechanisms by which this thought is
718 Schutz, “Fragments”, 28 & Alfred Schutz, “Some Leading Concepts in Phenomenology”, in Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 110. Hereafter cited as “Some Leading Concepts in Phenomenology”. 719 Schutz, “Some Leading Concepts in Phenomenology”, 110. 720 Schutz, “Fragments”, 28. 721 Ibid. 172
communicated to other people.722 In other words, the transcription of a musical thought onto a written score simply enables it to be interpreted on multiple occasions and/or by multiple people. Similarly, the transformation of this thought into actual sounds during a performance simply allows it to be heard by other people through the medium of music. Indeed, as I mentioned briefly earlier, Schutz argues that a musical thought is already meaningful in and of itself such that it can be conceived of and “mentally reproduced within the solitude of the individual consciousness”.723 This thought, he claims, had already “existed in [the composer’s] mind long before, although it was inaccessible to anyone else”.724 Analogously, an Academic “lecture” may indeed represent the forum in which a particular “philosophical thought” is communicated.725
However, Schutz argues, this lecture cannot be said to capture the essence of this thought because it originated elsewhere in the mind of its creator.726
Schutz’s notion of musical meaning is also grounded in his key claim (that I raised earlier) that music should be characterised as a dynamic lived experience in inner time rather than a “thing” to be characterised in terms of individual units of outer time
(seconds, minutes, hours, etc.). This fundamental claim is encapsulated and emphasised in his belief that the “structure” of musical meaning in “any kind of music” is distinctively “polythetical”.727 By this, he is suggesting that the meaning of a particular piece has to be “built up” in inner time by “reconstituting” or “reproducing” the
“interconnected mental operations” through which it was originally constituted in the
722 Schutz, “Fragments”, 28 & Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 164-65. 723 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 164-65. Schutz even claims that a musical thought could embody a “perfect piece of music” (Ibid., 164). 724 Schutz, “Fragments”, 28. 725 Ibid. 726 Ibid. 727 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172-73. 173
composer’s mind.728 As he puts it, the meaning of a musical work “consists in the articulated step-by-step occurrence in inner time, in the very polythetic constitutional process itself”.729 And, in Schutz’s view, this process of reconstructing musical meaning must be performed whenever we undergo the actual lived experience of reading through, playing, or listening to a piece.730 This last point is significant because, as I will shortly elaborate, it points towards the possibility that musical meaning is creative for Schutz. Curiously, however, this possibility is not one that he himself perceives to be a feature of his own account.
Schutz is aware that this “polythetical structure” is not unique to music but also applies to other ideal objects. For example, he acknowledges that the meaning of a “scientific thought” would also be built up in incremental stages when the reader reconstructs
“single phases” of it “step-by-step” in inner time.731 In order to understand a scientific thought such as “It takes one year for the earth to orbit around the sun.”, the reader would need to dissect it into various parts, comprising, for instance, the individual meanings of the words, “orbit”, “earth” and “sun”. However, what Schutz particularly wants to emphasise is that, unlike musical meaning, the meaning of other ideal objects
(e.g. the scientific thought) is “conceptual”.732 This entails that, following the initial polythetical process of reconstruction, the overall concept that a scientific thought communicates can be immediately ascertained, that is, without having to systematically re-analyse every word in the sentence or paragraph of the author’s text.733 In Schutz’s
728 Schutz, “Fragments”, 28-29. 729 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172. 730 Schutz, “Fragments”, 29. 731 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172. 732 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172 & Schutz, “Fragments”, 29-30. 733 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172 174
own terminology, the meaning of this thought can be ascertained “monothetically”, that is, in a “single glance”. 734
However, this does not imply that Schutz is unaware that certain aspects of music are often deemed to be ascertainable “monothetically” in concepts. For example, he acknowledges that we can determine in a “single ray” that a piece is written in a particular “form” (e.g. Sonata form) and/or that it depicts a certain “mood or emotion”
(e.g. “melancholy”).735 Nevertheless, he emphasises that such conceptual characterisations of music, which may partially constitute our views of a musical piece, are only incidental, rather than fundamental, to an understanding of musical meaning.
As Schutz puts it, the “statement that music cannot be caught monothetically is merely a corollary of the thesis that the meaning-context of music is not related to a conceptual scheme”.736
We could surmise from this necessarily polythetical structure that musical meaning, for
Schutz, is dynamic by virtue of its diverse and flexible nature. There are two main reasons for why we might conclude this. First, the process by which it is reconstructed
(i.e. the process of reading through, playing or listening to a musical work in inner time) could admit of differences upon further repetitions. Indeed, Schutz himself differentiates between the first and subsequent experiences of listening to a work, by claiming that it is upon further repetitions that the listener is able to “recognize emergent themes as recurrences of themes previously experienced”.737 Second, this process would presumably be experienced by different people in different ways due to
734 Ibid. 735 Schutz, “Fragments”, 29. 736 Ibid., 29-30. 737 Ibid., 57. 175
their diverse musical backgrounds/knowledge. For example, for a Classical musician who is experiencing a piece of Jazz music for the first time, the “swung beat” may initially feel like it is disrupting the “flux” of the music. In contrast, a Jazz musician who is unfamiliar with Classical music may perceive this “beat” as being normal rather than disruptive.
Despite the suggestion that musical meaning is dynamic, Schutz himself does not seem to take this view. He claims instead that “it is the task of the interpreter to bring about the correct meaning” of a particular piece.738 That Schutz refers to the “correct meaning” here suggests that he believes that there is only one particular meaning to be extracted from any work. Hence, Christine A. Skarda claims that the “specific musical meaning” of a piece, for Schutz, can be equated with that which was “originally intended by [its] composer”.739 Moreover, given that Schutz defines a musical work as an ideal object, this meaning would seem to originate in the composer’s musical thoughts. On Skarda’s interpretation of Schutz, the performer merely acts as the
“intermediary” or vehicle through which the composer’s own desired meaning for the piece is conveyed to the listener.740 In particular, she claims that the performer has fulfilled his/her function satisfactorily if s/he has been “able to transmit more of the musical meaning than in other performances”, which would result in the piece being
“better executed, more meaningful, etc.”.741 At least on this interpretation, then, the performer’s function in the formation of musical meaning, for Schutz, would seem to be more mechanical than creative and/or transformative.
738 Ibid., 23. 739 Christine A. Skarda, “Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of music”, in Understanding the Musical Experience, ed. F.J. Smith (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1989), 84-85. 740 Ibid., 85. 741 Ibid., emphasis added. 176
While Skarda herself remains uncritical of this particular aspect of Schutz’s account, we should nevertheless evaluate his notion of musical meaning further by contextualising it within his overall views of music. Schutz’s notion that every piece has its own
“correct” meaning is curious given his earlier comments concerning the “vague” nature of musical notation. As I discussed earlier, he claims that the markings in the score are not intended as strict directives but are rather a “hint” or suggestion from the composer to the performer(s) as to how to play the piece.742 If the composer’s musical thoughts are embedded in these markings, and the latter themselves are intended as mere suggestions, it is difficult to fathom how a “correct” meaning could be attributed to every work. Or, perhaps Schutz is making the broader point here that there is only one authentic or “correct” source from which the meaning of a piece should be derived, namely, the composer’s thoughts.
However, this still raises the further question of whether the composer can realistically be isolated as the only authentic source of meaning. As I will elaborate in section three,
Schutz conceives of the reconstruction of musical meaning as a collaborative process between the composer and the performer whereby their two streams of consciousness intersect in inner time. Being collaborative, it would seem that the composer’s input and the performer’s input are intertwined in this process, such that it would be difficult to distinguish between their respective contributions to the meaning of a work. Hence, it is possible that musical interpretation does not simply consist in translating the composer’s musical thoughts into sounds. Rather, it would appear that the performer’s creative input could also give rise to an innovative interpretation of a piece that is actually able to change the meaning of this piece itself. Perhaps musical meaning, then,
742 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 166. 177
is not so much reconstructed or reproduced by the performer or listener, as Schutz suggests, but is rather re-created, or at least transformed, upon every performance or listening.
An example of an alternative account of musical meaning that emphasises its creative aspect can be found in Higgins’ analysis of aphorism 334 (“One must learn to love”) from Nietzsche’s GS. Here, Higgins illuminates how our initial experience of a musical piece is not simply reproduced without alteration, but is rather transformed, upon subsequent encounters with it.743 To set the background for my discussion of her analysis, I will outline Nietzsche’s main claims in GS 334. First, however, a point of clarification: I am examining Nietzsche’s aphorism at this point in my thesis to distinguish my current discussion of his later views of music from my previous discussion (in chapter three) of his early views of music (i.e. those contained in BT and the unpublished essays, “The Dionysian Worldview” and “On Music and Words”). The main difference to note here is that, by the time Nietzsche wrote GS, he no longer held to the metaphysics of Will to which his early views of music generally adhered.
743 Please see pages 161-62 of The Music Between Us: Is Music a Universal Language? for Higgins’ analysis of GS 334. I have quoted the aphorism in full below.
This is what happens to us in music: First one has to learn to hear a figure and melody at all, to detect and distinguish it, to isolate it and delimit it as a separate life. Then it requires some exertion and good will to tolerate it in spite of its strangeness, to be patient with its appearance and expression, and kindhearted about its oddity. Finally there comes a moment when we are used to it, when we wait for it, when we sense that we should miss it if it were missing; and now it continues to compel and enchant us relentlessly until we have become its humble and enraptured lovers who desire nothing better from the world than it and only it. But that is what happens to us not only in music. That is how we have learned to love all things that we now love. In the end we are always rewarded for our good will, our patience, fairmindedness, and gentleness with what is strange; gradually, it sheds its veil and turns out to be a new and indescribable beauty. That is its thanks for our hospitality. Even those who love themselves will have learned it in this way; for there is no other way. Love, too, has to be learned. (GS 334: 262, emphases in original) 178
In GS 334, Nietzsche establishes an analogy between coming to appreciate a particular musical “figure and melody” and coming to “love” unfamiliar things.744 Just as we are unable to fully appreciate an unfamiliar figure and melody upon the first hearing, we are similarly unable to immediately fall in love with things that initially appear “strange” or foreign to us.745 In both circumstances, Nietzsche argues, we must slowly become accustomed to that which initially resists us by undertaking a “learn[ing]” process that requires much “good will”, “patience”, “fairmindedness” and “gentleness” on our behalf.746 It is only by participating in this process that we can eventually become
“enraptured” by a previously unfamiliar musical figure and melody in the same way that we will eventually be able to perceive the “new and indescribable beauty” of something that we have slowly come to love.747 His main point is paradoxical: in order to experience the “new” and unique in the object of desire, one must be habituated to the familiar or customary meaning of that object.
More precisely, Nietzsche claims with regards to music that this process involves undertaking three key steps which require multiple experiences of, or encounters with, a particular figure and melody. We must first “learn to hear” it, then be able to “tolerate” it and eventually become “used to” it.748 In her analysis of this “phenomenon of enjoying musical repetition” that GS 334 describes, Higgins argues that “repetition”, for
Nietzsche, combines both the “new” and the old, the “familiar” and the unfamiliar, in interesting ways.749 Her analysis thus captures the paradoxical elements that his aphorism contains. For Nietzsche, the effect that repetition has upon us, Higgins
744 GS 334: 262 745 Ibid. 746 Ibid. 747 Ibid., emphasis added. 748 Ibid., emphases in original. 749 Higgins, The Music Between Us, 161-62. 179
suggests, is simultaneously “comforting” and stimulating.750 It is “comforting”, she argues, because “music characteristically presents the familiar over and over again”, for example, through “repeated motives or patterns” or even the “repetition of entire musical works”.751 However, it is also stimulating, she suggests, because “novelty” features in subsequent experiences of the same musical piece.752 As Higgins puts it,
“we bring to each hearing the different relationship we have to it; and we enjoy re- experiencing the twists and turns of this particular work”.753 She thus concludes that, for Nietzsche, “repetition enables us to learn to feel at home with what is new”.754
Higgins’ analysis of the later Nietzsche thus provides an alternative model of musical meaning to Schutz’s, where meaning is simultaneously preserved and creatively transformed upon reiterations of the same piece.
Before progressing further with my analysis, I would like to recapitulate some key themes that have emerged thus far in my discussion of the crucial temporal dimension of music in Schutz’s philosophy. First, he gives precedence to inner time over outer time in his account. Second, whereas he associates the mind/consciousness with inner time, that is, the actual lived experience of time, he associates the body and the spatial world in which it dwells with outer time. As I will soon illustrate, he thereby also privileges the mind/consciousness over the body, as well as time over space, in his account. In what follows, I will outline some of Schutz’s own reasons for maintaining these distinctions in his philosophy of music in conjunction with possible criticisms of his approach. In general, these criticisms suggest that Schutz’s own account of the musical experience may, at times, be more multifaceted and complex than he himself
750 Ibid., 162. 751 Ibid., 158. 752 Ibid., 162. 753 Ibid., emphasis in original. 754 Ibid. 180
suspects. This complexity manifests itself in the various intricate interconnections between these central aspects of human experience (i.e. the mind, body, space and time) that, for the most part, remain implicit in his account. Insofar as these interconnections are not brought to the fore by Schutz himself, they thus remain under-examined in his philosophy. It is to a critique of his strict distinction between inner and outer time that I first turn.
One way of challenging Schutz’s inner time/outer time distinction is by evaluating his concept of “musical phrasing” in “Fragments”. In this text, he describes phrasing as the
“articulation of the musical flux into units and sub-units”.755 It is this segmentation of the music into “thematical units and sub-units”756 that would seem to position Schutz’s notion of musical meaning in his fragmented notion of outer time rather than in his fluid and continuous notion of inner time. This segmentation stems from the fact that central to his concept of musical phrasing is the “very short interruption of the flux of music” that allows one “phase” to be distinguished from another.757 According to him, these
“interruptions” or “intermittences” in turn provide the listener with the opportunity to examine the meaning of the music that has just unfolded.758 This, s/he performs by carving the music up into distinct phases and situating these within the overall context of the piece itself.759 This potential infiltration of outer time into music, the latter being a realm that Schutz associates almost exclusively with inner time, significantly puts into question the strict inner time/outer time distinction on which his philosophy of music
755 Schutz, “Fragments”, 66. 756 Ibid. 757 Ibid. 758 Ibid. 759 Ibid. 181
relies.760 In fact, not only does outer time seem to infiltrate his conception of music, but so too does the spatial world (which is governed by outer time). It is to both an explanation and critique of Schutz’s dismissal of space in music that I now turn.
Underlying Schutz’s belief that music is largely autonomous of our “spatial experience” is his claim that this experience is not a fundamental part of our perception of music.761
This, he argues, is because the ear, through which music is perceived, does not possess the inherent or natural ability to “build up the dimension of space”.762 Although we may imagine that we can perceive a spatial difference between two sets of “auditive” events (e.g. the sound of “approaching footsteps” and that of “distant thunder”), such perceptions, Schutz maintains, are actually derived from “preconstituted spatial experiences which were not purely auditive ones”.763 In particular, we have learnt from former “visual” experiences that the louder a sound is, the closer the object or person is to us.764 His contention that space is not a fundamental aspect of musical perception is what leads him to differentiate music from art forms like painting, architecture and sculpture.765 Unlike music, these other creative arts, Schutz argues, involve
“kinaesthesia” in one or more of its “visual”, “tactile” and/or “locomotive” forms.766 In the case of painting, the artist, he suggests, employs “specific devices” to direct the
760 In “The Musicality of the Other: Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, and Kimura”, Nobuo Kazashi also seems to make a similar, albeit implicit, critique of Schutz’s description of musical phrasing in “Fragments”. Kazashi claims that “even the Schutzian thematization of the essentially polythetic nature of musical experience appears […] still to be restrained by a residue of atomistic and rationalistic views of musical signification”. (Nobuo Kazashi, “The Musicality of the Other: Schutz, Merleau-Ponty, and Kimura”, in The Prism of the Self: Philosophical Essays in Honour of Maurice Natanson, ed. Steven Galt Crowell (Kluwer Academic Publishers: Dordrecht, 1995), 181.) By alerting us to the “atomistic” quality of Schutz’s conception of “musical signification” (i.e. a quality that Schutz himself associates with outer time), Kazashi might be implicitly challenging Schutz’s claim that music dwells almost exclusively in inner time. 761 Schutz, “Fragments”, 36-37. 762 Ibid., 36. 763 Ibid., emphases added. 764 Ibid. 765 Ibid., 33-36. 766 Ibid., 34-35. 182
observer’s eye “movements” in a way that serves to structure his/her perception of the work.767 For example, he notes that the “eye has to follow certain contour lines; it is guided by the distribution of colors, lights and shadows, etc.”768 In contrast with painting, music, Schutz argues, does not involve kinaesthesia769 because the ear cannot move around in space in the same way that one’s eyes and limbs can. For example, the movements of one’s ear cannot “follow” melodic lines in the same way that one’s eye movements can “follow” the contour lines of a painting.
Regardless of whether or not Schutz’s views of the physical attributes/capacities of the ear are scientifically correct, we could still question their relevance to his philosophy of music. As I mentioned earlier, he claims that the “physical qualities” of musical sounds are irrelevant to a phenomenological investigation of music in terms of lived experience.
Given his lack of interest in such qualities, it thus seems curious that he should appeal to so-called “facts” about the physical attributes/capacities of the ear to justify his diminished interest in space in music. Commentators like Judy Lochhead would challenge Schutz’s notion that music can be considered without reference to our spatial experience.770 While it may appear as though we simply listen to music, Lochhead argues instead that music actually engages our “entire body” and in such a way that our
“senses” are intertwined.771 In particular, it is our ability to perceive space through our capacity for vision that, for her, is especially important to the musical experience.772
Through her experiences of teaching pieces of “new music” (or “modern music”),
767 Ibid., 33-34. 768 Ibid., 34. Schutz claims here that, even though the images in a painting are not themselves moving, the observer must still employ kinaesthesia to view this painting because his/her “eye is incited to wander around within the limits of the frame” by its “contour lines” and other such “devices” (Ibid.). 769 Ibid., 36. 770 Please see Judy Lochhead, “Hearing New Music: Pedagogy from a Phenomenological Perspective”, Philosophy of Music Education Review 3, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 34-42. 771 Ibid., 38. 772 Ibid. 183
Lochhead noticed a distinct improvement in her students’ “attitude” towards, and understanding of, these pieces when a “visual component” was employed, despite the fact that most students “respond[ed] negatively” to this music at the outset.773 To add this visual component, she played a video of the performance in addition to giving her usual lecture about the background of the piece and making her students listen to it.774
Lochhead’s own explanation of this noticeable improvement is that her students were able to access “visually apprehended information about how sounds relate to one another in a spatial environment” when witnessing an actual performance of the piece that they were studying.775 For example, they were able to view the instruments from which particular sounds emanated and thereby get a clearer and/or more vivid idea of how the “instrumental timbres” might interact with each other in the “performance space”.776 Drawing from her observations from within the classroom, Lochhead argues that this “visually apprehended information” actually “contribute[s] significantly to the perceptual coherence of the music” for the listener and is thus a crucial, rather than merely incidental, aspect of music.777 Moreover, she claims that the students’ ability to actually see the performers’ “physical gestures” also helped to “enhance and clarify musical meaning” for them.778 In section three, I will elaborate how, in Schutz’s account, being in close physical proximity with a fellow musician’s body can greatly help a performer to follow the “flux” of the music. Curiously, however, this is not a point that he himself makes explicit.
773 Ibid., 34-35. 774 Ibid., 35. 775 Ibid., 38. 776 Ibid. 777 Ibid. 778 Ibid. 184
Lochhead does not mean to imply here that “any music which is electronically reproduced will be received negatively” by the listener because the “visual and spatial component of performance” is unavailable to him/her.779 Rather, her point is that, even without the use of visual aids, students with “prior visual and spatial experience with a particular style” of music would be able to understand a piece of that style better than those who lack this previous experience.780 In direct contrast with Schutz’s claim that music is autonomous of our spatial experience, Lochhead suggests that, “[h]aving no prior visual and spatial experience – no full perceptual encounter – with such musical styles proved an impediment to ‘hearing’.”781 She elaborates her analysis by linking her key claim that musical understanding is augmented through the use of multiple senses with Merleau-Ponty’s broader insight that “perception is a wholistic activity of the body in which the senses intermingle and inform one another”.782 In chapter five, I will expand on Merleau-Ponty’s crucial notion of “perception” in relation to the experience of music by examining his concept of the “lived body” or the “phenomenal body”.
Nicola Pedone argues that central to Schutz’s dismissal of space in music is his adoption of a particular “empirical position” towards “spatiality” whereby space does not partake in “sound in an original and irreducible way”.783 This is because, as I discussed earlier, he does not consider space as a fundamental aspect of our perception of musical sounds. An empirical understanding of space would be aligned with the conventional notion of space as linear, divisible, measurable and uniform. To challenge
Schutz, Pedone provides examples of certain musical styles and techniques, such as the
779 Ibid. 780 Ibid., 38-39. 781 Ibid., 39. 782 Ibid., 38. 783 Nicola Pedone, “Intersubjectivity, Time and Social Relationship in Alfred Schutz’s Philosophy of Music”, Axiomathes 2 (September 1995): 208-209. 185
“Venetian School and its practice of the double choir”, where she believes the “spatial element” is crucial to the music’s sound.784 In section three, I will take Pedone’s critique one step further by examining the wider possibility that we need to go beyond an empirical understanding of space altogether if we are to understand its importance to
Schutz’s own account of the musical experience, especially in terms of its social dimension. To make this suggestion, I will take up Fred Kersten’s proposal that the intersubjective aspect of space in Schutz’s account is predominantly “social-cultural” rather than merely physical in nature.785
Similar to Pedone, Imogen Parker also claims that space is a particularly significant aspect of certain musical pieces. In particular, Parker emphasises the ability of space to actually destabilise the sense of temporality that such works embody. To do this, she draws on Adorno’s insights into Stravinsky’s Sacre (a musical work I examined in detail in chapter one) to critique Bergson’s notion that space should be excluded from music.786 Insofar as Schutz’s dismissal of the spatial element of music is largely derived from Bergson’s, her critique also applies to Schutz’s philosophy. Parker begins by examining Adorno’s claim that Stravinsky has made the “spatial dimension absolute” in compositions like Sacre.787 Stravinsky, she suggests, emphasises this
“spatial dimension” (in Sacre) by employing “relentless repetition to create blocks of sound, juxtaposed against and across others”.788 Partly quoting from Adorno’s
Philosophy of Modern Music, Parker states, the “extension, rather than development, of the majority of musical ideas in this passage [i.e. several bars from “Augurs of Spring,
784 Ibid., 209. 785 Kersten, preface, 8. 786 For Parker’s analysis of Stravinsky’s music (including Adorno’s views of it), please see Imogen Parker, “The time of music: the music of time – Charles Ives’s Contemplations: bringing music into dialogue with time and space”, Critical Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2008): 62-65. 787 Ibid., 62. 788 Ibid. 186
Dance of the Adolescent Girls” in Sacre], results in the music heaping up, filling up more space: ‘there are only fluctuations of something always constant and totally static’”.789 The strong influence of this spatial dimension, she claims, disrupts
“temporal development” because the musical ideas remain disparate and simply accumulate as the piece progresses rather than being interconnected in fluid, cohesive and/or predictable ways that help to sustain the music’s flow.790 In Parker’s view, this ultimately results in a “refusal to allow the listener a straightforward or easily navigated temporal experience”.791 In contrast with Schutz, then, Parker provides an example of how the primary aspect of a musical piece is not always the continuous “flux” of its melodic line(s) but rather the absence thereof.
It is my contention that these criticisms of Schutz’s dismissal of space in music could be addressed by acknowledging that the body (which dwells in space) plays a greater role in his own account of the musical experience than he sometimes suggests. In what follows, I will both elaborate and challenge the mind/body dualism that features in this account by exploring the body’s role in forming and consolidating the interconnections between inner and outer time. To set up this critique, I will first illustrate how Schutz conceives of music as a transformative experience, focussing in particular on how this conception both resembles, and differs from, Nietzsche’s notion of music’s transformative effect. It is to the ways in which Schutz applies ideas from Nietzsche’s philosophy to deepen his own analysis of the musical experience that I now turn.
Similar to Nietzsche, Schutz also views music as a state where the more mundane aspects of our existence are momentarily forgotten. Nevertheless, unlike Nietzsche, for
789 Ibid., 62-63. 790 Ibid., 63. 791 Ibid., 64. 187
whom music’s transformative effect is inherently corporeal, Schutz claims that it pertains to our mind or consciousness. According to Schutz, becoming engrossed in the musical experience requires that we migrate to “another plane of consciousness” from that involved in the spatial world of everyday life.792 Specifically, this “transgression” to another plane of consciousness, he argues, involves reducing the “degree of high tension in our consciousness” that everyday life demands of us by focussing less intently on realising our daily projects.793 This decrease in tension, Schutz continues, is what ultimately allows us to “surrender to [music’s] flux” in inner time.794
Schutz draws further on Nietzsche’s aesthetics by associating the musical experience with certain aspects of the Dionysian principle. The inclusion of the Dionysian principle in his account is significant in two main ways. First, it indicates Schutz’s divergence from the common view that music is a form of escapism or an
“otherworldly” realm where our troubles simply disappear, leaving us in a calmer state of mind. This is because he actually emphasises that aspect of the Dionysian that explains music’s ability to stimulate the affects, that is, its “power […] to immediately excite feelings, to agitate the will”.795 This suggests that we should not interpret the reduction of tension that he claims music effects as producing a stupefying or comforting effect on us. For both Schutz and Nietzsche, then, music is not an antidote
792 Schutz, “Fragments”, 42-43. 793 Ibid. 794 Ibid., 43. 795 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 193-94. Schutz’s association of Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian with the affective aspect of music is also emphasised in “Mozart and the Philosophers”, where he states:
In listening to music we immerse ourselves in the continuous flux of our consciousness, and participate simultaneously and immediately in the ongoing musical process – with our feelings, emotions, and passions – in an attitude that Nietzsche has called the Dionysiac. (Alfred Schutz, “Mozart and the Philosophers”, in Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 196. Emphases added. Hereafter cited as “Mozart and the Philosophers”.) 188
to the potent and often bittersweet concoction of pain and pleasure that is human existence.
Second, and more importantly, Schutz’s analysis of the Dionysian principle also points towards an intertwining of the mind and body that remains largely implicit in his own account of music. This could demonstrate how, contrary to his stated view, the mind and body actually play equally important roles in the musical experience. These mind- body interconnections come to the fore in his use of Nietzsche’s Apollinian/Dionysian distinction to differentiate between two ways in which we can experience rhythm in music. Schutz defines rhythm in general terms as the “distribution of a melody over space-time”.796 This definition suggests that he partly associates rhythm with the outer world because it can be conceptualised and is measurable in spatial and mathematical terms. For Schutz, this conceptual characterisation of rhythm would correspond with
Nietzsche’s notion of the “Apollonic man”.797 In line with the Apollinian principle, this aspect of rhythm plays an individuating role in music due to its ability to segment the melody into separate parts. For example, from this Apollinian perspective, we could calculate that, if a bar of melody with a 4/4 time signature is spread out across the
“space” of twenty seconds, and there are four crotchets (each worth one beat) in this bar, each note should sound for approximately five seconds.
796 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 193. 797 Ibid., 194. This link between the “Apollonic man” and a conceptual notion of rhythm can be further explained through Schutz’s analogy between the way that rhythm, from the Apollinian perspective, only appears after the “melody has faded away” and the way that “movement becomes space only after it has ceased” (Ibid., emphasis added). Movement can only be conceived of in spatial terms after it has been “performed and accomplished” because an object only leaves a “spatial trace” after it has moved (Schutz, “Fragments”, 30). Moreover, the measurement of this “spatial trace” involves the use of a “conceptual scheme” because it requires us to “look back” and segment the completed movement into various parts (e.g. metres or kilometres) by way of conscious reflection (Ibid., 30-31). For example, after this process of segmentation, we may arrive at the concept that, “A car travelled sixty kilometres per hour for a total duration of three hours.” Similarly, from the perspective of the “Apollonic man”, Schutz claims that it is only after he has played or listened to a melody that he can “look back” on this experience and conceptualise it in such terms as, “Rhythmic pattern ‘x’ lasted for the ‘space’ or duration of ten seconds.” 189
However, Schutz also emphasises that a more productive idea of rhythm would be drawn from the Dionysian perspective that centres on lived experience. Insofar as lived experience is essential to his phenomenological investigation of music, this Dionysian perspective of rhythm (as opposed to its Apollinian counterpart) would seem to be more consistent with his broader conception of the temporal dimension of music and music’s role in existence. Unlike the “Apollonic man” who conceptualises rhythm, the
Dionysian individual, in Schutz’s view, is the “acting, dancing person who moves to music”.798 The mind/body distinction is weakened in Schutz’s analysis of the
Dionysian individual in the following way: his/her body cannot help but become infected by the music, which, in turn, unfolds in, and is thereby connected with, his/her stream of consciousness (i.e. his/her mind). Hence, the mind, body and music would seem to be entwined with each other in Schutz’s account, at least from the Dionysian perspective of lived experience. While Schutz himself downplays these potential interconnections in his analysis of rhythm here, more evidence of these links can be found in his wider notion of the “vivid present”, to which I now turn.
The “vivid present” is crucial to Schutz’s overall conception of temporality because it is a concept that he employs to unite the various temporal dimensions under a cohesive framework. These dimensions include inner and outer time, as well as the past, present and future. And, as we shall see in section three, this idea of the “vivid present” is also central to understanding how, for Schutz, participants in the collective musical experience are intertwined. By way of definition, Schutz claims that the vivid present
“encompasses everything that is actually lived through, it includes elements of the past
798 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 194. 190
retained or recollected in the Now and elements of the future entering the Now by way of protention or anticipation”.799 I will shortly return to explain the more intricate components of this definition. The most pertinent aspect of the vivid present for my current purposes is the fact that it materialises at the juncture of inner and outer time.800
By characterising the vivid present in this way, Schutz thereby suggests that inner and outer time, while seemingly “incomparable”,801 are nevertheless interrelated.
As I have already suggested, it is the body that forms and consolidates these interconnections between the two temporal dimensions. While he does not make this explicit, a connection could be established between Schutz’s account of how the body is experienced in both inner and outer time and his account of the Apollinian and
Dionysian perspectives of music (that I discussed earlier). This connection in turn reinforces the interconnections between the mind and body that, for the most part, remain buried in his analysis of the vivid present. From the conceptual perspective of
Nietzsche’s “Apollonic man”, bodily movements are “events” occurring in outer time whose “spatial trace” can be calculated in terms of the “path run through” in time and space.802 In contrast, from the Dionysian perspective, bodily movements are primarily lived experiences in inner time or what Schutz refers to as “happening changes, as manifestations of our spontaneity pertaining to our stream of consciousness”.803 Like the Dionysian individual or the “acting, dancing person who moves to music” (that I described earlier), these changes are experienced in our stream of consciousness (i.e. in our mind) in an instinctive manner, that is, without distinct awareness of the fact that the
799 Schutz, “Fragments”, 42. 800 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 216. 801 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 171. 802 Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 215. 803 Ibid. 191
body “creates space and time for itself” as it moves.804 It is by simultaneously partaking in inner time (which Schutz associates with the Dionysian principle) and outer time
(which he associates with the Apollinian principle) that the body becomes intertwined with the mind in the vivid present. Just as inner and outer time are interconnected in his philosophy, so too are the temporal dimensions of the past, present and future. I now turn to a discussion of these dimensions in order to illustrate how Schutz departs from traditional notions of time.
Schutz’s claim that the vivid present contains aspects of the past, present and future is based on William James’ similar notion of the “specious present”.805 In The Principles of Psychology, James describes the “specious present” as containing a “certain breadth of its own” because it both looks back to the past and orients itself towards the future.806
By agreeing with James’ notion of the “specious present”, Schutz thereby also challenges the conventional notion of “the present”. The idea that what we ordinarily call “the present” actually has a “breadth” (or what Schutz calls a “before and an after”) contrasts with the traditional notion that “the present” is a “mathematical point, a mere instant, an ideal limit between past and future”.807 In Schutz’s view, to conceptualise
“the present” as a “mere instant” or millisecond in time would be to engage solely with
804 Schutz, Life Forms and Meaning Structure, 193 & Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 215. 805 Schutz, “Fragments”, 42. William James himself actually borrows this notion of the “specious present” from E. Robert Kelly (or E.R. Clay) (William James, The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 609.) 806 James, The Principles of Psychology, 609. 807 Schutz, “Fragments”, 42. This conventional notion of “the present” that Schutz both describes and contests is what James terms the “strict present” (James, The Principles of Psychology, 608). James argues that, due to the ongoing flux of time, the particular “moment” that we label the “strict present” is actually always on the brink of becoming part of our past and thus ultimately eludes us (Ibid.). As he eloquently expresses it, “[w]here is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.” (Ibid.) In James’ view, the “strict present” is actually an “altogether ideal abstraction” whose existence can be conceived of through “[r]eflection”, but which never actually becomes available to our “immediate experience” (Ibid., 608-609). 192
the atomistic terminology of outer time, while overlooking the dynamism of our lived experience in inner time.
Central to how the past and future are interrelated in the vivid present, for Schutz, is our ability to have “recollections” of past experiences as well as “expectations” or predictions of future ones.808 He employs various terms from Husserl’s notion of temporality, namely, “retention”, “reproduction”, “protention” and “anticipation”, in order to explain this claim. A detailed examination of these terms is warranted here because, as we shall see, this capacity to have recollections and expectations is also important to Schutz’s notion of how people’s thoughts are interlinked during the collective musical experience. In particular, these Husserlian concepts help him to articulate how the composer and performer collaborate in the formation of musical meaning.
Schutz begins by subsuming two kinds of “remembrance” under his overall category of recollection.809 First, he defines “retention” as the remembrance of a recent experience which still “attaches itself immediately and without interruption” to that experience.810
To explain “retention” in musical terms, Schutz provides the example of experiencing a
“sound which lasts for a certain period of time”. 811 While we are listening to this sound, we are still able to quickly bring to mind what it was like when we first heard it.
Or, as Schutz puts it, we have “retention of its initial phases, which belong to past
Nows”.812 Second, Schutz defines “reproduction” as a different kind of remembrance
808 Schutz, “Fragments”, 39-41. 809 Ibid., 39-40. 810 Ibid., 40. 811 Ibid. 812 Ibid. 193
that “does not attach itself immediately to actual experiences”.813 Otherwise put,
“reproduction” involves the recollection of a previous recollection of an actual experience that occurred in “more remote Pasts”.814 For example, we may recall a previous recollection of a particular incident from our childhood.
Just as we can recall experiences from both recent and “more remote Pasts”, Schutz also claims that we can make predictions of those that will occur in both the near and the
“more distant future”.815 He calls “expectations” of the near future and of the “more distant future” “protentions” and “anticipations”, respectively.816 Schutz’s example of a
“protention” in the context of music is the expectation that a sound that we are currently hearing will maintain the “same pitch” in the immediate future (e.g. one second later).817
Schutz’s notion of the vivid present that I have just described in detail also grounds his explanation of how musicians share both time and the corporeal dimension of space in the musical experience. It thus also points towards other significant ways in which the interconnections between the mind, body, time and space feature implicitly in his account. Before explaining how this is so, I will make some general remarks about
Schutz’s overall theory of intersubjectivity.
3. The intersubjective musical experience
Understanding the importance of music to human existence, for Schutz, lies in the centrality that he gives to intersubjectivity in experience in general. According to him, the social world, including the broader cultural and historical dimensions in which it is
813 Ibid. 814 Ibid. 815 Ibid., 41. 816 Ibid. 817 Ibid. 194
embedded, is a fundamental aspect of human experience. This is encapsulated in his claim that:
the world of my daily life is by no means my private world but is from the outset
an intersubjective one, shared with my fellow-men, experienced and interpreted
by Others; in brief, it is a world common to all of us.818
By locating intersubjectivity at the heart of human existence, Schutz thereby dispels the notion that people essentially live in two separate worlds which overlap intermittently during isolated moments of collective activity. While acknowledging that, at times, people will be more engrossed in social interactions than others, he emphasises that the self and other are still fundamentally connected to each other in existence. In his view, it is the “common experience” that they both share that founds and constantly reinforces the “intersubjective character of the world”.819 This last point is emphasised in his notion of the “mutual tuning-in relationship” (a concept that I introduced in section one) that I will shortly elaborate.
More precisely, Schutz suggests that, when engaging in interpersonal interactions, people are “given one to the other not as objects but as counter-subjects, as consociates in a societal community of persons”.820 He thus disputes the “one-way relationship” that he claims features in Sartre’s rather antagonistic account of intersubjectivity where the other tends to be reduced to an “object” (whose “liberty” one endeavours to
818 Alfred Schutz, “Symbol, Reality, and Society”, in Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 312. Hereafter cited as “Symbol, Reality, and Society”. 819 Alfred Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, in Collected Papers II: Studies in Social Theory, ed. Arvid Brodersen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964), 31. Hereafter cited as “The Dimensions of the Social World”. 820 Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 165. 195
appropriate) rather than a “subject” (whose liberty is left intact).821 Contrary to this
Sartrean account, Schutz claims instead that it is the “reciprocal” aspect822 of the self- other relationship that comes to the fore when participants in the musical experience collaborate to reconstruct musical meaning. Developing a comprehensive understanding of this collaborative process of “making music together” requires a discussion of Schutz’s broader notion of the “mutual tuning-in relationship” to which I now turn.
In the musical manifestation of the “mutual tuning-in relationship”, the self and other meet through mental and/or corporeal means in overlapping dimensions of inner and/or outer time. In its simplest form, the musical manifestation of this relationship takes place between the composer and the “beholder”, which Schutz defines broadly as the
“player, listener, and reader of music”.823 It is within inner time, he claims, that the ongoing flux of music unfolds as the streams of consciousness of the composer and beholder are “lived through” concurrently with each other.824 Since the composer and beholder are essentially participating in the same “flux” of music, this “synchronization of [their] two interior streams of duration” thereby founds a “community of time” between them.825 As the composer’s musical thoughts unravel alongside the gradual
821 Alfred Schutz, “Sartre’s Theory of the Alter Ego”, in Collected Papers I: The Problem of Social Reality, ed. Maurice Natanson (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 200 & 202-203. Hereafter cited as “Sartre’s Theory of the Alter Ego”. Under Sartre’s theory of intersubjectivity, Schutz claims that it would be difficult to acquire any understanding of the other’s “concrete system of possibilities and projects” because we are only able to encounter him/her as an “object” rather than another “subject” (Ibid., 200). Having been “objectified” by us, his/her possibilities, Schutz suggests, would no longer seem “open” to us insofar as the other has already lost the “freedom of action” to realise them as s/he wishes (Ibid.). Henceforth, the other’s “possibilities are dead possibilities”, referring only to the “meaning” they have for us but not for him/her (Ibid.). We, in turn, deduce this meaning by examining how his/her body interacts with objects that we perceive in the outer world, through its “gestures”, movements, etc. (Ibid.). 822 Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 30. 823 Footnote no. 12 on Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 169. 824 Ibid., 173. 825 Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 26 & Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 173. 196
unfolding of the musical notes, so too does the beholder’s reconstruction of these thoughts when s/he plays or listens to a piece from beginning to end.
To use terminology I introduced back in section two, Schutz claims that this reconstruction takes place in a “polythetic” manner whereby the beholder “participates with quasi simultaneity in the [composer’s] stream of consciousness by performing with him step by step the ongoing articulation of his musical thought”.826 I will explain
“quasi simultaneity” shortly. The point I wish to stress first is that this “polythetic” process whereby the beholder reconstructs, step by step, these musical thoughts is achieved by instigating a dynamic “interplay of recollections, retentions, protentions, and anticipations” within his/her stream of consciousness.827 This last point refers us back to Husserlian concepts in Schutz’s philosophy which I discussed in detail earlier.
Basically, by recalling the music that has already occurred as well as predicting that which is to follow, the beholder gradually comes to perceive a “meaningful arrangement” in the “flux of tones” that is continuously unfolding.828 Moreover, this
“coordinat[ion]” of the “ongoing phases of my own conscious life” with another’s in turn founds the phenomenon that Schutz famously terms “growing older together”.829
Schutz uses “quasi simultaneity” rather than “simultaneity” to describe the relationship between the composer and beholder because, while these two individuals may share a community of time, they nevertheless do not participate in the same “sector of space”.830 Otherwise put, while they share experiences in inner time, they do not do so in outer time. For example, the performer may be playing the piece in Australia in
826 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 171-72. 827 Ibid., 170. 828 Ibid. 829 Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 30 & Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 175. 830 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 175-76. 197
2014, whereas the composer may have composed it in Vienna in 1788. Unlike the composer-beholder relationship, “coperformers”, Schutz claims, share a “community of space and time” that establishes what he calls a “genuine” or “true face-to-face relationship” between them.831 In a footnote to “Making Music Together”, Schutz clarifies that the use of the term “genuine” here “signifies merely that the participants in such a relation share time and space while it lasts”.832 For example, the coperformers may all be playing Holst’s The Planets in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House at 10:30am on January 31st, 2014. According to him, this sharing of both time and space entails that actual simultaneity (rather than quasi simultaneity) characterises the relationship between coperformers.833 By virtue of sharing the same sector of space, coperformers, he claims, also partake in what he calls the “immediacy” of the “shared vivid present”.834 In contrast, the composer and beholder only partake in a “derived form” or “reconstruction” of the “shared vivid present” that the coperformers experience.835
Schutz expands on these contrasting notions of “quasi simultaneity” and “simultaneity” by also applying them to the relationship between the performer and listener. The following discussion of this relationship serves to show how his own account of the musical experience might be more complex than he makes explicit. In terms of the performer-listener relationship, actual simultaneity would feature in live performances where the performer(s) and listener(s) share both time and space. In contrast, quasi simultaneity would feature in situations where they do not share the same sector of
831 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 171-72 & 176 & Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 30 (emphasis added). 832 Footnote no. 19 on Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 172. 833 Ibid., 174-76. 834 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 176 & Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 221. 835 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 171-72. 198
space, for example, when the listener’s access to the performance is mediated by
“mechanical devices” (e.g. a CD player).836
In terms of the performer-listener relationship, Schutz perceives primarily quantitative differences between situations involving the “face-to-face relationship” and those involving “derived relationships”.837 These situations, he claims, would differ in terms of the varying degrees of “intensity, intimacy, and anonymity” that they exhibit.838 For instance, due to the lack of physical proximity between the listener(s) and performer(s) in a “derived relationship”, we could suppose that there would be a greater degree of
“anonymity” and lesser degrees of “intimacy” and perhaps “intensity” between them in comparison with a live performance (where a “face-to-face relationship” is involved).839
Aside from these quantitative differences between degrees of “intensity, intimacy, and anonymity”, it matters little to Schutz whether the audience is constituted by “one single person, a small group of persons in a private room, a crowd filling a big concert hall, or the entirely unknown listeners of a radio performance or a commercially distributed record”.840 His main interest lies instead in what unites all of these collective musical experiences, that is, their shared basis in the “mutual tuning-in relationship”.841 The main unifying factor between these experiences, he argues, is the fact that they all
836 Ibid., 174. Schutz subsumes such situations involving quasi simultaneity under his broader notion of “derived relationships” (Schutz, “On Multiple Realities”, 221). He also seems to count the “system of musical notation” as another “technical” or “mechanical device” amongst others (Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 177). This is because, as I discussed earlier in this chapter, he regards the written score (along with other such “devices”) as simply another means of communicating the music to other participants in the musical experience. 837 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 174. 838 Ibid. 839 Ibid. 840 Ibid. 841 Ibid., 174-75. 199
necessarily involve the “partaking in common of different dimensions of time simultaneously lived through by the participants”. 842
Contrary to Schutz, however, I want to suggest that, in addition to these quantitative differences, significant qualitative differences can also be found in these various manifestations of the performer-listener relationship. This is one way in which his account of the musical experience might be more multidimensional than he sometimes suggests. Let us take the example of listening to John Cage’s piece 4’33’’ as part of a large audience in the Royal Albert Hall (i.e. a live performance involving a “face-to- face relationship”) and listening to a recording of this same piece through headphones
(i.e. an example of a situation involving a “derived relationship”). In order to fully grasp this example, some background information on this piece is necessary. Cage’s
4’33’’ is unique because it theoretically consists in “silence” insofar as no notes are actually “sounded” or played during a performance of it. Even if the performers do engage with their instruments, they would only be miming the gestures of “playing”
(e.g. pretending to blow into a trumpet, poising one’s fingers over the piano keys, etc.).
Hence, when merely listening to a recording of 4’33”, especially for the first time, we might get the impression that no instruments are being “played” or at least be unable to determine what these are. In contrast, if we were able to actually see the musicians during a live performance, it would be clear to us as to whether an entire orchestra or a single/few instrumentalist(s) is/are involved. Hence, a potential qualitative difference in this example could be that between the imagined use of instrumentation when merely listening to Cage’s work (e.g. “no instruments”) and the actual use of instrumentation as ascertained during a live performance of it (e.g. “an entire orchestra”).
842 Ibid., 177. 200
Skarda’s reading of Schutz also suggests that he might be underestimating the complexity of his own account by bringing to light the important role that the body and space play in it. For Schutz, the transformative effect of the music on the performer and listener, Skarda claims, is more powerful during the experience of a live performance than in situations where these individuals are not in physical proximity of each other. In particular, she attributes music’s powerful transformative effect in the context of a live performance to the sense of “immediacy” that arises from being in the direct presence of another’s body (its “motions, facial expression”, etc.).843 While not explicitly critiquing
Schutz on this point, Skarda’s analysis helps to expose his curious tendency of downplaying the role that the corporeal and spatial elements play in his own account.
Contrary to Schutz’s neglect of these elements, her analysis suggests that the shared community of space between the performer(s) and listener(s) is what allows their bodies to interact with each other, thereby also enriching their musical experiences.
The strength of music’s effect, Skarda proposes, is largely due to the greater degree of
“reciprocity” that characterises the “face-to-face relationship” between the performer and audience when compared with other musical situations involving “derived relationships”.844 While, as I will shortly discuss, this notion of “reciprocity” is brought to the fore by Schutz himself, unlike Skarda, he does not explicitly link it with the body and affect. Skarda explains the way in which she believes “reciprocity” features in his account in the following way:
843 Skarda, “Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of music”, 86. 844 Ibid., 86-87. 201
A process of mutual orientation, of taking one another into account, takes place
between the performer and his audience, e.g., the phenomena of applause and
bowing reflect this mutual orientation.845
This process, Skarda claims, is transformative because the audience becomes more engrossed in the music as the performer himself/herself does.846 Ideally, this entails that the performer is able to “enhance his performance and thereby communicate more of the musical meaning”, which, in turn, allows the audience to develop a “greater appreciation of the work” by grasping more of its “meaning”, and vice versa.847 Skarda also frames music’s transformative effect, as this is depicted in Schutz’s account, in terms of the heightened affective states that are experienced by the participants during a live performance. In her view, these affective states are positively correlated with each other, meaning that an increase in the level of emotional engagement of the performer would produce a similar increase in that of the audience, and vice versa.848 Inasmuch as the body and affect are intertwined in their contribution to musical meaning, Skarda’s reading of Schutz provides more evidence of the important role that the body (and the space in which it dwells) plays in Schutz’s account.
However, in order to appreciate the significance of the intersubjective and corporeal dimensions of space in Schutz’s account (that Skarda’s analysis brings to the fore), we first need to rethink the notion of space itself. In this respect, Kersten suggests that we need to go beyond what Pedone would call an “empirical” notion of space. Kersten claims that, in Schutz’s philosophy, “this community of space is not the space studied
845 Ibid., 86. 846 Ibid. 847 Ibid., 86-87. 848 Ibid., 86. 202
by the physicist; it is the social-cultural space of making music together, of the musical process itself”.849 Exploring this “social-cultural space of making music together”, as well as the body’s essential role in creating, shaping and sustaining it, requires a more detailed analysis of how Schutz believes coperformers actually interact in this space.
For Schutz, the coperformers’ shared experiences of the interrelated dimensions of inner and outer time are highly dynamic in nature. His analysis of the coperformers’ mutual
“anticipation” of each other’s parts is an example of one aspect of his account where he does draw out the complexities of the musical experience by highlighting the intricate interactions that take place between the self and other. However, while his description of these interactions emphasises the notion of “reciprocity”850 (a point raised earlier by
Skarda), I will demonstrate in chapter five that the ways in which this notion actually manifests itself in his account is not without its weaknesses. To do so, I will compare
Schutz’s analysis of the intersubjective musical experience with Merleau-Ponty’s similar account of “dialogue” in which I argue “reciprocity” is more firmly entrenched.
Nevertheless, my main aim for now is to provide an overview of the ways in which
“reciprocity” could be said to feature in Schutz’s account, to which I now turn.
Each performer, Schutz suggests, must “anticipate” his/her coperformers’
“interpretations” of their own parts and, conversely, their interpretations of his/hers.851
Schutz argues that this anticipation of another’s part is necessary because each performer’s “freedom of interpreting the composer’s thought is restrained by the freedom granted to the Other”.852 For example, interpretations of the expression
849 Kersten, preface, 8. 850 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 175. 851 Ibid., 176. 852 Ibid. 203
marking rubato (i.e. to accelerate or decelerate one’s playing mainly for emotional effect) sometimes differ amongst performers within the same musical ensemble.
Certain players may thus need to adjust their own interpretations of the composer’s score in order to maintain the overall cohesiveness of the ensemble’s performance.
Given this need to constantly adjust to another’s dynamic interpretation, one’s own part during a performance “remains necessarily fragmentary” 853 and malleable. Indeed, it is the often surprising or unpredictable nature of the other’s interpretation that significantly enhances the dynamism of one’s own.
This element of “reciprocity” in Schutz’s account seems to be accentuated by the fact that each performer is himself/herself implicated in multiple experiences of inner time.854 Subsumed under each musician’s anticipation of his/her coperformers’ interpretations of the score, Schutz argues, is a consideration for how they too may relate to the composer and listener in inner time.855 Hence, not only is s/he implicated in the ongoing flux of music in inner time that s/he shares with both the listener and the composer, but s/he is also influenced by the types of experiences in inner time that s/he expects his/her coperformers would also share with them.856
What makes Schutz’s overall tendency to dismiss the body’s role in the musical experience even more curious is the fact that he actually provides a comprehensive analysis of how the body contributes significantly to the collective performance of music. His own detailed analysis of the body’s ability to facilitate interpersonal interactions challenges the privileged place that he gives to the mind/consciousness that
853 Ibid. 854 Ibid., 175. 855 Ibid. 856 Ibid. 204
is a striking feature of his account. He claims that, since coperformers also share a community of space in outer time, they must also pay close attention to each other’s bodily movements, such as another’s “facial expressions, his gestures in handling his instruments” and the movements of the “conductor’s baton”.857 On a basic level, cues for when to commence or stop playing are indicated by whether a musician is holding his/her instrument in a “resting” position (e.g. close to his/her lips) or a “playing” position (e.g. away from his/her lips).
These bodily movements fulfil three main functions in Schutz’s own conception of the intersubjective musical experience. First, the ability to perceive another’s movements permits the performer to experience his/her coperformer’s “stream of consciousness in immediacy”.858 For example, having a clear view of a pianist’s hand and arm movements is often useful for predicting his/her thoughts about how s/he will play the next phrase. Abrupt movements from a height might signal his/her intention to start the next phrase with a loud and powerful gesture. In contrast, subtle, fluid movements could signal his/her intention to play the next phrase in a more lyrical and/or serene manner.
Second, by providing clues as to another person’s intended approach to a particular piece, bodily movements, in Schutz’s account, are an important tool of communication and coordination amongst musicians. For example, by listening to the breathing patterns of others, most musicians are able to determine the tempo and mood of the piece. Third, Schutz also notes that coperformers could find “recourse” in these corporeal activities that transpire in outer time when the “flux” of inner time has been
857 Ibid., 176-77. 858 Ibid., 176. 205
unintentionally or accidentally “interrupted”.859 For instance, a performer may look to the conductor’s baton for the tempo of the music, and the performer to his/her coperformers’ gestures, when they can no longer feel the beat. Importantly, the body intervenes in these situations to sustain the music’s flow during the moments where the activities of the mind/consciousness (that transpire in inner time) have been disrupted.
Moreover, while it may appear that the body is only playing a supporting role in the above examples, Schutz actually goes on to suggest that the body’s interventions in the musical process can significantly influence the direction that a musical performance takes. For instance, he claims that, “[e]ven if performed without communicative intent, these [corporeal] activities are interpreted by [the performer] as indications of what the
Other is going to do and therefore as suggestions or even commands for his own behavior.”860 By “communicative intent” here, Schutz means gestures or movements that are made for the distinct purpose of being “interpreted” by others.861 Indeed, sometimes even the slightest of gestures, when performed without “communicative intent”, could have the effect of eliciting an incorrect entry during a tense musical performance. This is even more apparent in more improvisatory performances (e.g. in
Jazz music), where subtle gestures such as the accidental nodding of one’s head or unintentional eye contact could significantly change the direction of the collective interpretation of a piece.
In addition to the three functions that I have just described, the body is also central to
Schutz’s wider theory of intersubjectivity. There, it plays a key role in his conception of the process whereby we come to “know” another person. As with his more specific
859 Ibid. 860 Ibid. 861 Schutz, “Symbol, Reality, and Society”, 320-21. 206
conception of the musical experience, however, Schutz himself does not really acknowledge the importance of the body to this process because of his adherence to a mind/body dualism that privileges the mind over the body. Mind/body dualism is entrenched in the process of coming to “know” the other in Schutz’s theory because it consists of two steps, the first of which involves the body and the second of which involves the mind. First, “objects, facts, or events in the outer world”, the totality of which Schutz refers to as “signs”, are taken to “directly or indirectly refer to another’s bodily existence”.862 He takes such “events” to include “blushing, smiling”, movements such as “wincing, beckoning” and “activities” such as “talking, walking, manipulating things”.863 Second, these bodily events are then associated with the thoughts of the person who is apparently responsible for their occurrence.864 That is, these events are taken as “expressing cogitations of a fellow-man”, which Schutz defines in the
“broadest Cartesian sense, denoting feelings, volitions, emotions, etc.”865
Schutz adopts the Husserlian position here that the other’s thoughts are not immediately available to us but can only be accessed indirectly, that is, through the intervention of his/her body.866 Expressing this position in Husserl’s terminology, Schutz claims that the other’s body is “given to my original perception” whereas his/her “psychological life” is “not presented, but appresented”.867 Despite the fact that he acknowledges that our most immediate point of contact with the other is via his/her body, Schutz seems to suggest that bodily movements are only “external manifestations”, that is, “mere
862 Ibid., 319. 863 Ibid. 864 Ibid. 865 Ibid. 866 Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 164. 867 Ibid. 207
indications” of another person’s inner mental life (or “conscious life”)868 in which the true or authentic site of the self is located. Insofar as “knowing” another person essentially means to “know” his/her mind, Schutz claims that the “attention of the observer is focused not on the [bodily] indications but on what lies behind them”.869
Indeed, he even suggests that the other’s body initially appears to us as an “object” like any other, that is, before we have become aware that it actually belongs to another
“conscious” human being like ourselves.870 In other words, any perceived “changes” in this body are initially construed in the same way as those occurring in “inanimate objects”.871 For him, it is only after these changes have been attributed to the “lived experiences belonging to another consciousness” that this body ceases to be an indiscriminate “object” for us and gets attached to another human being, so to speak.872
However, Schutz’s privileging of the mind over the body in the above ways is curious for two main reasons. First, he claims that there are actually limits to how much we can
“know” of another person’s mind. Insofar as “access” to the latter is necessarily mediated by his/her body, we are unable to ascertain the “specific and exact content of
[his/her] consciousness”.873 Adding more complexity to this issue is Schutz’s further claim that we cannot ascertain whether another’s bodily movements (e.g. his/her
868 Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 172 & 174 & Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 23. 869 Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 172. 870 Ibid., 169. 871 Ibid. 872 Ibid. This awareness that one is currently in the “presence” of “another Self as a human being, alive and conscious” (as opposed to a machine or animal, for example) is what Schutz refers to as the “Thou- orientation” (Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 24). When the other person also comes to recognise that I am another human being like himself/herself, Schutz claims that the “Thou-orientation” goes from being “one-sided” to “reciprocal” (Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 186). In this situation, the “Thou-orientation” mutates into what he calls the “basic We-relationship”, that is, a “face-to-face relationship” in which the individuals involved share experiences in both time and space (Ibid.). 873 Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 25. 208
gestures and facial expressions) have been unintentionally or deliberately performed, that is, with or without communicative intent.874
Moreover, given the amount of uncertainty that Schutz believes surrounds the actual content of another’s thoughts, we could also question the extent to which we can
“know” the other at all from the perspective of his views of intersubjectivity. Indeed,
Richard M. Zaner criticises his philosophy in an even more fundamental way by positing that Schutz “has not shown that, or how, a simultaneity of Self and Other […] is possible”.875 Central to Schutz’s problem in this regard, Zaner contends, is his strict distinction (derived from Husserl) between the “inner” domain of the mind and the
“outer” domain of the body.876 Against Schutz, Zaner argues that, at most,
“simultaneity” could exist between the “inner durée” and ‘“outer’ bodily displays” of a single person in such a way that the developments in his/her “inner” stream of consciousness are concurrently “ex-pressed” in his/her external bodily movements.877
Given this ambiguity surrounding how simultaneity is actually feasible between people,
Zaner concludes that Schutz’s theory of intersubjectivity ultimately suffers from a paradox whereby the “Other remains […] considerably problematic even while nothing is more certain within daily life”.878
Nobuo Kazashi raises the further suggestion that, even if this “simultaneity of the streams of experience” does hold true of Schutz’s general notion of the “face-to-face relationship”, this does not necessarily imply that individuals would automatically
874 Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 178-80. 875 Richard M. Zaner, “Making Music Together While Growing Older: Further Reflections on Intersubjectivity”, Human Studies 25 (2002): 8. 876 Ibid., 6. 877 Ibid., 8-9. 878 Ibid., 7. 209
experience the “pure intensity of human interaction” that Kazashi claims actually distinguishes his notion of the intersubjective musical experience.879 In Schutz’s philosophy, Kazashi argues, the deep intertwining between individuals in the musical experience is in contrast to “[m]ost of the time in everyday life [where] we are little better than dead to each other”.880 Indeed, my overall analysis in this chapter has also suggested that, for Schutz, our interpersonal encounters in everyday life are largely perfunctory and routine whereas those in the musical experience are deeply engaging and dynamic. This noticeable contrast, Kazashi acknowledges, is something that Schutz himself actually recognises but whose implications he nevertheless does not fully draw out.881 In the final chapter on Merleau-Ponty, I hope to bridge this gap that Kazashi identifies in Schutz’s views of the social dimension of everyday life and of the musical experience. There, I will show how Merleau-Ponty conceives of the self and other as being more deeply interconnected than Schutz inasmuch as he believes that this intricate intertwining is prevalent even in the everyday act of perception.
879 Kazashi, “The Musicality of the Other”, 184. 880 Ibid., 185. 881 Ibid., 184-85. This substantial contrast that Kazashi identifies in Schutz’s philosophy between how we engage with others in the musical experience and in everyday life prompts him to question the plausibility of Schutz’s broader “proposal to understand the basic modes of social interaction after the model of musical experience” (Ibid., 184). As I mentioned in section one, Schutz proposes that a comprehensive analysis of how the “mutual tuning-in relationship” transpires in the musical experience would also enhance our understanding of other types of “social intercourse” (e.g. “marching together, dancing together”, etc.). However, Kazashi does not perceive Schutz’s vision here as all too well-conceived, suggesting that “one might well be predisposed to find it too naïve” (Ibid.). For Kazashi, grounding an understanding of the “basic modes of social interaction” (especially those that occur within everyday life) in the musical experience is questionable. The point that he appears to be leaning towards here is that, in Schutz’s account, the types of “social interaction” that transpire in everyday life and in the musical experience actually exhibit significant structural differences. This suggestion about structural differences is not part of my point here. Rather, what I take from Kazashi’s reading of Schutz is his more general argument that, in Schutz’s account of intersubjectivity, our social encounters in everyday life differ greatly from those in the musical experience. 210
Conclusion
In general, Schutz’s phenomenological analysis of music in terms of lived experience presents a unique perspective of its integral role in human existence. An important aspect of his account of music’s ability to transfigure our life is his claim to its capacity to transform our relationships with other people across several dimensions of time.
Moreover, he does much to elucidate how the “complicated texture of meanings”882 that is created by the plurality of interlocking interpretations of musical works helps to foster interpersonal interactions that are intricate, vibrant and varied rather than purely practical and sterile. In so doing, Schutz portrays the musical experience as a phenomenon that constantly affirms and thereby sustains a “community of intersubjectivity”883 wherein the depths of human relations are experienced and explored. He thus attributes the “perfect humanity” of Mozart’s art to its profound investigation of the “metaphysical mystery of the existence of a human universe of pure sociality”.884 While music may indeed lack conceptual meaning, it is at this intersection between intersubjectivity and temporality in Schutz’s philosophy that it acquires its essential value as a fundamentally human activity that carries within it the presence of others both past and present, both present and absent.
Despite contributing these important insights, as I have illustrated throughout this chapter, the crucial role that the body and space play in the musical experience is under- examined in Schutz’s philosophy. It is this deficiency that I will attempt to rectify in the final chapter on Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology. There, I will focus in particular on how music draws its creative power from the role of corporeality and
882 Schutz, “Mozart and the Philosophers”, 196. 883 Ibid., 198. 884 Ibid., 199. 211
affect in his theory of expression. By drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, I also hope to demonstrate how we can formulate a phenomenological account of the intertwining of the self and other in the musical experience without relying on the strict mind/body and time/space dualisms to which Schutz adheres. 212
Chapter five
Music, language and expression in Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology
Introduction
The previous chapter on Schutz’s philosophy of music signalled my departure from
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’s approaches to the relationship between music and human existence insofar as these are based on a metaphysics of Will. Schutz’s phenomenological account of music in terms of lived experience advances our understanding by situating the musical experience within the key interrelated dimensions of temporality and intersubjectivity. This chapter on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy further develops this phenomenological analysis of music, including its relationship with temporality and intersubjectivity, but in ways that largely challenge
Schutz’s views of the musical experience. At first glance, it may seem odd to use
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy as an interpretative lens to explore music. Unlike the other four philosophers canvassed in this thesis, he devotes little attention to music in his aesthetics. However, his ontology does provide the means of redressing the limitations of Schutz’s account that I identified in chapter four.
In Phenomenology of Perception (hereafter PhP), Merleau-Ponty seeks to develop a renewed understanding of phenomenology which builds on its Husserlian origins by situating it within human existence. In the Preface to this text, he claims that phenomenology is a philosophy that is focussed on re-establishing a “direct and primitive contact with the world, and endowing that contact with a philosophical 213
status”.885 Being concerned with re-establishing this “direct and primitive contact”,
Merleau-Ponty conceives of the human subject in his philosophy as already deeply embedded in the world in which s/he lives. His phenomenological framework could thus provide an interesting perspective from which to further examine the overall argument in this thesis that music is not primarily an abstract object of knowledge but rather, as Schutz suggests, a lived experience in which we are already engrossed.
In particular, Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology deepens my analysis of music by allowing me to more thoroughly examine the role that the body plays in the musical experience. This, in turn, permits me to address some of the problems arising from
Schutz’s mind/body dualism. As I discussed in chapter four, Schutz largely restricts his analysis of music’s transformative power to an examination of the musical experience in terms of a “phenomenon of our conscious life”.886 In contrast, this chapter will show how Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology allows for a close analysis of the interrelated corporeal and affective dimensions of music’s transformative effect. Moreover, the questionable time/space dualism that also pervades Schutz’s notions of temporality and intersubjectivity will also be contested.
In “Eye and Mind” (from The Primacy of Perception), Merleau-Ponty provides a possible explanation for the relative lack of attention that he devotes to music (in comparison with painting, for example). He claims that music is “too far beyond the world and the designatable to depict anything but certain outlines of Being – its ebb and
885 PhP, vii/vii. Hereafter cited as PhP with pagination from the Routledge Classics 2002 edition followed by pagination from English editions prior to the Routledge Classics 2002 edition. Please note that I have referred to the 2002 edition in my footnotes and a concordance programme has been used to ascertain the page numbers from prior editions. 886 Schutz, “Fragments”, 44 (emphasis in original). 214
flow, its growth, its upheavals, its turbulence”.887 This suggests that he prefers not to write about music because, unlike science and the visual arts, it does not partake in the
“visible” world insofar as sounds cannot be seen. Consequently, from Merleau-Ponty’s own perspective, a philosophical analysis of music would probably be restricted to an exploration of music’s relationship with the broad changes and movements that drive existence. Nevertheless, this suggestion that he does not dwell on music because of its supposedly ethereal nature is curious given the numerous “practical” applications of his phenomenology of the body in areas such as music education, music therapy and ethnomusicology.888
That his philosophy is conducive to an aesthetics of music is indicated by the way he sometimes uses concrete or “real-life” examples of musical experiences to elaborate and substantiate his claims about the inherently expressive nature of language. It is his notion that both language and music are “creative” forms of expression889 that constitutes the means of adapting his philosophy for my purposes. My examination of
Merleau-Ponty’s views of language will focus on speech rather than writing for two main reasons. First, speech (rather than writing) seems to be his own focus in his discussion of language in such works as PhP and “Indirect Language and the Voices of
Silence” (from Signs, hereafter “Indirect Language”). Second, I am mainly interested in the corporeal aspect of language in this chapter. As I will demonstrate in section two,
887 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, in The Primacy of Perception, trans. Carleton Dallery & ed. Claude Lefort (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 161. Hereafter cited as “Eye and Mind”. 888 For relevant examples, please see Lochhead, “Hearing New Music: Pedagogy from a Phenomenological Perspective”, 34-42 (discussed in chapter four); Elizabeth A. Behnke, “At the Service of the Sonata: Music Lessons with Merleau-Ponty”, in Merleau-Ponty: Critical Essays, ed. Henry Pietersma (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1989), 23-29; Greg Corness, “The Musical Experience through the Lens of Embodiment”, Leonardo Music Journal 18 (2008): 21-24; Kirsten Fink- Jensen, “Attunement and Bodily Dialogues in Music Education”, Philosophy of Music Education Review 15, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 53-68; and Greg Downey, “Listening to Capoeira: Phenomenology, Embodiment, and the Materiality of Music”, Ethnomusicology 46, no. 3 (Autumn 2002): 487-509. 889 PhP, 455/391. 215
speech seems to engage the body more directly than writing in Merleau-Ponty’s theory of language.890 I begin my discussion of the role of music in his existential phenomenology by analysing how the body is crucial to his notion of the development of “habit”.
1. The role of the body in the “acquisition of habit”891
Perhaps the best-known passage in PhP that is relevant to music is Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of an organist’s “acquisition of habit” in his discussion of the “spatiality of one’s own body and motility”.892 Here, he outlines how an organist is able to master an unfamiliar instrument before performing at short notice. His discussion of the organist’s development of “habit” is significant to the overall argument of this thesis because it provides a more concrete explanation of how corporeality and affect lie at the heart of music’s expressive power. For Merleau-Ponty, the organist’s body plays a significant role in bringing the “musical essence of the piece” to life, a role which extends beyond the mechanical function of converting the musical notes in the written score into sounds.893 Rather, he emphasises the centrality of the body to the creative aspect of music by detailing how it “appropriates” the physical resources available to it
890 By making this claim, I do not intend to engage in a debate about the various philosophical perspectives that exist concerning the relationship between the body, speech and writing, such as those found in Derrida’s philosophy. Given the numerous comparisons that Merleau-Ponty establishes between speech (in language) and music, an analysis of his views of speech (rather than writing) seems the most fitting approach to take. Specifically, the parallels that he draws between the corporeal and affective dimensions of both language and music (that constitute the focal point of this chapter) are more closely related to speech than writing. 891 PhP, 164/142. 892 Please see Ibid., 167-69/145-46 for Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the organist’s “acquisition of habit”. 893 Ibid., 168/145-46. 216
(e.g. the “stops, pedals and manuals” of the organ) to explore the “possibilities of achieving certain emotional or musical values”.894
While Merleau-Ponty does not elaborate what he actually means by these “values”, we could suppose that they refer to the emotive and meaningful aspects of music that can be partly derived from the markings in the written score (e.g. presto i.e. “very fast” and cantabile i.e. “in a singing style”), and, more importantly, from the organist’s own interpretation of these markings. The organist, he suggests, realises these values through the movements of his/her body.895 For example, s/he uses his/her fingers to produce sounds with different tone colours (e.g. warm, mysterious, harsh, etc.) and dynamics by applying varying amounts of pressure to the keys. This, in turn, would influence the overall expressive qualities of the musical piece (e.g. appassionato i.e.
“impassioned”). Merleau-Ponty endows the bodily movements involved in realising these emotional or musical values with the gravity of a religious ritual. He states, in
“reality his movements during rehearsal are consecratory gestures: they draw affective vectors, discover emotional sources, and create a space of expressiveness as the movements of the augur delimit the templum [a sacred place]”.896 Just as the “augur” carves out a sacred area in space through his/her bodily movements, the musician’s body also performs a sort of divination by revealing, and carving out, the “affective” possibilities of a musical piece through its movements. Hence, the musical notes are transformed by way of the organist’s body into something that expresses a higher significance than that which could be communicated by a mere succession of sounds.
And, in ways I will shortly outline, this harnessing of music’s expressive power, for
Merleau-Ponty, occurs without conscious deliberation.
894 Ibid., 166 & 168/144 & 145-46. 895 Ibid., 168/145-46. 896 Ibid. 217
Merleau-Ponty’s emphasis on the body’s expressive potential leads him to draw a parallel between the body and an artwork. For him, they are both a “nexus of living meanings”.897 He reinforces this point in “Indirect Language” by claiming that all
“perception, all action which presupposes it, and in short every human use of the body is already primordial expression”.898 I will say more about expression shortly. My main point here is that, for Merleau-Ponty, the body is not simply a sign of a meaning that lies elsewhere.
Merleau-Ponty acknowledges that this identification of the body with the locus of music’s expressive power would be contested by more traditional philosophical approaches to conceptualising the body, in particular, those posited by the broad doctrines he terms “intellectualism” and “empiricism”. He thus sets out to defend his own conception of the body as an “expressive space”899 against such conventional approaches. On the one hand, he contests the “intellectualist” idea that the mind and thought characterise personhood and agency and can thus definitively explain the many ways in which humans engage with the world (including their artistic and linguistic activities). This privileging of the mind, he suggests, leads to an attendant devaluation of the body whereby it is reduced to a “mere biological entity”900 that simply obeys the principles of the mind or nature. On the other hand, Merleau-Ponty is equally critical of the way in which “empiricism” also devalues the body. Under the “empiricist” conception of the “objective body”, he claims, the body is simply viewed as an
897 Ibid., 175/151-52. 898 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence”, in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 67. Emphasis in original. Hereafter cited as “Indirect Language”. 899 PhP, 169/146. 900 Ibid., 220/189-90. 218
“assemblage of organs juxtaposed” in certain “objective positions” in “homogeneous space”.901 In Merleau-Ponty’s view, “empiricism” thereby deprives the body of its expressive potential by essentially reducing it to an inanimate object. Coupled with this devaluation of the body, he also claims that “empiricism” deprives consciousness of its expressive potential by reducing it to a mere “collection of mental facts”.902
Merleau-Ponty’s critiques of both intellectualism and empiricism reveal something of his approach to musical performance insofar as they shape his analysis of the organist’s development of habit. In contrast with intellectualism, and consistent with his emphasis on the expressive power of the body, Merleau-Ponty does not reduce the organist’s body to a mere thoroughfare through which his/her thoughts about “musical values” are able to pass. He also challenges the notion that the organist’s development of habit is a predominantly theoretical exercise that is grounded in his/her capacity for thought.903
For example, he claims that the organist need not “draw up a plan” of the locations of all the stops, pedals and manuals on the organ and “commit them to ‘memory’” so as to master this instrument.904
To illustrate this point, Merleau-Ponty draws a parallel between the “spatial” and
“auditory” spheres.905 Just as the organist can seamlessly adapt to the physical configurations of the unfamiliar organ, Merleau-Ponty highlights the fact that a person, with “no knowledge of music”, can “change key” equally as seamlessly.906 For example, this person may be unaware that a key change from D Major to A Major
901 Ibid., 112, 117 & 166-67/98, 102-103 & 144-45. 902 Ibid., 157/136. 903 Ibid., 167-68/145-46. 904 Ibid., 168/145-46. 905 Ibid., 292/251. 906 Ibid., 292-93/251-52. 219
requires the addition of one more sharp to the key signature. Nevertheless, even without knowing this theoretical fact about music, s/he is still able to sing the same song in two different keys (i.e. D Major and A Major) equally as competently by simply using his/her ears. Hence, Merleau-Ponty suggests that, if “knowledge” could be said to partake in the development of habit, it would present itself in a corporeal, rather than an intellectual, form.907
Just as he dismisses the idea that musical performance centres on the expression of thought, Merleau-Ponty also critiques the notion that the body that “understands” and acquires such musical knowledge is the “objective body” posited by empiricism. 908 In contrast with empiricism, Merleau-Ponty claims that the organist’s ability to master an unfamiliar instrument is not premised on his/her awareness of how the various parts of the organ are spread out across disparate “co-ordinates in objective space”.909 Rather than the “objective body”, he privileges the idea of the “lived body” or what he sometimes calls the “phenomenal body”.910 For him, the “objective body is not the true version of the phenomenal body, that is, the true version of the body that we live by: it is indeed no more than the latter’s impoverished image”. 911 Lochhead stresses that the
“phenomenal body”, for Merleau-Ponty, is “wholistic” in nature insofar as it is described in his writings as a “total organ” that is governed by a “comprehensive bodily purpose”.912 In other words, it is a body in “situation” because its movements and
907 Ibid., 166/144. 908 Ibid., 167/145. 909 Ibid., 121 & 168/106 & 145-46. 910 Ibid., 121/106. 911 Ibid., 501/431. 912 Ibid., 112-13/98-99 (emphasis in original) & Lochhead, “Hearing New Music”, 38. 220
actions are already guided or governed by the particular objectives of the “tasks” in which it engages.913
In Merleau-Ponty’s view, the fact that the “phenomenal body” has already oriented itself within the world in a particular way is evident even in the basic acts of sensory perception. He claims that the “sense-content”914 that we receive through bodily perception is never expressed by us in a neutral fashion. Rather, he argues, it has already been transformed into something that has a particular “meaning for us”.915 For example, a particular musical note (e.g. G) may sound slightly “flat” to someone with perfect pitch, whereas for someone who only has a relative sense of pitch, it might sound in tune especially out of the context of a musical performance. Hence, as
Merleau-Ponty would put it, the sense-content in this example is “already ‘pregnant’ with a meaning”,916 such as “flat”, “sharp”, “in tune”, etc. His fundamentally corporeal notion of perception contrasts significantly with Schopenhauer’s notion of perception, which, as I discussed in chapter two, privileges its intellectual aspect. To recapitulate, the intellect, Schopenhauer argues, is responsible for harnessing art’s creative, transformative power, whereas the body only performs the basic, mechanical function of receiving sense-data.
I will now apply the points from the above discussion to Merleau-Ponty’s example of the organist. Given that his/her project is to familiarise himself/herself with the new organ, the organist’s “comprehensive bodily purpose” would probably be to coordinate
913 PhP, 115/101. As Merleau-Ponty describes it, the “phenomenal body” is “polarized by its tasks, of its existence towards them, of its collecting together of itself in its pursuit of its aims” (Ibid., emphasis in original). 914 Ibid., 176/152. 915 Ibid., 61/53. 916 Ibid., 176/152. 221
his/her finger and feet movements in such a way that s/he is able to play in time with the beat. Since s/he is already an accomplished organist, achieving this objective would not necessitate an awareness of where each of his/her body parts is located in space at any one moment during the rehearsal. For example, s/he would not need to estimate the distance between his/her fingers and the keys and/or between his/her feet and the pedals.
Rather, when the organist has become relatively comfortable with playing the new instrument, the keys and pedals should almost feel like they are already part of his/her body in the same way that Merleau-Ponty claims a “blind man’s stick” eventually becomes for him/her a “parallel to sight”.917 Since, for Merleau-Ponty, the organist
“incorporates within himself the relevant directions and dimensions” of the organ, his/her body does not merely occupy space but rather “inhabits” it.918 As he eloquently puts it, the organist “settles into the organ as one settles into a house”.919 This implicit, underlying understanding of its surroundings that the “phenomenal body” possesses is what Merleau-Ponty refers to as “corporeal intentionality”.920 He describes this as:
917 Ibid., 165/143. Merleau-Ponty uses this example of the “blind man’s stick” to critique the Cartesian distinction between “vision” and “perception”. In Merleau-Ponty’s view, vision, for Descartes, is a mechanical function that the body performs, whereas perception is a capability of a higher order that is performed by the mind. For example, in “Eye and Mind”, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how, for Descartes, one’s capacity for “thought” is what permits one to apprehend the “resemblance” between oneself and one’s corresponding “mirror image” (Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, 170). This implies that, left with only his/her corporeal capacity for vision, this resemblance would not be discernible by an individual such that s/he would erroneously believe that the “mirror image is nothing that belongs to him” (Ibid.). Moreover, in PhP, Merleau-Ponty also uses the example of the “blind man’s stick” as an analogy to further challenge Descartes’ privileging of the mind over the body in perception. Merleau-Ponty begins by claiming that the “stick is no longer an object perceived by the blind man, but an instrument with which he perceives” (PhP, 176/152, emphasis in original). Similarly, the body, he claims, is not simply an “object” that the mind employs for “seeing” things, but is rather fundamental to our capacity for perception (Ibid., 177/153). Developing a “perceptual habit”, such as the ability to recognise “colours” with one’s “gaze” or establish one’s bearings in the world with one’s “stick”, requires one to “appropriate fresh instruments” with one’s body (Ibid., 166 & 176-77/144 & 152-53). And, for Merleau- Ponty, this capacity for “appropriating fresh instruments” is transformative because it enables us to “enrich and recast the body schema” (Ibid., 166 & 177/144 & 153). 918 Ibid., 161 & 168/139-40 & 145-46 (emphasis in original). 919 Ibid., 168/145-46. 920 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, in Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 89. Hereafter cited as “On the Phenomenology of Language”. 222
a rigorous awareness of the bearing of my gestures or of the spatiality of my
body which allows me to maintain relationships with the world without
thematically representing to myself the objects I am going to grasp or the
relationships of size between my body and the avenues offered to me by the
world.921
To expand on the implications of this idea of “corporeal intentionality” for an aesthetics of music, it might help to compare Merleau-Ponty’s distinction between the “objective body” and the “phenomenal body” with Elizabeth A. Behnke’s distinction between what she calls the “fixed, thing-like body” and the “swing body” (a term she borrows from the “fiddler Annie Steinhardt”).922 Similar to Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the
“objective body”, Behnke claims that the “thing-like body” in music simply “becomes another recalcitrant object to be mastered” and drilled in carrying out a “static repertoire of actions”.923 If the body were merely “thing-like”, improving one’s competence on an instrument, Behnke suggests, would be a predominantly mechanical process that involves moving one’s “hands and fingers” at the “right time” in the piece and at the
“right spot” on the instrument (e.g. at a particular position on a violin “string”).924
Moreover, given that it is essentially an “object”, the parameters of what this “thing-like body” can achieve when playing music have already been strictly demarcated beforehand, even in the case of experienced musicians.925 In Behnke’s words, the
“body is conceived as an objective thing whose condition at maturity is an inevitable
‘given’ to be coped with since it cannot be changed”.926
921 Ibid. 922 Behnke, “At the Service of the Sonata”, 25-26. 923 Ibid., 24-25. 924 Ibid., 24. 925 Ibid., 25. 926 Ibid. 223
In contrast with this notion of a “thing-like body”, Behnke prefers the notion of the
“swing body” as the “one that dances, flows, moves freely, fluidly, flexibly, like swing music”.927 When understood in terms of the “swing body”, the musician’s
“possibilities” are opened up in the process of bringing forth the “expressive” qualities of the music itself.928 A violinist herself, Behnke suggests that the violin thereby becomes for her an “opening” to what Merleau-Ponty calls one’s “‘sonorous being’” toward a “system of levels, dimensions, tone colors, and styles”.929 In line with
Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “phenomenal body”, the musician, Behnke claims, experiences both his/her body and musical instrument not as a mere collection of disparate parts, but in a largely seamless fashion.930 Hence, while “mov[ing] with the underlying temporal flow of the music”, the musician’s whole body becomes caught up in the forward momentum of the music itself.931 This momentum arises from the fact that the music constantly progresses from one “phrase” to another, eventually realising itself as a “coherent temporal whole” when the piece ends.932
Nevertheless, this strong focus on the body in Merleau-Ponty’s account of musical expression does not imply that he thereby dismisses the role that consciousness plays in the experience and performance of music. Rather, he suggests that we ought to understand the musical experience in such a way that neither privileges consciousness over the body nor renders these two integral aspects of the self hostile to each other.
Hence, unlike Schutz, Merleau-Ponty challenges any form of mind/body dualism that
927 Ibid., 26. 928 Ibid., 25-26. 929 Ibid., 24. 930 Ibid., 26. 931 Ibid. 932 Ibid., 27. 224
may feature in an analysis of any experience (and hence in musical experience).
Merleau-Ponty argues instead that we need to “recognize an ideality that is not alien to the flesh, that gives it its axes, its depth, its dimensions”.933 He would thus seek a renewed understanding of the musical experience in which the mind and body are inseparable in their contribution to realising and augmenting music’s expressive potential.
On a broader scale, this inseparability of the mind and body is evident in Merleau-
Ponty’s notion of the “intentional arc”, which he claims “brings about the unity of the senses, of intelligence, of sensibility and motility”.934 He uses this general notion to describe how a person is embedded in the multitude of diverse yet interrelated aspects of existence, including its corporeal, intellectual, socio-political, ethical and temporal dimensions.935 As I will demonstrate in section four, Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the
“intentional arc” also helps to show how a musician’s playing “style” is not only influenced by his/her thoughts but also embodies his/her wider engagement with the world. In the next section, I will examine how the mind (and thought) and the body are intertwined in both linguistic and musical expression.
2. Two creative forms of expression: music and language
Thus far in this chapter, I have discussed Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body’s expressive potential in relation to the development of a musical habit. In this section, I will broaden that analysis by comparing the body’s crucial contribution to the creative
933 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, in The Visible and the Invisible: Followed by Working Notes, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1968), 152. Hereafter cited as “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”. 934 PhP, 157/136. 935 Ibid. 225
dimension of language with its equally important contribution to the creative dimension of music. By taking this approach, my analysis will thus challenge the conventional philosophical view that music is a creative form of expression whereas language is not.
However, it will also help to explain the role of both in creativity which, for Merleau-
Ponty, exemplifies human existence. The key notion that I will explore here is
Merleau-Ponty’s view that both music and language draw their creative, transformative potential from the role of corporeality and affect in expression. In this way, he distances himself from the tendency of both Adorno and Schutz to downplay the creative aspect of language. As I demonstrated in chapters two and four, these two philosophers adopt the more conventional perspective that linguistic meaning is primarily conceptual and representational and can thus supposedly portray the world in a more or less realist manner.
Language, Merleau-Ponty argues, is inseparable from the body firstly because it necessarily manifests itself in the empirical world through our “act of speaking”.936
Secondly, speech, in turn, is inherently corporeal because it necessarily engages the
“phonatory or articulatory organs, and a respiratory apparatus”.937 Due to the corporeal nature of speech, Merleau-Ponty claims that we must “restore to the act of speaking its true physiognomy”.938 Just as he believes that the body is responsible for the crystallisation of habit in music, Merleau-Ponty also regards the corporeal “act of expression” in speech as being responsible for the “creative use” of language.939 As with music, it is the “phenomenal body” rather than the “objective body” that speech engages. Hence, just as the organist need not locate the stops, pedals and manuals of
936 Ibid., 211/182. 937 Ibid., 454/390-91. 938 Ibid., 211/182. 939 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 44 & PhP, 455/391. 226
the organ in “objective space” before performing, the speaker need not “visualize the word in order to know and pronounce it”.940 Moreover, just as the organist’s body
“appropriates” particular physical resources with the aim to expressing certain emotional or musical values, the speaker, Merleau-Ponty claims, appropriates a certain
“word” as part of his/her “equipment” in the “linguistic world” with the aim to communicating a particular meaning.941 Hence, the body, for Merleau-Ponty, is what allows us to transform the “raw” or basic components of language (e.g. consonants, vowels, punctuation marks, etc.) into a wide range of linguistic meanings, ranging from the literal and straightforward to the more metaphorical, nuanced and/or obscure.
He contrasts this fundamentally corporeal notion of a “conquering, active, creative language” with what he calls “empirical language” (or sometimes “constituted language”).942 The latter notion of language refers to the pre-existing archive of
“dictionary” “definitions” whose “meanings” are usually assumed to be stable and self- evident.943 For example, the word “pen” is usually equated with its dictionary definition of a “writing instrument that uses ink”. In the following analysis of Merleau-Ponty’s theory of language, I will also elaborate the ways in which he privileges “creative language” over “empirical language”.
Helpful in understanding his position on creative expression is an examination of his critiques of conventional philosophical theories of language. I will first examine his critique of intellectualist theories of language, which he believes to be largely responsible for perpetuating the erroneous idea that language is less expressive and
940 PhP, 210/181. 941 Ibid. 942 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 44, Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, 153 & PhP, 218/188. 943 PhP, 218-19 & 452/188-89 & 389. 227
creative than art. By privileging the role that thought plays in linguistic expression, such theories, Merleau-Ponty claims, essentially divorce linguistic meaning from its corporeal “act of expression” in speech or writing. (However, I will follow Merleau-
Ponty in focussing on speech as the mode of expression being contested.) According to him, intellectualist theories do this in two main ways. First, they identify thought as the sole contributor to linguistic meaning, while claiming that the “sounds and phonemes” that constitute words are not inherently meaningful.944 Second, they suggest that thought can be extricated from speech. Thought is assumed to contain enduring
“truths” (e.g. those concerning the “workings of physical causality”) which are supposedly able to describe the way the world actually is and always will be.945
Thought is thus said to remain unchanged over time irrespective of any changes that may occur in the empirical world where it is expressed in speech. For example,
Merleau-Ponty draws our attention to the fact that mathematical formulae (e.g. the
Pythagorean theorem) are assumed to hold even if everyone in the world had
“forgotten” them.946 Intellectualist theories, he argues, therefore mistakenly assume that language just symbolises thought as a way of providing a potentially accurate and direct representation of nature that the thought is about.947 It is primarily this overestimation of the explanatory power of thought that Merleau-Ponty suggests has ultimately led us to underestimate the ability of language to be a creative means of expression.
Pursuing this critique further, Merleau-Ponty dismisses the notion that linguistic meaning can be divorced from its “act of expression” (in speech) as an illusion by
944 Ibid., 205 & 452/177 & 389. 945 Ibid., 454-55/390-91. 946 Ibid. 947 Ibid., 455/391. 228
arguing that language use is not merely a means of “designating” thoughts.948 His alternative view is that speech “does not translate ready-made thought, but accomplishes it”.949 If language were a mere “external accompaniment of thought”, the “word”, he suggests, would be reduced to an “empty container” into which meaning is subsequently inserted.950 In this way, language itself would be rendered redundant because it could essentially “teach us nothing”.951 Against intellectualist theories of language, Merleau-
Ponty argues that both speech and thought are important contributors to the creation and evolution of linguistic meaning. In his view, speech and thought are intertwined or
“intervolved, the sense being held within the word, and the word being the external existence of the sense”.952 Due to this inherent interconnectedness, thought, he claims, cannot exist without speech because these two aspects necessarily act as “stimuli for one another” in language.953 He suggests that there is a circular movement between them in that they not only engender, but also reconnect with, each other in the act of linguistic expression.954 As he puts it, all “thought comes from spoken words and returns to them; every spoken word is born in thoughts and ends up in them”.955 If
948 Ibid., 211/182. 949 Ibid., 207/178 (emphasis added). 950 Ibid., 205/177. 951 Ibid., 452/389. 952 Ibid., 211/182. 953 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, introduction to Signs, trans. Richard C. McCleary (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 17. 954 Ibid., 17-18. 955 Ibid. Expanding on the broader relationship between speech and thought in language, Merleau-Ponty claims that speech performs a “paradoxical operation” in the evolution of linguistic meaning (PhP, 452/389). On the one hand, through the repeated use of certain words (which express particular thoughts), certain meanings are gradually established as conventional ways of interpreting these words (Ibid.). On the other hand, speech also enables changes to linguistic meaning in the sense that words generally acquire new meanings when they are spoken in different situations over time (Ibid.). For example, due to the growing number of Internet users in today’s society, the word “net” would probably be understood as a shorter word for “Internet” rather than an object with which to catch fish. For Merleau-Ponty, the mutable nature of language entails that it “sometimes remains a long time pregnant with transformations which are to come” (Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 41). This is not to say that he believes that a language can change to such an extent that particular words or phrases can completely disappear from it over time. Although a certain “means of expression” may gradually “fall into disuse”, for him, it still maintains a presence, albeit a reduced one, in that language (Ibid.). For example, the French phrase, “répondez s’il vous plaît”, is usually substituted with “R.S.V.P” by English speakers today. Nevertheless, the original 229
thought was indeed a precondition of speech, Merleau-Ponty suggests that we would be unable to explain how our thoughts are sometimes not fully formed prior to their verbalisation in speech.956
Merleau-Ponty’s departure from these conventional intellectualist views of language also means he departs from conventional views of the broader relationship between language and music. For instance, by refusing to reduce language to “empirical language” (i.e. the stable archive of seemingly self-evident dictionary definitions that I mentioned earlier), he thereby also challenges the traditional view that “language is more transparent than music”.957 His main point here is not that language and music are equally as transparent or ambiguous, but rather that neither is entirely transparent in itself. Just as a fixed set of supposedly self-evident dictionary definitions cannot exhaust the scope of linguistic meaning, Merleau-Ponty also claims that “no vocabulary is presupposed” in music that could be said to exhaust its meaning.958
At first glance, it appears that Merleau-Ponty would thereby disagree with Adorno’s notion of music’s “idiomatic character” due to his claim that music lacks a stable vocabulary. As I mentioned in chapter one, by music’s “idiomatic character”, Adorno is referring to particular uses of the musical elements (e.g. melody, harmony, rhythm, etc.) that have gradually become conventional over time, such as the use of “double dotting” in the rhythms of Baroque music. In relation to such “general symbols” in music,
Adorno claims that their apparent “invariance has become sedimented, a kind of second
French meaning, “please respond”, still resonates in how this phrase is currently used. Merleau-Ponty argues that, by reducing language to a “fait accompli – as the residue of past acts of signification and the record of already acquired meanings” (Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, 85), conventional philosophical conceptions of language often overlook this important fact that language is constantly evolving. 956 PhP, 206/177-78. 957 Ibid., 218/188. 958 Ibid., 219/189. 230
nature”.959 On further investigation, however, Merleau-Ponty might not dispute this notion of music’s “idiomatic character” because, like Adorno, he also acknowledges that music, like language, has its own conventions or “tradition”.960 For example,
Merleau-Ponty recognises that, in order to be able to grasp “atonal music”, one first needs to be familiar with the conventions of “classical music” from which it distinguishes itself.961
However, the more salient point for him is that there appears to be a greater sense of a fixed tradition in language than in music. This is encapsulated in his claim that, “alone of all expressive processes, speech is able to settle into a sediment and constitute an acquisition for use in human relationships”.962 By this, Merleau-Ponty is referring to the difficulty of abandoning the conventional yet misguided belief that a particular thought can somehow be extracted from another’s speech and be repeated or at least rearticulated in one’s own.963 It is this idea that a particular thought is simply passed down from one writer/speaker to another that gives us the sense that we partake in, and have inherited, the “same world”.964 Moreover, what underlies this belief that a thought can be transferred between people, while remaining more or less the same, is the equally misguided assumption (that I discussed earlier) that linguistic meaning is divorceable from its means of expression in speech.
Merleau-Ponty is as critical of empiricist approaches to linguistic expression as he is with the intellectualist approach discussed above. In contrast with the intellectualist
959 Adorno, “Music, Language, and Composition”, 114. 960 PhP, 221/190. 961 Ibid. 962 Ibid., 220/189-90. 963 Ibid., 221/190. 964 Ibid. 231
approach to language, he argues that it would be considered largely self-evident that music needs to be expressed through the “empirical presence of the sounds” for its meaning to be brought to light.965 Musical expression, for Merleau-Ponty, thus exemplifies the need for material expression. This is not to say that, in his view, meaning in language simply “sticks” to the words either such that meaning is equally unchangeable (which would be the empiricist view). In general, he disputes any notion of language that posits that words can “signify anything whatsoever unequivocally”.966
Moreover, he claims that, under empiricism, the word is simply reduced to a “psychic, physiological or even physical phenomenon” because it is considered as a mere mechanical reaction to “given stimuli or ‘states of mind’”.967 In contrast, and as I have already highlighted in this chapter, Merleau-Ponty argues that expression itself
(including all of its linguistic and artistic forms) is creative. Hence, in language, as in art (including music), the “process of expression” is what, for him, “brings the meaning into being or makes it effective, and does not merely translate it”.968
Merleau-Ponty’s observation that music maintains close ties with the empirical world by virtue of its physical manifestation in sounds contrasts with both Adorno and
Schopenhauer’s views of music. As I discussed in chapter one, Adorno highlights music’s “enigma” by claiming that, unlike both language and the visual arts, music is less directly connected to the “visually or conceptually determined world of objects”.969
Moreover, as I mentioned in chapter two, Schopenhauer makes the unusual claim that,
965 Ibid., 219/189. As Merleau-Ponty notes, while the prospect of having “thought without words” is rarely contested, the “idea of music without sounds is ridiculous” (Ibid., 221/190). 966 Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, 85. 967 PhP, 205/177. 968 Ibid., 212-13/183-84. 969 Adorno, “On the Contemporary Relationship of Philosophy and Music”, 138-39. 232
“to a certain extent, [music] could still exist even if there were no world at all”.970
Merleau-Ponty’s observation thus signals an interesting point of departure from the other perspectives of the relationship between music and language that have been presented in this thesis.
However, to extend his critique of empiricism, we should clarify here that Merleau-
Ponty’s observation that music is inseparable from its expression in sounds is not based on the assumption that music directly represents objects in the empirical world. Indeed, like both Adorno and Schutz, Merleau-Ponty also regards music as the exemplar of the non-representational art form.971 This is encapsulated in his rather odd claim that music is an “art form that does not speak”.972 By this, he means that, unlike the “empirical use” of language in “everyday chatter”, musical works do not explicitly “name” things in the world.973 Moreover, in contrast with the assumed veracity of speech that conventional intellectualist views of language espouse, the usual understanding of musical works is that their primary function is not to represent or mirror nature974 but to be creative in providing an interpretation of it. For example, the melody in Camille
Saint-Saens’ piece, “The Swan” (from The Carnival of the Animals), may indeed portray the graceful movements of a swan. However, we cannot say with certainty that whenever a particular note (e.g. G) is played for a particular duration, Saint-Saens intends to convey that a particular part of the swan’s body is moving gracefully. Given the predominantly interpretative nature of musical works, their capacity (or lack thereof)
970 WWR I, 257. 971 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, trans. Oliver Davis (London: Routledge, 2004), 99. Hereafter cited as The World of Perception. Merleau-Ponty even claims that it is “quite clearly impossible in [music] to make out that the work of art refers to anything other than itself” (Ibid.). However, he excludes “programmatic music” from this claim (Ibid.). This type of music (e.g. Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique) is composed with the intention of depicting a certain narrative with a series of events. 972 Ibid. 973 Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 99 & Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 44. 974 PhP, 455/391. 233
to depict nature accurately is unlikely to figure significantly in how we usually appraise their value.
Unlike conventional views of language, Merleau-Ponty claims that music and the other arts “confine themselves within the cultural world”.975 This entails that there is a fictional aspect of musical works (and artworks in general) which allows them to
“create their own object” through the transformation of natural phenomena in inventive ways.976 It is this explicitly creative aspect of music that distinguishes it from the conventional notion of language as uncreative. Unlike linguistic meaning, which is traditionally understood as being repeatable by multiple people over time, musical meaning, Merleau-Ponty argues, appears to be created afresh every time a composer writes a new work.977 As he puts it, “every composer starts his task at the beginning, having a new world to deliver”.978 Importantly, this “new world” is brought to life when a person undergoes the actual experience of playing, and thereby interpreting, the composer’s music. By thus conceiving of musical meaning as experiential, Merleau-
Ponty, like Schutz, is then able to claim that any conceptual or “intellectual analyses” of a piece must ultimately be referred back to a performance (i.e. an experience) of it.979 If we were to attempt to notate or conceptualise the meaning of a piece prior to experiencing a performance of it (whether this concerns listening to, or playing, it), this conceptualisation, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, would be groundless. This accounts for his claim that “musical notation is a facsimile made after the event, an abstract portrait of the musical entity”.980
975 Ibid. 976 Ibid. 977 Ibid., 221/190. 978 Ibid. 979 Ibid., 212/183. 980 Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, 153 (emphasis in original). 234
Thus far, I have examined how Merleau-Ponty conceives of both music and language as creative forms of expression by way of his critiques of the broad doctrines of intellectualism and empiricism. These critiques also find their parallel in his critiques of purely “objectivist” and “subjectivist” views of painting. Following this up in section three allows for an explanation of how artistic creativity, for Merleau-Ponty, depends on his phenomenological idea that the person is not distinct from, but intertwined with, the world in which s/he is embedded, including the objects and people that inhabit it. This idea, in turn, is particularly crucial to his analysis of the creative aspect of music.
3. Merleau-Ponty’s critique of subjectivist and objectivist views of painting
Equally important to his view of creative expression as his analysis of language is
Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of creative expression in painting. His account emerges from his critiques of the objectivist view, which claims that painting directly replicates the world or nature, and the subjectivist view, which claims that painting replicates the painter’s inner “feeling” or emotions.981 Merleau-Ponty’s critique of both views also emerges from his engagement with Malraux’s theory of painting, where he simultaneously credits Malraux for exposing the limitations of the objectivist view of painting and criticises him for maintaining an overly subjectivist view.982 And, as we
981 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 48 & 52. 982 Ibid., 47. For an evaluation of Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Malraux’s views of art, please see chapter seven (“Critique of Impure Phenomenology”) of Gary Shapiro’s book, Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying. (Gary Shapiro, Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003), 217-44.) Shapiro situates Merleau- Ponty’s critique of Malraux within the broader context of the historical and political dimensions of art. His analysis of Merleau-Ponty and Malraux’s views of art also engages other prominent theorists in the Continental tradition such as Foucault, Nietzsche and Hegel. 235
shall shortly see, Merleau-Ponty puts the body at the centre of creative expression in this account by emphasising the role that our capacity for perception plays in the artistic process.
Merleau-Ponty’s critique of the objectivist view of painting is analogous to his critique of the “empiricist” notion of the “objective body”. Just as the objectivist view holds that a painting is a direct “representation” of nature, empiricism, as I mentioned earlier, holds that the body can be directly represented by the fixed locations in “objective space” that it supposedly occupies. In contrast with this objectivist view, Merleau-
Ponty argues that if painting was indeed purely representational, “meaning” would not be situated within the artwork itself but rather in the external “objects” that it is said to depict.983 In his words, “its meaning would lie entirely beyond the canvas”.984 This would result in the somewhat strange inference that all the paintings that depict the
Sydney Opera House (as it existed at a particular moment in time) convey the same meaning because they portray exactly the same “subject”.985 This view of painting is unusual because it homogenises perception and thereby robs art of any creative expression.986 As Merleau-Ponty puts it, a painting would essentially be “imposing an unimpeachable spectacle upon our senses”.987
983 Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 95. 984 Ibid. 985 Ibid. (emphasis in original). 986 Merleau-Ponty claims that this assumption of the homogeneity of perception relies on the erroneous presupposition maintained by the objectivist view of painting that corporeal perception is experienced in a uniform manner amongst all humans (Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 48). Due to the fact that all humans possess a similar “perceptual apparatus” (e.g. “we all have eyes, which function more or less in the same way”), the objectivist view posits that we would all “see the same spectacle” when viewing a particular painting (Ibid.). 987 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 48 (emphasis in original). 236
Merleau-Ponty contests this assumption of the homogeneity of perception by astutely noting that “perception already stylizes”.988 By this he means that, as I suggested earlier, sense-data is never expressed by us in a neutral fashion but already possesses a particular significance informed by the particular ways in which we engage with the world. Given that different people would engage with the world in different ways, their perceptions of the same painting would also differ. More generally, Merleau-Ponty believes that an examination of the complexity and diversity of “direct perceptual experience” is central to grasping the essence of artworks (including musical pieces).989
In his view, it is precisely the crucial influence that the “world of perception” has on a painter’s work that Malraux ironically overlooks, notwithstanding his agreement that
“perception already stylizes”.990 It is to his critique of Malraux’s subjectivist view of painting that I now turn.
By “defin[ing] modern painting as a return to subjectivity”, Malraux, Merleau-Ponty argues, thereby erroneously “shut[s] modern painting up in a recess of the individual”.991 With this claim, he makes Malraux’s subjectivist view of painting analogous with intellectualism. As I discussed earlier, Merleau-Ponty critiques the intellectualist view which posits that both language and music are direct translations of thought. Thought, he explains, is traditionally assumed to represent the “inner life” of a person.992 Similarly, Merleau-Ponty also critiques the subjectivist view that a painting is a direct translation of the “inner life” of its painter.993 As I mentioned earlier, this
988 Ibid., 54. 989 Merleau-Ponty, The World of Perception, 95. 990 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 54. 991 Ibid., 47-48. 992 PhP, 213/183-84. 993 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 53. 237
“inner life”, in Malraux’s views of painting, refers to the painter’s “feeling” or deepest emotions rather than thought.994
By locating the creative source of painting entirely within the painter himself/herself,
Malraux, Merleau-Ponty suggests, thereby fails to recognise that creativity actually emerges in the painter’s relationship or “communication with the world”.995 For
Merleau-Ponty, this is evidenced by the fact that a painter’s “style” only really crystallises when it comes to encompass the various interpretations of his/her work from other people who also partake in his/her world.996 In addition to this oversight,
Merleau-Ponty claims that Malraux mistakenly regards the “perceived world” as a mere
“stylistic means” or resource that the painter uses to create his/her paintings.997 In contrast, Merleau-Ponty reminds us that it is precisely this “world of perception” that nourishes creative expression. As he eloquently puts it, to “live in painting is still to breathe the air of this world – above all for the man who sees something in the world to paint”.998 As I will shortly elaborate, this nourishment of the creative dimension of both music and language by the “world of perception” centres on our corporeal and affective immersion in this world. Understanding how the body and affect fit into Merleau-
Ponty’s accounts of music and language first requires that we examine his notion of
“expressive silences”. These “silences”, I go on to suggest, are central to his views of the transformative power of both language and art.
994 Ibid., 52. 995 Ibid., 53-54. 996 Ibid., 52-53. 997 Ibid., 54 & 57 (emphasis in original). 998 Ibid., 64. 238
4. “Expressive silences” in music and language
In “Indirect Language”, Merleau-Ponty begins by adopting Ferdinand de Saussure’s view of language which posits that, “taken singly, signs do not signify anything, and that each one of them does not so much express a meaning as mark a divergence of meaning between itself and other signs”.999 It follows from this that the meaning of particular words can only be ascertained by examining how they differ from, and are interrelated with, other words.1000 As Merleau-Ponty puts it, “it is the lateral relation of one sign to another which makes each of them significant, so that meaning appears only at the intersection of and as it were in the interval between words”.1001 These “gaps” between words or signs are what Merleau-Ponty refers to as “expressive silences”.1002
For him, the important contribution of these gaps or silences to linguistic meaning signals the need to go beyond an analysis of the individual constituents of language (e.g. words, phrases, etc.), which carry little meaning in themselves, so as to exercise our capacity to interpret the dynamic interconnections that bind them together.
Nevertheless, he also departs from Saussure by claiming that these gaps or expressive silences involve the aspects of temporality, corporeality and affect. The temporal aspect of these silences helps to explain how linguistic meaning, for Merleau-Ponty, is futural and hence both undetermined and unpredictable. This futural element, he argues, arises from the fact that the expressive silences between words do not signify a distinct break or lapse in meaning but are rather inhabited by a “significative intention” that our
999 Ibid., 39. 1000 Ibid., 42. 1001 Ibid., emphases added. 1002 Ibid., 46. 239
spoken words help to fulfil at a later point in time.1003 In particular, Merleau-Ponty notes that a person often uses speech as a mechanism to “become aware” of, and/or clarify, what s/he actually “intends”.1004 For example, talking our way through our future plans with someone or even to ourselves is often a helpful means of ascertaining the various advantages and disadvantages of a possible course of action. Moreover, for him, this gap between “my as yet unspeaking intention”, and the words that enable me to fulfil it, has an instructive role in linguistic expression.1005 In his view, it is what allows “my spoken words [to] surprise me myself and teach me my thought”.1006
Owing to these silences, the meaning of a particular sentence, for Merleau-Ponty, is never static. Being necessarily oriented towards the future, this meaning always exceeds the individual meanings of the particular words that constitute that sentence.
As he puts it, “all the signs together allude to a signification which is always in abeyance when they are considered singly, and which I go beyond them toward without their ever containing it”.1007 It is these expressive silences, or what he also calls the
“indirect or allusive” aspect of language, that are distinctly absent from empirical language (i.e. dictionary definitions).1008 Empirical language, Merleau-Ponty claims, operates instead like a “table of correspondence” in that “there is a direct meaning which corresponds point for point to figures, forms, and established words”, thereby leaving no room for any expressive silences.1009
1003 Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, 89- 90. 1004 Ibid., 90. 1005 Ibid., 88. 1006 Ibid., emphasis added. 1007 Ibid. 1008 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 43 & 46. 1009 Ibid. 240
Aside from the futural undetermined aspect, the important role of the body and affect in expressive silences can be illuminated by examining not only the differences between signs but also the wider differences between particular experiences. To explain how this is so, I will analyse Merleau-Ponty’s comparison between two different experiences of the same dialogue in “Indirect Language”. In this text, he investigates why a particular dialogue seems significantly more dynamic to people when they are actually partaking in it than when they subsequently listen to an “exact recording” of it.1010
Merleau-Ponty attributes the difference between the two experiences primarily to the dynamic interaction that transpires between the bodies and emotions of the speakers (for example, between their “gestures”).1011 This dynamism, he suggests, is only perceivable to them when they are actually participating in the dialogue itself.1012 He states, the “presence of those who were speaking, the gestures, the physiognomies, and the feeling of an event which is coming up and of a continuous improvisation, all are lacking in the recording”.1013 What Merleau-Ponty’s comparison illuminates is that, while the body and affect contribute greatly to the inventiveness and dynamism of language, they are nevertheless “silent” contributors in that their creative force cannot be ascertained by simply compiling the dictionary definitions of the words that are uttered by the speakers. Moreover, while we may have a vague sense of what type of gestures and emotions the speakers are displaying by listening to a recording of the dialogue, their vividness is nevertheless lacking because we do not perceive these gestures/emotions in their immediacy.
1010 Ibid., 57. 1011 Ibid. 1012 Ibid. 1013 Ibid., emphases added. 241
Merleau-Ponty adds that, in the recording, the vibrancy of the original dialogue is lost because it is henceforth “flattened out in the unique dimension of sound”.1014 This suggests that, for him, the speakers’ use of multiple sensory capacities plays a noticeable role in enhancing their overall experiences of the dialogue. In other words, he seems to regard as significant their ability to not only hear others talking, but also see their bodily movements and feel their bodily presence. As I discussed in chapter four, it is the use of multiple, interrelated senses (especially the combination of hearing and vision) that commentators like Lochhead view as essential to enhancing one’s understanding of music.1015 For Lochhead, this is closely aligned with Merleau-Ponty’s broader conception of “perception” as a “wholistic activity of the body” in which the senses are intertwined.1016 Having discussed the role that expressive silences play in language, I will now assess the role that they might also play in music.
Similar to his analysis of the gaps in language, Merleau-Ponty makes a similar point in
“The Intertwining – The Chiasm” about how these gaps in music are crucial to understanding its expressiveness. He states, “[w]e do not see, do not hear the ideas, and not even with the mind’s eye or with the third ear: and yet they are there, behind the sounds or between them”.1017 While he does not explicitly say so, these gaps could be characterised as “expressive silences” because they capture the creative, interpretative and experiential aspects of musical expression that cannot be discerned purely from the various “marks of musical notation”.1018 I will expand on the more detailed aspects of this claim shortly. First, I want to explore how these gaps or silences fit into Merleau-
1014 Ibid. 1015 Lochhead, “Hearing New Music”, 38. 1016 Ibid. 1017 Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, 151 (emphases added). 1018 Ibid. 242
Ponty’s overall account of musical expression. To do this, I now examine Jessica
Wiskus’ analysis of the role that the “musical idea” plays in this account.
To explain how the “musical idea” lies “behind the sounds or between them”, Wiskus outlines the ways in which it situates itself between the “visible” and “invisible” in
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.1019 She claims that, an idea, by its very nature, is unavailable to our sensory perception and is thus “irreducible to the sensible or visible realm”.1020 However, Wiskus continues, the “musical idea” is not strictly “invisible” for
Merleau-Ponty either because, unlike the “a-spatial” and “a-temporal” “Platonic ideas”, it is still connected with this realm.1021 This last point is emphasised in Merleau-Ponty’s assertion that the ideas “would not be better known to us if we had no body and no sensibility; it is then that they would be inaccessible to us”.1022
Merleau-Ponty’s concept of expressive silences can be used here to expand on this connection between the musical idea and the sensible realm. Since the musical idea, for him, lies “behind the sounds or between them”, it also lies in the gaps or expressive silences in music. And insofar as it partakes in these silences, it also partakes in the experiential aspect of music that, as I suggested earlier, is what these silences capture.
Thus, the musical idea cannot be completely divorced from the sensible realm because it discloses itself through one’s experience of playing the sounds that are necessarily perceived through the senses. Hence, Wiskus posits that the “musical idea comes to be
1019 Jessica Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism: Temporality and the musical idea according to Merleau-Ponty”, Philosophy Today 51 (2007): 163. 1020 Ibid. 1021 Ibid. 1022 Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, 150. 243
known not as a theoretical conception but only through the presentation of actual sounding notes”.1023
More precisely, in the act of playing music, the relations between musical signs (i.e. musical notes), while appearing to be fixed or stable in the written score, are rendered dynamic through their interpretation in performances. Even the most basic instructions in the score cannot be executed with mathematical precision. For example, two notes
(e.g. two crotchets), while being of equal length in the score, will rarely be of equal length when actually played in succession. Owing to these gaps or silences between the marks of musical notation and their interpretation in performances, a “certain divergence” also appears in the relation between musical notes or signs1024 when these are actually played by multiple musicians or even by the same musician on multiple occasions. For example, the rate of crescendo between two notes may be faster or slower depending upon the interpretative tendencies and/or affective state of the particular performer. Taking into account the dynamic relations between notes,
Merleau-Ponty characterises this “divergence” between them as “that never-finished differentiation, that openness ever to be reopened between the sign and the sign”.1025
Hence, unlike Schutz, for whom musical performance consists primarily in the translation of the composer’s musical thoughts into sounds, Merleau-Ponty demonstrates how the performer actually creatively transforms musical meaning in the act/process of playing itself.
Merleau-Ponty attributes music’s dynamism, an aspect which these expressive silences help to explain, to the creative activity of the body. It is our corporeal engagement with
1023 Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism”, 163. 1024 Merleau-Ponty, “The Intertwining – The Chiasm”, 153. 1025 Ibid. 244
music, he suggests, that endows the musical ideas with what he describes as “their authority, their fascinating, indestructible power”.1026 Due to this unique capacity of the body to continuously transform musical meaning in often unexpected ways, he suggests that our interpretation of the musical ideas is not a task over which we have complete agency or control. Hence, he states, “[w]e do not possess the musical or sensible ideas, precisely because they are negativity or absence circumscribed; they possess us.”1027 As
Merleau-Ponty describes it, it is as though, instead of deliberately creating or re-creating the music himself/herself, the performer becomes the vehicle through which the music creates or re-creates itself. Moreover, this process of interpretation is not a methodical activity whereby the exact nature of the relations between notes has been worked out beforehand. Rather, these relations are formed during the performance itself, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle being assembled by an unknown hand. Merleau-Ponty states:
The performer is no longer producing or reproducing the sonata: he feels
himself, and the others feel him to be at the service of the sonata; the sonata
sings through him or cries out so suddenly that he must “dash on his bow” to
follow it. And these open vortexes in the sonorous world finally form one sole
vortex in which the ideas fit in with one another.1028
Kazashi provides an interesting comparative analysis of Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s contrasting views of these “open vortexes” or silences in their accounts of music.
Kazashi’s claims are significant to my analysis because they point towards another way in which Merleau-Ponty’s account might improve Schutz’s. To provide the background for this comparison, Kazashi draws an interesting parallel between these “open
1026 Ibid., 150. 1027 Ibid., 151. 1028 Ibid., emphasis added. 245
vortexes” (or expressive silences) in Merleau-Ponty’s account and the Japanese psychiatrist, Bin Kimura’s views of the “acoustic ‘ma’ or ‘interval’ between sounds”.1029 Kazashi suggests that these “intervals”, for Kimura, are “acoustic
‘horizons’ which are not simply ‘empty backgrounds’ for positive sounds, but rather fields resonant with all but imperceptible echoes from the past and the future as well”.1030 Hence, we could say that, just as these intervals, for Kazashi/Kimura, are
“resonant” with multiple temporal dimensions (i.e. the past, present and future), the expressive silences in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy are also “resonant” with the interpretative and experiential aspects of music that are integral to its meaning. I will later explore how these gaps, for Merleau-Ponty, could also embody the creative aspect of temporality in music through Wiskus’ notion of “rhythm” as a form of “temporal depth”.
Kazashi uses Merleau-Ponty and Kimura’s views of musical expression as a platform from which to critique Schutz’s model of “musical phrasing” (that I discussed in chapter four). While acknowledging that Schutz himself is generally aware of the “creative aspect” of these intervals (or silences), Kazashi nevertheless claims that, in this model at least,
the significance of intervals seems to have been analyzed by Schutz largely from
the viewpoint of the technical need for “musical phrasing”; that is to say, it is
understood largely as partitioning between melodic Gestalts. The aspect of
1029 Kazashi, “The Musicality of the Other”, 180-81. 1030 Ibid., 182. 246
intervals as moments of significative excess does not seem to have been
accorded full recognition.1031
By this, Kazashi seems to suggest that, although these intervals, for Schutz, facilitate the performer’s ability to reflect on the meaning of a musical work, they are nevertheless not meaningful in themselves. In other words, they seem to merely mark the boundaries of where one section of the piece ends and another begins. Hence, in Kazashi’s view, meaning in Schutz’s model of musical phrasing lies not in the “intermittences” between the notes that constitute the “thematical units and sub-units” but rather in these notes themselves.1032 As I have just discussed, this contrasts with Merleau-Ponty and
Kimura’s views of music where these “intermittences” are inherently meaningful. In this way, Kazashi offers another perspective from which Merleau-Ponty might develop a more sophisticated and insightful account of musical meaning than Schutz.
Moreover, for Merleau-Ponty, the meaning-giving activity that takes place in the musical experience seems to operate in similar ways in human experience in general.
As I suggested earlier, the musician, in his view, does not completely determine the direction or outcome of the process by which meaning is both created and transformed.
In Institution and Passivity, this aspect is also apparent in his broader discussion of what it actually means for humans “to be conscious”.1033 There, he suggests that humans do not have complete control over the process by which they interpret, or make sense of, the world. Just as the creative meaning-giving activity of the musician occurs at the level of the “divergence” between musical signs, that of our consciousness occurs when
1031 Ibid., 182-83. 1032 Ibid., 182. 1033 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Institution and Passivity: Course Notes from the Collège de France (1954- 1955), trans. Leonard Lawlor & Heath Massey (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2010), 206. Hereafter cited as Institution and Passivity. 247
we “realise a certain divergence, a certain variation in an already instituted existential field”.1034 Merleau-Ponty’s characterisation of the “existential field” as “already instituted” here seems to suggest that our consciousness transmutes existing meanings in the world by re-interpreting or reshaping them rather than constructing completely new meanings. Otherwise put, for him, this meaning-giving activity is not of a monodirectional nature whereby humans simply “impose significations perpetually” onto the world,1035 as if it was a blank canvas. Rather, it is a reciprocal activity whereby the world simultaneously transfigures us as we transfigure it.1036 The main point here is that creativity emerges in the productive engagement of humans with the world whereby humans and the world are inseparable, rather than separable, from each other.
Merleau-Ponty then claims that, in order to enact this transmutation of meaning, we must “continue a vortex of experience” that originated at the moment we were born.1037
One explanation of this is that, through our constant interactions with the world, recurring patterns begin to develop and shape our interpretations of the events/phenomena that transpire in our existential field. While these patterns may eventually form a broader mechanism that consolidates these various interpretations into an overall worldview, there are nevertheless gaps in this supposedly stable framework for transformations to occur. And it is in the intermittent deviations (or divergences) from these patterns that the creative, transformative activity of our consciousness is allowed to intervene. For example, our perspective of human nature may be significantly changed following the one-off occurrence of a large-scale tragedy that resulted in a considerable loss of life (e.g. the detonation of an atomic bomb).
1034 Ibid. 1035 Ibid. 1036 Ibid. 1037 Ibid. 248
Henceforth, we may perceive people as essentially evil rather than essentially good. In the next section, I will further examine how this creative transformation of existence
(whether this occurs through the means of language or art) comes to the fore in the role of the body and affect in expression.
5. The corporeal and affective dimensions of meaning
For Merleau-Ponty, this corporeal and affective dimension of language and art is not only essential to our creative transformation of existence but also captures what he calls our “fundamental manner of being”, that is, our overall “style” of engaging with the world.1038 It is these two points that I will focus on in this section. In terms of linguistic expression, this transformative activity is closely linked with his key notion of
“existential meaning”, that is, the “emotional” dimension of speech that permeates the
“accent, intonation, gesture and facial expression” of the speaker.1039 Importantly, these elements of accent, intonation, etc. allow for creativity in expression because they enable the speaker to convey his/her intended messages in diverse, and often surprising, ways. Furthermore, these messages are in turn interpreted in diverse ways by those who receive them.
Importantly, these elements of speech communicate the more nuanced, ironic, poignant and/or enigmatic qualities of our messages in ways that the actual conceptual content of our words cannot. For example, a quivering tone of voice could betray a speaker’s fear despite his/her declaration, “I am not afraid”. Similarly, the meaning of a particular joke would probably differ depending on whether it is told by someone with a very dry,
1038 PhP, 174 & 213/151 & 183-84. 1039 Ibid., 174, 212 & 217/151, 183 & 187. 249
sarcastic sense of humour or someone with a more straightforward or conventional sense of humour. In particular, Merleau-Ponty suggests that this dimension of
“existential meaning” is able to capture the mysterious yet powerful ways in which the body can “sense” its intimate and reciprocal relationship with the “world of perception”.1040 This ineffable sensation is what he describes as the “enigma” of the body that “sees itself seeing; it touches itself touching; it is visible and sensitive for itself”.1041
Merleau-Ponty argues that, in language, “existential meaning” is more fundamental than
“conceptual meaning” because the latter must be derived by “deduction” from the former.1042 He states:
the spoken or written words carry a top coating of meaning which sticks to them
and which presents the thought as a style, an affective value, a piece of
existential mimicry, rather than as a conceptual statement. We find here,
beneath the conceptual meaning of the words, an existential meaning which is
not only rendered by them, but which inhabits them, and is inseparable from
them.1043
To justify this point, he provides the example of how we are able to grasp the particular
“style” of a “piece of philosophical writing” (e.g. “Spinozist, critical or phenomenological”) by familiarising ourselves with the “tone and accent of the
1040 Merleau-Ponty, “Eye and Mind”, 162-63. 1041 Ibid., 162. 1042 PhP, 208/179. 1043 Ibid., 212/183 (emphases added). 250
philosopher” even before we are able to fully comprehend its conceptual content.1044
This also applies to music. For example, musicians can sometimes pinpoint the tradition from which a piece has emerged (e.g. Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc.) by its distinct “style” even if they are unfamiliar with the more technical/theoretical aspects of the work itself (e.g. its use of “sonata form” or a polyphonic texture).
More broadly, for Merleau-Ponty, one’s particular style of speaking, writing, composing or playing in turn reflects what he calls one’s “style of being”.1045 This, as I signalled earlier, pertains to the distinctive way in which a person engages with, and relates to, the world. In terms of linguistic expression, this could encompass such factors as his/her current emotional state, his/her attitude towards the person/people with whom s/he is speaking and the project in which s/he is currently engaged.
Analogously, in terms of musical expression, a pianist’s choice of “touch” (e.g.
“delicate” or “commanding”) could reflect the wider context of his/her emotional involvement with the music, his/her own interpretation of the composer’s score and the extent to which s/he adheres to the stylistic conventions imposed by the musical tradition. This discussion thus recalls Merleau-Ponty’s broader notion of the
“intentional arc”, which emphasises the fact that a person’s creative process is also
1044 Ibid., 208/179. Jerrold Levinson draws our attention to how the idiosyncratic aspects of a philosopher’s “thought” can also be viewed in terms of the peculiar musical qualities that this “thought” possesses. (Jerrold Levinson, “Philosophy and Music”, Topoi 28 (2009): 123.) To explain this notion of the “music of a philosopher’s thought”, he states:
It is to call attention to its rhythm, whether halting or flowing; to its cadence, whether striding or mincing; to its timbre, whether light-toned or dark-hued; to its texture, whether linear or convoluted; and to its melody, whether severe or ingratiating. Indicative of the real existence of distinctive musics in the writing of the great philosophers is the fact that the identity of the philosopher is sometimes discernible from a paragraph or two, even when the specific ideas or themes being discussed do not permit such an identification. (Ibid., emphasis in original) 1045 PhP, 213/183-84. 251
bound up with his/her lived history as well as the socio-political, ethical and
“ideological” concerns in which s/he is already situated.1046
Merleau-Ponty also argues that our particular “style of being” is expressed in the world through our “gestures” (of which the “spoken word” is an example), which explains why he sometimes refers to the “existential meaning” of language as its “gestural meaning”.1047 For him, the gesture is essentially an “expression” of our “intentions” through corporeal means.1048 For example, when teaching young children, we may assume a sterner tone of voice in order to ensure their good behaviour throughout the duration of the class. Being the embodiment of our intentions, the meaning of a particular gesture, Merleau-Ponty claims, is not limited to the moment of its execution but is rather oriented towards the future in which these intentions are fulfilled, perhaps through the use of further gestures. He thus describes each gesture as “both a beginning and a continuation which, insofar as it is not walled up in its singularity and finished once and for all like an event, points to a continuation or recommencements”.1049 In this way, the gesture contributes to the creative dimension of speech by acting as the catalyst for both the generation and regeneration of meaning.
While Merleau-Ponty does not say much about the “linguistic gesture”, he does describe how the meaning of a word is significantly affected by the different ways in which it can be spoken (e.g. the use of “hesitation” and the various inflections of speech) as well as the grammatical decisions that we make when we speak (e.g. the “choice of a certain
1046 Ibid., 157/136. 1047 Ibid., 208, 214 & 225/179, 184 & 194 (emphasis in original). Merleau-Ponty states, the “spoken word is a gesture, and its meaning, a world” (Ibid., 214/184). 1048 Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, 89. 1049 Merleau-Ponty, “Indirect Language”, 68. 252
syntax”).1050 Given these descriptions of the “linguistic gesture”, the musical gesture, for him, could involve the expressive aspects of playing/performing music that would significantly influence its meaning. These could include the pianist’s choice of “touch”
(that I mentioned earlier) and the degree to which a singer or violinist uses vibrato.
Interestingly, both Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche analyse language partly in terms of gestures. However, given that Merleau-Ponty associates the “gestural meaning” of language with its affective dimension, his notion of gestures would probably be more akin to Nietzsche’s notion of tone (than gestures). As I discussed in chapter three,
Nietzsche describes tone in language as having the capacity to merge people in the underlying “ground” of existence through the “universal language” of affect. In contrast, he suggests that gestures (i.e. consonants, vowels and the words they form) mainly have a representational and individuating function in language. In particular, he argues that the arbitrary and variable nature of gestures is evinced by the fact that a particular combination of consonants and vowels may not designate the same object in, or aspect of, the world across different languages.1051
However, Merleau-Ponty departs from Nietzsche in this respect by arguing that the diverse use of consonants and vowels across different languages is not indicative of their “arbitrary” nature.1052 He employs a fascinating musical metaphor to illustrate this point, stating:
The predominance of vowels in one language, or of consonants in another, and
constructional and syntactical systems, do not represent so many arbitrary
1050 Merleau-Ponty, “On the Phenomenology of Language”, 89. 1051 MW: 107-108. 1052 PhP, 218/188. 253
conventions for the expression of one and the same idea, but several ways for the
human body to sing the world’s praises and in the last resort to live it.1053
To “sing the world’s praises”, for Merleau-Ponty, means to employ the diverse range of
“words, vowels and phonemes” that is available to us in order to express the “emotional essence” of things.1054 Consistent with his critique of empirical language, he claims that this does not simply involve employing various consonants and vowels to “designate” or “name” things in a random manner.1055 Rather, while we may be familiar with numerous languages, each with their own peculiar combination of consonants and vowels, Merleau-Ponty reminds us that there is only one specific language “in which we live”.1056 Otherwise put, this language, in comparison with others, more fully
“expresses” the particular world we inhabit.1057 For instance, even if we were familiar with both English and French, we would not normally use words from both languages within the same sentence unless we had a particular reason for doing so. We may, perhaps, be performing an English-French translation of a particular phrase for someone. Hence, while Merleau-Ponty stresses that language is never a fixed construct for us, he is also aware that we would feel a stronger attachment to one language over another (or even to a particular word/ phrase within the same language) because it bears the marks of our lived history.
Another way of analysing the difference between how Merleau-Ponty and Nietzsche figure the source of creative expression is through their contrasting assessments of the expressive potential (or lack thereof) of the unembellished human “cry”. Whereas
1053 Ibid., emphases added. 1054 Ibid., 217/187. 1055 Ibid., 218/188. 1056 Ibid. 1057 Ibid. 254
Nietzsche regards the cry as a heightened expression of affect, Merleau-Ponty claims that it is “poor in expressive means”.1058 As I discussed in chapter three, Nietzsche argues that the human cry marks the transition from tone (in language) to music because it is able to express the “ecstasy of the feelings” peculiar to the Dionysian state of intoxication.1059 In particular, he claims that the cry is uttered at the moment where the corporeal and affective transformation (that is central to music’s disindividuating effect) reaches its peak amongst a group of people.
On the contrary, Merleau-Ponty claims that the cry engages the body solely in terms of its capacity as a “mere biological entity”, that is, “as nature gave it to us”.1060 He thus seems to suggest that, unlike art forms such as poetry,1061 the cry does not draw on the body’s expressive, transformative power to make use of the resources available to it in order to create or re-create meaning. Hence, while Nietzsche regards the cry as a potent form of musical expression, Merleau-Ponty might consider it as involving a relatively less expressive use of the body, in comparison with music and poetry, for example. However, he would agree with Nietzsche’s broader argument that music’s origins are fundamentally intersubjective, a notion that Nietzsche’s account of the cry emphasises. It is the social dimension of both music and language that I will shortly explore as part of my examination of Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s views of intersubjectivity and temporality.
While Merleau-Ponty writes about the broad themes of intersubjectivity and temporality in his philosophy, he does not really explain their role in the experience of music or in
1058 Ibid., 174/151. 1059 DW 4: 94 (emphasis in original). 1060 PhP, 174 & 220/151 & 189-90. 1061 Ibid., 174/151. 255
its creative dimension. Hence, I will attempt to reconstruct an account of how he might conceptualise this role by using Schutz’s account of the roles that intersubjectivity and temporality play in the musical experience as a point of both reference and comparison.
I will also demonstrate how it is in the differences between their accounts that the relative advantages of Merleau-Ponty’s views of music over Schutz’s are brought to the fore. Specifically, I will show how Merleau-Ponty improves Schutz’s account by dissolving the strict dichotomies between the mind and the body, and between time and space, to which Schutz adheres. I begin the second half of this chapter with a comparative analysis of their respective notions of intersubjectivity.
6. A comparative analysis of Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s notions of
intersubjectivity
Both Merleau-Ponty and Schutz perceive our relationships with other people as a fundamental aspect of human existence. For example, Merleau-Ponty claims that the
“social world” is a “permanent field or dimension of existence” with which “we are in contact by the mere fact of existing”.1062 Similarly, as I mentioned in chapter four,
Schutz claims that the “world of my daily life is by no means my private world but is from the outset an intersubjective one, shared with my fellow-men, experienced and interpreted by Others”.1063 In Merleau-Ponty’s view, whether we choose to actively engage with, or isolate ourselves from, others we are still assuming a particular attitude towards them (e.g. welcoming, hostile, indifferent, etc.). He astutely notes that the
“refusal to communicate […] is still a form of communication”.1064
1062 Ibid., 421/362. 1063 Schutz, “Symbol, Reality, and Society”, 312. 1064 PhP, 420/361. 256
In this section, I explore how this important claim that intersubjectivity lies at the core of human existence applies to the experience of music. I begin by examining the close interconnections between the self and other that are common to both Schutz and
Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of “making music together” and the linguistic interactions in
“dialogue”, respectively. By emphasising the “reciprocity” that exists between musicians/speakers, both Merleau-Ponty and Schutz thereby distance themselves from
Sartre’s more antagonistic notion of interpersonal relations.1065 Later on, however, I will also question the extent to which reciprocity actually features in Schutz’s account in comparison with Merleau-Ponty’s.
Merleau-Ponty describes the creation and transformation of linguistic meaning in a
“dialogue” in similar terms to Schutz’s account of the reconstruction of musical meaning. For Merleau-Ponty, a dialogue is a “shared operation of which neither of us is the creator” such that we both become “collaborators for each other in consummate reciprocity”.1066 Just as Schutz suggests that musicians must “anticipate” their coperformers’ interpretations of the composer’s score during a performance, Merleau-
Ponty also suggests that participants in a dialogue must “anticipate” each other’s meanings.1067 Given the numerous parallels that Merleau-Ponty draws between linguistic and musical forms of expression, we could suggest that he would also establish an analogy between the interactions that transpire between speakers in a dialogue and those which transpire between musicians in a performance. Hence, we could conceptualise the collective music-making experience in his philosophy in terms of a musical dialogue where words are replaced by sounds.
1065 As I discussed in chapter four, on Schutz’s interpretation of Sartre’s account of intersubjectivity, the self is either a subject, or an object for the other, but never both simultaneously. 1066 PhP, 413/355. 1067 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 176 & PhP, 413/355. 257
However, there would also seem to be a stronger sense of reciprocity in what I have just termed an account of musical dialogue in Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy than in Schutz’s account of the collective music-making experience. The antagonism that Schutz critiques in Sartre’s notion of intersubjectivity also appears to pervade his own account of musical performance. This is because Schutz seems to suggest that musicians are opposed to one another insofar as each performer’s “freedom of interpreting the composer’s thought is restrained by the freedom granted to the Other”.1068 Since one musician’s gain in freedom coincides with another’s loss, each musician, Schutz claims, is either a “leader or follower” at different moments in a performance.1069 In contrast, this aspect of competing freedoms does not feature in Merleau-Ponty’s account of dialogue. It would therefore also not feature in how he would regard musical dialogue
(insofar as this conception would be derived from that account). As the following discussion will both demonstrate and emphasise, Merleau-Ponty believes that we already “inhabit”, or intertwine with, the other. Hence, other people, for Merleau-
Ponty, are an enabling, rather than disabling, factor in our freedom because they perform the crucial function of provoking, clarifying, or simply increasing our awareness of, our own meanings.1070 Indeed, he claims that individuals are intertwined even in the basic act of perceiving each other. Upon encountering another person, the physical objects that partake in both our own and the other’s “environment” instantly
“take on a fresh layer of significance” when his/her body also attempts to employ these objects to fulfil his/her own “intentions” which, in turn, overlap with our own.1071
1068 Schutz, “Making Music Together”, 176. 1069 Ibid. 1070 PhP, 413/355. 1071 Ibid., 411-12/353-54. 258
In “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other” (from The Prose of the World), Merleau-
Ponty provides further insights into how the other can both disrupt and further one’s own intentions through his analysis of the intersubjective dimension of speech or expression. Here, he conceives of a conversation as a creative, transformative activity that brings about a dynamic interplay between the similarities and dissimilarities that exist between the self and other.1072 In his view, it is through this productive interplay that a “new signification”, originating neither solely in the self nor solely in the other, is created.1073 Insofar as others are both similar to, and different from, us, Merleau-Ponty claims that we perceive their “gestures and behavior” as being simultaneously strange and familiar.1074 Although the other’s “style” of engaging with the world is, to a certain extent, “coherent” to us because it resonates with our own, there will also be instances where we are baffled, “surprised, disoriented” by the other.1075 And, Merleau-Ponty suggests, it is through this process of interacting with another person who is simultaneously close to, and distant from, us that we are both transfigured.1076
In this way, Merleau-Ponty helps to temper what Kazashi identifies as a potential tension in Schutz’s philosophy. As I mentioned in chapter four, Kazashi perceives a significant difference in Schutz’s theory of intersubjectivity between the predominantly perfunctory social encounters that transpire in everyday life and the “pure intensity of human interaction”1077 that Kazashi believes distinguishes the collective music-making experience. In contrast, and as illustrated above, Merleau-Ponty considers what we
1072 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other”, in The Prose of the World, trans. John O’Neill (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 142. Hereafter cited as “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other”. 1073 Ibid., 142-43. 1074 Ibid., 142. 1075 Ibid. 1076 Ibid. 1077 Kazashi, “The Musicality of the Other”, 184. 259
would usually regard as “mundane” activities, such as perceiving another person in our own environment, as already displaying an intertwining of the self and other.
While this thesis has suggested that music cannot be considered as an “object” as such, this interlocking of people’s intentions could also pertain to musical situations. In other words, the “consummate reciprocity” that Merleau-Ponty identifies in the experience of a linguistic dialogue could also find its parallel in a musical dialogue. For example, when a solo transforms into a duet at a certain point during a performance, a musician would need to adjust his/her style of singing/playing (e.g. in terms of dynamics, tone quality, etc.) to ensure that it would not substantially conflict with that of the additional singer/instrumentalist. This would in turn ensure the continued coherence of the sounds that are produced following this change in the music. Moreover, sometimes observing another’s behaviour also helps a musician to fulfil his/her own intentions rather than simply disrupting or amending them. For example, a conductor’s hand/finger movements and facial expressions can aid a musician to play more “expressively” and
“in time” by clarifying for him/her the tempo and emotional tone of the piece.
Merleau-Ponty’s account of dialogue (which, as I have suggested, applies to musical dialogue) also contains several key points of departure from Schutz’s account of the intersubjective musical experience. First, however, there is one point of similarity between their accounts that is worth mentioning here. Referring to the transformative effect that the experience of a dialogue has on our “being”, Merleau-Ponty claims that a
“synchronizing change of my own existence” is produced when I respond to the other’s speech.1078 This echoes Schutz’s claim that a form of “synchronization” between the
1078 PhP, 213/183-84. 260
experiences of both self and other takes place when they are “making music together”.1079 However, one significant difference between Merleau-Ponty and Schutz in this respect is the fact that, for Schutz, this “synchronization” ensues between their minds or streams of consciousness, whereas, for Merleau-Ponty, it ensues between their general behaviour, in which the body plays a prominent role.
Moreover, in contrast with the hint of antagonism between self and other apparent in
Schutz’s account, a strong sense of mutual participation characterises Merleau-Ponty’s account of dialogue (which would also apply to musical dialogue). For Merleau-Ponty, there is no element of “rivalry” in a conversation in the sense of a power struggle between participants to assume the supposedly dominant role of the speaker rather than the supposedly subservient role of the listener.1080 That is, the speaker is not the sole
“active” participant in the dialogue who possesses the power to control its direction just as the listener is not merely a “passive” participant who must acquiesce to the direction dictated by the speaker.1081 Rather, Merleau-Ponty distances himself from this hierarchical understanding of the relationship between the speaker and listener by making the alternative suggestion that “it is the same thing to speak to and to be spoken to”.1082 This means that one does not oscillate between speaking and listening such that the latter activity begins where the former activity ends, and vice versa. Rather, for
Merleau-Ponty, responding appropriately to the other’s speech, and thereby prolonging the conversation, necessitates that both speaking and listening occur simultaneously and in an “active” manner.1083 He thus claims that, “I hear myself in him, while he speaks
1079 Schutz, “The Dimensions of the Social World”, 26. 1080 Merleau-Ponty, “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other”, 143-44. 1081 Ibid. 1082 Ibid., 142 (emphases in original). 1083 Ibid., 143-44. 261
in me”.1084 While my own words are unfolding as I speak, I am already “listening”, so to speak, to what I envisage the other’s response will be.1085 Similarly, while listening to the other’s words unfolding, I am already silently “speaking” through, or articulating, my own response to him/her.1086 Hence, speaking and listening, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, are interrelated and simultaneous, rather than mutually exclusive, activities in a conversation.
A broader way in which Merleau-Ponty both departs from, and improves, Schutz’s theory of intersubjectivity is through a critique that he might make of Schutz’s account of the process of coming to “know” the other. As I discussed in chapter four, mind/body dualism is embedded in this process because it consists of two steps, the first of which involves the body and the second of which involves the mind. Merleau-
Ponty’s criticisms of accounts of perception of the other based on “reasoning by analogy” apply to Schutz’s philosophy in several ways. On this model of perception of the other, Merleau-Ponty claims, we initially perceive another’s bodily or “physical behaviour”, and by “analogy” from how we understand our own mind-body relation, we posit his/her mental or “‘psychic events’” with which this behaviour supposedly corresponds.1087 Insofar as Merleau-Ponty contests this approach to comprehending the
“existence of other people”,1088 he might also take issue with Schutz’s account of
“knowing” the other for the following reasons. First, Merleau-Ponty argues that our capacity to perceive others does not actually originate in the process of “reasoning by analogy” but is rather a precondition of the latter.1089 He justifies this through his
1084 Ibid., 142. 1085 Ibid., 143-44. 1086 Ibid., 144. 1087 PhP, 410/352. 1088 Ibid. 1089 Ibid. 262
example of how, for a baby, “‘[b]iting’ has immediately […] an intersubjective significance.”1090 This is despite the fact that s/he is as yet too young to instigate the act of “deduction” that “reasoning by analogy” involves.1091 Just as a baby is instantly aware that his/her “mouth and teeth” can be used to “bite” something, s/he instantly recognises that I have similar intentions when perceiving the “biting” movements made by my jaw.1092 This fundamental intertwining between individuals is encapsulated in
Merleau-Ponty’s claim that, “[i]n so far as I have sensory functions, a visual, auditory and tactile field, I am already in communication with others taken as similar psycho- physical subjects.”1093
Second, given that it is the intertwining of corporeal intentions that is the basis of the intersubjective encounter, Merleau-Ponty would also dispute Schutz’s privileging of the mind over the body in his account.1094 Third, Merleau-Ponty would challenge Schutz’s adherence to mind/body dualism by claiming that we perceive the other in his/her entirety, that is, as a “piece of behaviour” which is “undivided between the body and consciousness”.1095 For example, Merleau-Ponty suggests that, when perceiving what appears to be the “grief or the anger of the other in his conduct”, we can attribute the increasing redness of his/her face neither to the existence of certain angry or melancholy thoughts nor to “any ‘inner’ experience of suffering or anger”.1096 Unlike Schutz’s dualistic conception of a person, then, we perceive in another’s overall behaviour
1090 Ibid. 1091 Ibid. 1092 Ibid. 1093 Ibid., 411/353. 1094 As I discussed in chapter four, Schutz situates the authentic site of a person in his/her “mental life” (or “conscious life”) and even appears to suggest that another’s body appears to us as an “object” like any other before we have established that s/he is another “conscious” human being like ourselves (Schutz, On Phenomenology and Social Relations, 169). In direct contrast, Merleau-Ponty claims that “neither the body of the other nor the objects he regards have ever been pure objects for me” (Merleau-Ponty, “Dialogue and the Perception of the Other”, 137). 1095 PhP, 414-15/356-57. 1096 Ibid., 415/356-57. 263
his/her particular “style” of engaging with the world, including all of its interconnected dimensions (e.g. socio-political, ethical, temporal, etc.).
Merleau-Ponty’s account of the intercorporeal basis of “dialogue and the perception of the other” is also applicable to the social dimension of the experience of music performance. For example, sometimes an intake of breath replaces the usual “count-in”
(e.g. “one, two, three, four”) as the cue for a musician to start playing in a performance.
In this scenario, the particular characteristics of this intake of breath (e.g. “short and sharp” or “long and relaxed”) are enough to convey both the tempo and emotional tone of the piece. Since the musician has to respond immediately to this cue, we could suppose that s/he does not mentally calculate an approximate metronome speed, which matches that which his/her coperformer could also have in mind, before starting to play.
Rather, just as a baby can immediately ascertain another’s intentions through his/her bodily movements, the musician’s response would be equally as spontaneous. S/he would most likely “inhabit” his/her coperformer’s body such that s/he breathes as his/her coperformer breathes. It is in this way that the other’s interpretation of the piece is able to connect and interact with his/her own.
Insofar as the timing of the piece is grasped by the musician’s “inhabitation” of the other’s body, this example also demonstrates how Merleau-Ponty could conceive of the intersubjective and temporal dimensions of music as interrelated. A broader interconnection between temporality and intersubjectivity features in his wider philosophy because he believes that time is not only pertinent to the individual person but also assumes a “social horizon”.1097 In Merleau-Ponty’s view, just as one temporal
1097 Ibid., 503/433. 264
dimension “opens upon” another, different “temporalities” belonging to different individuals can also “open on to”, and “interweave” between, each other.1098 In this way, an individual’s experience of temporality is both influenced by, and also influences, others’ experiences of temporality. It is to a comparative analysis of
Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s views of temporality (including musical temporality) that I now turn, beginning with a discussion of their similarities. My subsequent discussion of the differences between their views will demonstrate how Merleau-Ponty improves on
Schutz’s account of musical temporality by dissolving the problematic time/space dichotomy that pervades Schutz’s philosophy.
7. A comparative analysis of Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s notions of temporality
Both Merleau-Ponty and Schutz critique the conventional notion of time in favour of a notion of temporality that emphasises the lived experience of a particular individual. As
I demonstrated in chapter four, this conventional notion of time corresponds with what
Schutz calls “outer time”, that is, the standardised seconds, minutes and hours that govern our activities in everyday life. More importantly, however, Schutz goes on to claim that “inner time” (rather than “outer time”) captures a person’s actual lived experience of temporality. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty also challenges the conventional notion of time by critiquing what he calls “objective time”.1099 What he means by
“objective time” resembles Schutz’s notion of outer time because it consists in a determinate and universal “system of objective positions”.1100 However, he also goes beyond Schutz’s critique of the conventional notion of time by suggesting that
“objective time” is not actually a viable notion of temporality in the first instance.
1098 Ibid. 1099 Ibid., 487/419-20. 1100 Ibid., 487-88/419-20. 265
Objective time, for Merleau-Ponty, would simply consist in a “series of instances of
‘now’, which are presented to nobody, since nobody is involved in them”.1101 In other words, rather than being supposedly applicable to everyone, objective time would in fact be inapplicable to anyone.
Merleau-Ponty’s alternative notion of time is encapsulated in his unusual claim that
“time is someone”.1102 By this, he means that an account of time must take the lived experience of the particular individual as its starting point. This is because, for
Merleau-Ponty, the “events” that occur in the past, present and future only become meaningful when considered from the “finite perspective” of the particular human
“subject” that partakes in them.1103 It is the “subject” that either connects, or distinguishes between, the events of his/her past, present and future, thereby organising them into an integrated narrative. By thus partaking in the overall narrative of our existence, time, like music, is performative. We live through, or “act out”, the events of our past, present and future when our body “actively assumes” and “inhabits” time.1104
These events are inscribed in a script of our own devising. Moreover, this script is constantly being rewritten because it encompasses the contributions of those who also
“inhabit” time alongside us.
Given his overall conception of time, Merleau-Ponty would also suggest that a notion of musical temporality should give primary consideration to lived experience. For example, it should account for the fact that a person’s lived experience of a piece may be “short” even though this contradicts the supposedly “objective” fact that the work is
1101 Ibid., 481/414-15. 1102 Ibid., 490/422 (emphasis in original). 1103 Ibid., 477/411. 1104 Ibid., 117/102-103. 266
actually an hour long. This example recalls Schutz’s observation (that I discussed in chapter four) that the outer time of a musical piece may differ significantly from a person’s lived experience of it in inner time. However, unlike Schutz, Merleau-Ponty would not situate this experience in an individual’s mental life. This is because, as we have seen, he contests both the mind/body dualism and the privileging of the mind over the body, which underpin Schutz’s account.
Another key similarity between Merleau-Ponty and Schutz’s accounts of temporality is their mutual acknowledgement of the fluid interconnections that exist between temporal dimensions. Since Merleau-Ponty claims that time involves the “mutual harmonizing and overlapping of past and future through the present”,1105 he would most likely be sympathetic to Schutz’s notion of the “vivid present”. As I discussed in chapter four,
Schutz describes the latter as a temporal dimension in which the past, present and future are all implicated in each other. For him, this idea of the “vivid present” is central to music because it helps to explain how the performers’ various interpretations of the composer’s score are able to intersect when they “make music together”.
Merleau-Ponty would also concur with Schutz’s repudiation of the conventional view that “the present” is but a fleeting, self-contained moment in time.1106 Like Schutz,
Merleau-Ponty argues that, “by definition the present is not shut up within itself, but transcends itself towards a future and a past”.1107 Due to the fact that time progresses, what was once envisaged to occur in the future will soon partake in our present.
Similarly, what once partook in our present will soon become part of our past. In this
1105 Ibid., 488/420. 1106 As I mentioned in chapter four, Schutz disputes the conventional notion that “the present” is a “mathematical point, a mere instant, an ideal limit between past and future” (Schutz, “Fragments”, 42). 1107 PhP, 488-89/420-21. 267
way, the present already contains within it both echoes of the past and premonitions of the future. Similarly, Merleau-Ponty disputes the notion that the “past” is but a fleeting moment in time, claiming that a past occurrence will continue to inform, and resonate in, the occurrences that transpire in our present and future.1108 In particular, the past plays the important role of establishing the backdrop against which present and future occurrences actually attain their definition and meaning. This is not to say, however, that Merleau-Ponty thinks that the past is fixed. Rather, he believes that it is always open to creative reinterpretation in the present. As he puts it, “[w]hen I call up a remote past, I reopen time, and carry myself back to a moment in which it still had before it a future horizon now closed, and a horizon of the immediate past which is today remote.”1109
The presence that the past retains in our life could also find its parallel in music. For instance, we could liken the relationship between the past, present and future with the relationship between the keynote and dissonances, respectively. Dissonances can only be recognised as “dissonances” when they are juxtaposed against the consonance of the original key signature from which they are differentiated. Just as the past is subject to creative reinterpretation in the present, our encounters with certain dissonant passages in musical works may also prompt us to reconsider the nature of consonance. This is especially so in works which depart from traditional forms of tonality (e.g. atonal works) where this consonance/dissonance distinction is blurred.
Wiskus draws our attention to a passage from Merleau-Ponty’s Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France in which he illustrates how the various temporal dimensions
1108 Ibid. 1109 Ibid., 483/416 (emphasis added). 268
are interrelated within the specific context of music. Wiskus herself draws on this passage to explore several interesting interconnections between the notions of
“temporality”, “rhythm”, and “depth” in his philosophy.1110 I will first provide a general discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s key claims in this passage before turning to her analysis.
In this passage, Merleau-Ponty explains his overall notion of time in terms of the temporal characteristics of a melody. He states:
The melody gives us a particular consciousness of time. We think naturally that
the past secretes the future ahead of it. But this notion of time is refuted by the
melody. At the moment when the melody begins, the last note is there, in its
own manner. In a melody, a reciprocal influence between the first and the last
note takes place, and we have to say that the first note is possible only because
of the last, and vice versa.1111
The “reciprocal influence” between the “first and the last note” of the melody that
Merleau-Ponty describes would seem to mirror the “reciprocal influence” that characterises the broader interconnections between temporal dimensions in his philosophy.1112 Just as the past, present and future are necessarily implicated in each other, the last note of the melody is already foreshadowed in the first.1113 However,
Merleau-Ponty clarifies here that the relationship between the two notes is not “causal”
1110 Please see page 164 of Wiskus’ article, “Beneath Platonism: Temporality and the musical idea according to Merleau-Ponty”, for her analysis of this passage. 1111 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Nature: Course Notes from the Collège de France, trans. Robert Vallier (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2003), 174. Hereafter cited as Nature. 1112 Ibid. 1113 Ibid. 269
in that the first note does not somehow establish in advance how/when the last note will occur.1114 I will shortly demonstrate how Wiskus helps to challenge this traditional causal understanding of the relationship between temporal dimensions through her fascinating notion of a “bodily-past”.1115
Wiskus refers to the above passage when illustrating her key claim that “rhythm”, in
Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, can be conceived of as a “temporal depth”. Her claim is significant to my analysis because it presents another way of figuring the creative dimension of musical expression, this time from a temporal perspective. Like the interpretation of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy provided in this chapter, Wiskus also suggests that the locus of creativity in music, for him, is situated in the gaps or expressive silences. This is what her analysis of his conception of “depth” brings to the fore.
Wiskus begins by describing Merleau-Ponty’s overall notion of “depth” as a
“relationship between oppositional (or ‘incompossible,’ as he writes) pairs”.1116
Consisting in a relationship between contrasting aspects, Wiskus claims that “depth” reveals itself as the “space between things” rather than an actual “thing to be seen”.1117
She suggests that, in Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetics, “depth discloses itself behind or
1114 Ibid. This passage comes from a chapter entitled “Animality: The Study of Animal Behavior” from “Second Course. The Concept of Nature, 1957-1958: Animality, the Human Body, and the Passage to Culture”. Merleau-Ponty uses the metaphor of a melody to explore the notion of Umwelt, that is, the “milieu tailored to the animal” (Ibid., 172). Drawing from Proust’s notion of melody, Merleau-Ponty claims that the relationship between the first and the last notes of a melody cannot be defined in terms of “cause” and “effect” or “means” and “end” (Ibid., 174). Similarly, a “simple relation of causality”, he suggests, also does not apply to the events that occur in the “construction of a living being” (Ibid., 174-75). To demonstrate this point, Merleau-Ponty argues that the “action of the milieu” does not somehow “cause” the “action of the animal” (Ibid., 175). Rather, the “action” of one influences that of the other, and vice versa (Ibid.). 1115 Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism”, 164. 1116 Ibid., 161. 1117 Ibid., emphasis added. 270
between the objects of the painting” just as the “depth between sonic events” or
“sounds” in music is captured in its “rhythm”.1118 Wiskus argues that rhythm embodies
“depth” in music because it reveals itself through the “relation between pulses” rather than in a “single, distinct ‘beat’”.1119
Importantly, she thus seems to suggest that, for Merleau-Ponty, rhythm is also a form of expressive silence. This, we can infer from her claim that “rhythm consists precisely in what is not heard” and, like his notion of the “musical idea”, therefore exists “behind the sounds or between them”.1120 As Wiskus elaborates, the rhythm of a piece (e.g. dotted, swung, slow, fast, etc.) can only be determined by analysing the “interval between articulated sounds” because it is only after the “second articulation” of sound has occurred that we can ascertain the type of rhythm that has taken place between it and the initial “articulation”.1121 For example, following the “second articulation”, we may discover that, in relation to the first, it came after, rather than “on the beat”. For
Wiskus, the fact that rhythm reveals itself only in the “interval between articulated sounds” explains why a conductor makes a “gesture (sometimes only a breath)” prior to the “first sounded note” as opposed to at this starting note itself.1122 In so doing,
Wiskus suggests that s/he creates an “interval” between the initial “gesture” and the starting note that will effectively establish the “rhythm or a pulse for the entirety of the musical movement or phrase”.1123
1118 Ibid., 163. Wiskus argues that this concept of “depth” is central to Merleau-Ponty’s examination of both painting and music in his 1960-1961 lectures, entitled L’ontologie cartésienne et l’ontologie d’aujourd’hui (Ibid., 161). 1119 Ibid., 163-64 (emphasis added). 1120 Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism”, 163-64 & Jessica Wiskus, The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music After Merleau-Ponty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 9. 1121 Wiskus, The Rhythm of Thought, 9 (emphasis in original). 1122 Ibid. 1123 Ibid. 271
Continuing her analysis of how rhythm expresses a “temporal depth” between “sonic- events”, Wiskus argues that these events (e.g. the first and last notes of a melody) are interrelated in such a way that displays a “reciprocity” and “intertwining” between the present and the past.1124 For her, even if a past “sonic-event” (e.g. the first note of the melody) is “no longer audible”, it remains important because, far from being a forgotten moment in time, it still greatly affects the “present sonic-event” (e.g. the last note of the melody).1125 This, Wiskus explains, is because, “through rhythm, the past is not merely passive; it actively clings to the present as the ‘thickness’ or depth of the present”.1126
She describes this “thickness” in terms of a ‘“bodily-past”’, that is, an “entire temporal field through which the present radiates its richness”.1127
When conceptualised in this way, the “past”, in Wiskus’ view, ceases to be a “fixed point of origin” and becomes a “sustaining and dynamic force” that maintains an ongoing relationship with the present.1128 The aspect of “richness” implies that the
“bodily-past”, for Wiskus, is itself a source of fecundity in that it carries within it the seeds of creativity.1129 She states, “[a]s an idea that participates in time, the musical idea retains the past not as a model but as a latency – as an open dimension, a possible productivity, a passivity flush with an activity – which, when taken up again, makes itself felt within the present.”1130 Moreover, the aspect of “thickness” means that the
“bodily-past” departs from the conventional idea of time. In contrast, this conventional idea would involve what Wiskus describes as a “flatness”, whereby “events [are]
1124 Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism”, 164 (emphasis in original). 1125 Ibid. 1126 Ibid. 1127 Ibid. 1128 Ibid. 1129 Wiskus, The Rhythm of Thought, 97. 1130 Ibid. 272
arranged along a linear series of cause and effect”.1131 Wiskus’ compelling analysis of rhythm highlights the fact that, although Merleau-Ponty rarely writes directly about music, his philosophy nevertheless provides significant insights into how multiple, interrelated dimensions of human existence (e.g. its expressive, corporeal, temporal and intersubjective dimensions) can be perceived through the lens of the musical experience.
One dimension of the musical experience that I have yet to examine in my comparative analysis is space. As I discussed in chapter four, Schutz claims that music is autonomous of our spatial experience. Having addressed criticisms of this claim from commentators like Lochhead, Pedone and Parker in the previous chapter, I will now propose ways in which Merleau-Ponty might also challenge Schutz in this respect.
Time and space, for Merleau-Ponty, are interrelated concepts that are equally as important to lived experience (including musical experience). In a footnote to PhP, he critiques Bergson’s negative view of the “spatialization of time” by challenging his assumption that space should be eliminated from a notion of “authentic time”.1132
Bergson, Merleau-Ponty suggests, makes this misguided assumption because he mistakenly reduces space to the “objective space” that is occupied by the “objective body”.1133
Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Bergson could also apply to Schutz’s philosophy insofar as
Schutz also views space from an “objective” viewpoint. As I mentioned in chapter four,
Schutz adheres to what Pedone would call an “empirical” understanding of space, that is, the conventional notion of space as linear, divisible, measurable and uniform. If space is simply equated with “objective space”, it is perhaps understandable that space
1131 Wiskus, “Beneath Platonism”, 164. 1132 Footnote no. 3 on PhP, 482/415. 1133 Ibid. 273
and time would appear to be two very different aspects of existence to both Schutz and
Bergson. For both theorists, time (i.e. Schutz’s notion of inner time which is derived from Bergson’s notion of durée) is continuous and fluid, whereas space (if understood in an “objective” sense) is discontinuous and fragmented.
In contrast, Merleau-Ponty would regard space as being essential to the musical experience because it is what underlies and supports the creative activity of the
“phenomenal body”. Moreover, it is the “phenomenal body” that “actively assumes” both time and space in human experience (and hence in musical experience) so as to fulfil its aims through movement.1134 The ways in which the “phenomenal body”
“actively assumes” both time and space in the context of the musical experience can be illustrated by revisiting two examples that have featured in this chapter. First, Merleau-
Ponty’s own example of the organist’s “acquisition of habit” could demonstrate how a musician actively assumes space. Instead of merely occupying space, his/her body
“inhabits” it in order to fulfil its purpose of “getting used” to the instrument. Second, an example of how a performer actively assumes time is the way in which s/he “inhabits” the corporeal breathing apparatus (i.e. the “bodily space”) of his/her coperformer in order to determine the tempo of a musical piece.
Unlike Merleau-Ponty, Schutz does not give adequate consideration to the fact that the body in music is not simply an object that occupies space and time (as evinced by the above examples), but rather plays the more significant role of shaping the lived experience of music itself. As I discussed in chapter four, the important role that the body and space play in the musical experience remain largely implicit and under-
1134 Ibid., 117/102-103. 274
examined in Schutz’s account. This concludes my comparative analysis of Merleau-
Ponty and Schutz’s views of the intersubjective and temporal dimensions of music, which also proposed numerous ways in which the former’s account might improve the latter’s. In what follows, I will summarise the issues that this chapter has examined and also signal those that I will address in the overall conclusion to this thesis.
Conclusion
Building on Schutz’s phenomenological approach to music, this chapter on Merleau-
Ponty’s existential phenomenology also examined music in terms of lived experience rather than as an abstract object of knowledge. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the “intentional arc”, I analysed the musical experience from a holistic perspective.
This permitted me to consolidate several key themes that this thesis has discussed, namely, the integral role of music in the corporeal, affective, intersubjective, temporal and spatial dimensions of human existence. The great emphasis that Merleau-Ponty places on the interrelations between these dimensions allowed for an analysis of the musical experience that avoided the strict mind/body and time/space dualisms that I had previously identified as the key limitations of Schutz’s account.
Since Merleau-Ponty does not really write about music in an explicit or sustained manner, this chapter employed his various analogies between music and language as the starting point from which to reconstruct an account of how he might have conceptualised music. In so doing, it brought to light some insights about music that could be drawn out from his philosophy. In particular, this chapter demonstrated how he identifies the “phenomenological body” as the locus of the creative, expressive and 275
transformative potential of both music and language. Hence, while conventional philosophical frameworks usually distinguish sharply between these two ways of engaging with, and/or conceiving of, the world, Merleau-Ponty takes the unusual approach of uniting them under his theory of expression.
However, while Merleau-Ponty uses music as a concrete explanatory tool for this theory, he also follows Adorno and Schutz in acknowledging music’s non- representational and a-conceptual characteristics. Insofar as it is these two features that contribute significantly towards music’s inherent ineffability for Adorno, Merleau-
Ponty’s views of music thus provide an interesting and somewhat ambiguous response to the crucial question of music’s “enigma” that this thesis has addressed. In the following conclusion to this thesis, I will provide an overall response to the central issue of how philosophy can examine music’s value and meaning in ways that respect its fundamentally “enigmatic” nature. Moreover, I will also draw further on Merleau-
Ponty’s theory of expression to examine how music could provide important insights into how we might begin to rethink the nature of philosophising itself. 276
CONCLUSION
In response to the distinct lack of attention to music in the philosophical literature, this thesis has sought to develop a renewed philosophical approach to music that would be more receptive to, and more adequately express, its so-called “enigma”. Thus, the question that has framed the analysis is this: If music is inherently ineffable, can philosophy actually say anything meaningful about it at all? As I discussed in the overall introduction to this thesis, Bowie responds to this question by suggesting that music can act as an important catalyst for furthering the development of philosophy.
Music does so by making philosophy aware of its own limitations and providing it with the means of addressing them. Taking this into account, I will, in this conclusion, consider how a renewed philosophical approach to music could provide the stimulus for conceiving of a different approach to philosophising in general. In order to contextualise this analysis, I will first summarise the overall arguments that I have developed thus far.
My main claim in this thesis has been that a renewed philosophical approach to music should focus on its integral place in human existence. In contrast with the recent analytic approaches to music, I have investigated music not as an abstract object of knowledge but rather as a dynamic lived experience that significantly transforms and thereby enriches our existence. I argue that it is in music’s mysterious, yet powerful, transformative effect that its essential meaning and value are situated. My analysis has also illustrated ways in which investigating music in terms of lived experience challenges the traditional ontological distinctions between subject and object, mind and body, self and other, and time and space. 277
In general, the five different philosophical perspectives of the relationship between music and existence that I have examined illuminate the ways in which music is a life- affirming force that allows us to traverse the whole keyboard of human emotions. It is also a force that endows our life with its tempo and rhythms, while continually making us aware of how these are intricately interwoven with those of others. More specifically, I have adapted Adorno’s aesthetics to reveal how music evolves alongside the wider socio-historical circumstances with which it is intertwined. Schopenhauer has been recruited to bring to light how the transformations that take place in the musical elements themselves (especially melody and harmony) can help us to understand the modulations between desire, suffering, boredom and sadness that transpire in our own life. From Nietzsche, I have elaborated an account of the affective dimensions of the experience of music: for the early Nietzsche music (re)connects us with the underlying
“flux” of existence, thereby immersing us into a complex terrain characterised by both creation and destruction, and, accordingly, by both pain and pleasure.
My analysis of Schutz’s phenomenology has provided an account of how music is also underscored by the “flux” of time, or rather by an intricate labyrinth of interconnected
“fluxes” of time, which intersect when people meet in the dynamic process of “making music together”. This opens up the crucial question of the social aspect of the musical experience, a question often neglected in other philosophical traditions. And, for
Schutz, it is when “growing older together” in the musical experience that both self and other are transformed. Last but not least, while increasing emphasis on the intertwining of self and other, Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy has provided the means of demonstrating that the locus of creativity in music resides in the “expressive silences” that are central 278
to its meaning. This creativity comes to the fore in the corporeal and affective dimension of the actual performance of music itself. Hence, whether we are singing, playing the piano or strumming the guitar, music transforms our bodies by allowing them to carve affective significances out of a vast array of rhythms, melodies, harmonies, textures and tone colours.
The renewed approach to music that I have just described emphasises its creative, expressive and transformative aspects. This approach, I believe, could provide an opening for how we might begin to rethink the nature of philosophising itself. This would require that we view music and philosophy as analogous in some respects. By this, I mean that we could emphasise the creative, transformative and expressive aspects of philosophy that are also central to music. Expanding on this suggestion requires that
I first outline several similarities between Adorno and Merleau-Ponty’s views of the role that philosophy might play in existence. Although Adorno considers music’s
“enigmatic character” as its most striking and distinguishing aspect, he also attributes a sense of ineffability to the world or “reality” in general (of which music is an important part). As I discussed in chapter one, he claims that “reality”, being itself “incomplete, contradictory and fragmentary”, presents philosophy with a puzzle to “unriddle” rather than a problem with a clear-cut solution.1135 This notion that the world itself (which would include music) is “enigmatic” also features in Merleau-Ponty’s renewed understanding of “phenomenology”. He describes the essentially “enigmatic” character of the “world and reason” in similar terms to Adorno’s, claiming that “their mystery defines them: there can be no question of dispelling it by some ‘solution’, it is on the hither side of all solutions”.1136 Moreover, just as Adorno conceives of reality as
1135 Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, 126. 1136 PhP, xxiii/xxi. 279
“incomplete”, Merleau-Ponty claims that the world with which phenomenology deals is also “unfinished”.1137
The point I want to emphasise here is that neither Merleau-Ponty nor Adorno considers the continued presence of this “unsolvable” puzzle or “enigma” as an indication that philosophy has somehow fallen short in its attempts to understand reality.1138 And, as this thesis has demonstrated, this is analogous to the way in which the continued presence of music’s “enigma” is also not an indication that philosophy has failed to
“understand” (for want of a better word) music. Rather, it signals the need for what
Adorno calls a “changed philosophy”1139 (a concept that I introduced in chapter one). In both theorists’ views, philosophy, like music, is creative and transformative because it involves a process of continuous re-creation. This is evident in Adorno’s claim that philosophy “must always begin anew” by virtue of resisting “solidification in a body of enumerable theorems”.1140 Similarly, Merleau-Ponty claims that, by avoiding premature conclusions, the philosopher himself/herself remains a “perpetual beginner” such that philosophy also becomes an “ever-renewed experiment in making its own beginning”.1141 Since phenomenology, for him, is itself a philosophy that partakes in this “unfinished world”, it, too, is of an “unfinished nature”.1142 For Wiskus, given that philosophy partakes in the “call to re-creation”, the process of philosophising itself would involve the “reengagement of texts, returning to ideas, rethinking through the movement of expression itself – an expression that could never be finished”.1143 She thus draws our attention to the fact that philosophy, in Merleau-Ponty’s view, is itself a
1137 Ibid. 1138 Ibid., xxiii-xxiv/xxi. 1139 ND, 13. 1140 ND, 13 & Adorno, “The Actuality of Philosophy”, 126. 1141 PhP, xv-xvi/xiv-xv. 1142 Ibid., xxiii/xxi. 1143 Wiskus, The Rhythm of Thought, 123. 280
form of creative expression. And, for Merleau-Ponty, this also applies to music and other aspects of human existence, as emphasised in Rosalyn Diprose’s observation that
“expression, whether philosophical, historical or scientific, is fundamentally creative”.1144
In more precise terms, then, what might a “changed philosophy” that partakes in this
“call to re-creation” involve? Taking our cue from Adorno, we could suggest that it would need to constantly re-evaluate its ways of investigating and interpreting the world with which it is also intertwined. And, for Merleau-Ponty, this world in which music is embedded is already a source of creativity and fecundity in and of itself. This process of re-evaluation would evolve alongside the changes in the various social, historical and cultural phenomena that significantly influence human experience. Moreover, in order to be more receptive to the “enigmatic character” of the world (of which music is an important part), this philosophy would need to be more receptive to the many contradictions, ambiguities and ambivalences that lie at the heart of that experience.
For example, this might imply a reassessment of the traditional ontological distinctions
(i.e. the subject/object, mind/body, self/other and time/space dualisms) that, as we have seen in this thesis, are challenged in the more specific context of the experience of music. By taking the above into account, perhaps, as Merleau-Ponty suggests, we would then begin to immerse ourselves in what he calls “relearning to look at the world”.1145 Moreover, as Nietzsche proposes, perhaps we would also begin to perceive the “new and indescribable beauty” of something that we have gradually come to love.1146 In other words, we may develop a greater appreciation of the ineffable or
1144 Rosalyn Diprose, “A guide to Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts”, in Merleau-Ponty: Key Concepts, ed. Rosalyn Diprose & Jack Reynolds (Durham, GBR: Acumen, 2008), 8. 1145 PhP, xxiii/xxi. 1146 GS 334: 262. 281
inexpressible “beauty” that finds vivid expression in the deep intertwining of music and life itself. As Vikram Seth eloquently puts it:
Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to
grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to
hear such music – not too much, or the soul could not sustain it – from time to
time.1147
1147 Seth, An Equal Music, 484. 282
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