WHERE ARE WE WHEN WE LISTEN to MUSIC? Siegfried Zepf

Where Are We When We Listen to Music?

Siegfried Zepf

Adopting the perspective of Langer’s understanding of music as a presentational symbol, the author questions what is symbolized in music. He argues that music symbolizes a state of “oneness” that Sandler describes as a confusion of self- and object-representations. Akin to substitutive formation, in whose guise we experience and recognize mystified what we have excluded from our consciousness, we consciously experience and recognize in music in a mystified manner this phenomenon that never entered into consciousness. Like the relation between the substitute and the substituted unconscious, which have a tertium comparationis (Freud), this phenomenon of our inner life is symbolized in music by common elements. As a result of its structural identity with bodily registered sensory experiences of our former “audio-phonic skin” (Anzieu) wrapping us in our intrauterine situation, music can also revive this envelope by its sound, tonal configurations, and rhythm, thus allowing us to remember this situation somatically and to recognize our former state of “oneness” in its guise. The feelings that we experience when listening to music that we like relate to this state. They are nameless because there is no subject who could “mentalize” them.

Keywords: music, presentational symbolism, oneness, womb, somatic memories

En adoptant la perspective de Langer, qui appréhende la musique comme un symbole présentationnel, l’auteur remet en question ce qui est symbolisé dans la musique. Il soutient que la musique symbolise un état d’« unité », décrit par Sandler comme un état où se confondent représentation de soi et

326 Where Are We When We Listen to Music? représentations objectales. Comme dans le cas des formations substitutives, par l’entremise desquelles nous expérimentons et reconnaissons, stupéfaits, ce que nous avons exclu de notre conscience, par la musique nous expé- rimentons consciemment et reconnaissons, non sans stupéfaction là aussi, un phénomène qui n’est jamais devenu conscient. De la même façon que le substitut et la représentation substitutive qui en prend le relais sont reliés par un « tertium comparationis » (Freud), ce phénomène de notre vie inté- rieure est symbolisé dans la musique grâce à des éléments communs. De par son identité structurelle incluant des expériences sensorielles inscrites dans le corps par notre ancienne « peau audiophonique » (Anzieu), qui nous a servi d’enveloppe dans notre monde intra-utérin, la musique peut égale- ment ranimer cette enveloppe par les sons émis, les configurations tonales et le rythme, de sorte que nous parvenons à nous rappeler cette situation sur le plan somatique et à reconnaître notre état d’« unité » de jadis. Les sentiments que nous ressentons quand nous écoutons de la musique qui nous plaît sont reliés à cet état. Ils sont indéfinissables parce que le sujet qui aurait pu les « mentaliser » n’avait pas encore émergé.

Mots clés : musique, symbolisme présentationnel, unité, utérus, souvenirs somatiques

We carry within us all the music we have never heard in our life, which lies at the bottom of the abyss of memory. All that is musical in us is memory. When we did not have a name, we must have heard everything. —Emile Cioran (1986/1995, p. 38)

To avoid any accusations of plagiarism, I will admit right away that the title of this paper has been borrowed from Peter Sloterdijk (1993, p. 294). To shed some light on the reasons why I could not have formulated it more aptly myself, I begin with a preliminary note. I have attended concerts performed by Mark Knopfler and Leonard Cohen. When they played certain pieces, I experienced an emotional state that I could not name, and then I could not do without this music. Every now and then I became lost in their music and let the world temporarily come to an end. Somehow, the music was able to comfort me and fulfil an indefinable longing for something that was both quite near and far away. My longing for this music remained, but after some time I could not listen to Leonard Cohen anymore. I wanted to listen to his music, yet I could not do so. Why did I reject this music although I longed for it? What

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kinds of feelings did this music release? I had the impression that, while enveloped in this music, figures reappeared that once had been lost, yet I had no idea who these revenants (Freud, 1900, p. 480) might have been and where these feelings came from. Had I fallen so deeply into darkness that I could not recognize anything anymore? In this situation I remembered an essay by Peter Sloterdijk and started thinking about the very situation signified by the heading that I borrowed.

Nameless Feelings It was not mourning, not despair, not pain, and not a mixture of these or other emotions that accompanied that music. It was impossible to name my emotional state. This was quite confusing because, as a psychoanalyst, I should at least have some insight into my feelings and the reasons why I felt this way. How could I identify my feelings? Since I had frequently dealt with language in my work, I was acquainted with Ludwig Feuerbach’s (1841/2004, p. 5) opinion: “Music is the language of feeling; melody is audible feeling—feeling communicating itself.” I had read something similar by Jean Jacques Rousseau (1753/1832, p. 373; see also Schweitzer, 1905/1955): “Les sons, dans la mélodie, n’agissent pas seulement sur nous comme sons, mais comme signes de nos affections, de nos sentiments; c’est ainsi qu’ils excitent en nous les mouvements qu’ils expriment.”1 According to this perspective, I should have been able to distinguish the nature of my feelings immediately from the music I heard. However, there are contradictory answers to the questions whether feelings were specific to music and how music triggers feelings. One of the Bach sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel, for instance, thought that music can move us only if the musician presented his or her own feelings in the music. He (Bach, 1753/1949, p. 152) stated that the musician “cannot move others unless he too is moved. He must of necessity feel all the affects he hopes to arouse in his audience, for the revealing of his own humour [Empfindung] will stimulate a like humour [Mit-Empfindung] in the listener.” Henri Prunière (1933) repeated this idea 180 years later, referring to composers. “We may rest assured,” he states, “that he [the composer] will not express these sentiments with authority unless he had experienced them at some given moment of his existence” (p. 20). Deryck Cooke (1959; see also Sessions, 1950) also assumed that the intentionality of the composer is experienced

1. “The sounds in the melody have an effect on us not only as sound, but as signs of our emotions, our sentience; therefore they are able to provoke the movement in us that they express” (author’s translation). 328 Where Are We When We Listen to Music?

by the listener when entering into the feelings the composer expresses in writing the particular piece. In contrast, Ferruccio Busoni (1907/1973, p. 21) was convinced that, when composing, a musician should not be touched by any feelings if his or her music is to have an aesthetic quality. Hanslick (1854/1986) was convinced that music has no content other than itself, that music consists of nothing but “tonally moving forms” (p. 29) and that “the themes of a piece of music are … its essential content” (p. 82). None of these ideas were helpful in elucidating my feelings. Truly, if I confined myself to the views of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Prunière, and Cooke to understand the nature of the feelings I experienced when listening to Knopfler and Cohen, I would have only to find out what types of feelings both musicians had when composing or playing their songs. However, this attempt would not have been consistent with my emotional state. It remained the same, not only when listening to pieces played by Knopfler and Cohen but also when listening to other music, such as Georg Händel’s “Lasica la spina” sung by Cecilia Bartoli. Furthermore, this access would have been opposed by a statement by Victor Hugo (1864, p. 88): “Ce qu’on ne peut dire et ce qu’on ne peut taire, la musique l’exprime.”2 On the other hand, if I subscribed to the opinion of Busoni or Hanslick, it would remain a secret as to why Mark Knopfler’s and Leonard Cohen’s music could give rise to these nameless feelings. Regardless of which position I chose to take, to understand the nature of my feelings, it seemed necessary to investigate them within a conceptual framework that does justice to both music and the listener. Langer’s understanding of music provided such a framework. As Basch (1976) and Harris (1987) pointed out, Langer’s concept of presentational symbolism corresponds to Freud’s primary process, and her conceptual definition of music as a presentational symbol is in agreement with psychoanalytical understanding of symbols as codified by Jones (1916/1961), thus allowing me to examine my feelings from a psychoanalytical perspective without an unacceptable transgression of conceptual limits. I will start with an outline of Langer’s concept of presentational symbols. Although psychoanalysts have occasionally mentioned her concept in connection with music (e.g., Feder, 1982; Haesler, 1997/2006; Hagman, 2005; McGlashan, 1987; Nass, 1971; Rechardt, 1987; Salomonsson, 1989), it has not been related to psychoanalytical concepts in more systematically. In the following section I will comment on Langer’s conceptualization and

2. “Music expresses what cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent“ (author’s translation).

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focus on the question of what music symbolizes. I will restrict my considerations to listening only and will disregard musical composition and the criteria employed to measure the aesthetic quality of music.

Langer’s Concept of Presentational Symbolism Langer (1942/1979, p. 81) developed her ideas out of those of Cassirer (1923/1953) and drew a distinction within Cassirer’s understanding of symbols. She differentiated between “discursive” and “presentational” symbolism and characterized music as a presentational symbol. Like the discursive symbolism of language, music is understood as a genuine means of acquiring knowledge, although music lacks much of what language has at its disposal. Music has no vocabulary, the tones of a scale are not similar to words, and harmony cannot be understood as grammar nor thematic development as syntax. Except for the reproduction of natural or cultural sounds like cuckoos or church bells, “tones lack the very thing that distinguishes a word from a mere vocable: fixed connotations or ‘dictionary meaning’” (Langer, 1942/1979, pp. 228–229). Music is not characterized by separable elements with fixed and conceptualized connotations and syntactic rules for the derivation of complex connotations that leave their constituting elements unchanged (p. 232), as is the case in language. As Ernst Kurth (1931, p. 10), theorist of music and esteemed by Adorno (1933/1984) pointed out, in Langer’s view, too, a tone acquires its significance only by virtue of its function in its musical context. Since there are no small- est units in music whose meanings are independent of the music in which they appear, the meanings are not—as in the case of language—“successively understood, and gathered into a whole by the process called discourse.” In music, all parts “are involved in a simultaneous, integral presentation” (Langer, 1942/1979, 96). The meaning of a presentational symbol is generated in such a way that all parts are “telescoped into one total expression” (p. 190). It communicates itself as a whole, a view that was previously held by Stumpf (1885, p. 343) and afterwards by Jankélévitch (1961/2003, p. 52), both of whom were well-known musicologists in their day. Music symbolizes and communicates the “morphology of feeling” (Langer 1942/1979, p. 238). In Langer’s view, it is not the feelings of an individual but rather their “presentational abstraction” (1967/1980, p. 157), their “logical formulation” (1942/1979, p. 97) that is contained in music. She labelled this formulation “logic” because music has a form “which that object could also take” (p. 225; see also 1953, p. 27), and she related this term to an isomorphic arrangement of the elements in the symbol and what

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is symbolized—a structurally similar “relation of the parts to each other” (p. 70). In this context, Langer referred to “certain aspects of the so-called ‘inner life’—physical or mental—which have formal properties similar to those of music—patterns of motion and rest, of tension and release, of agreement and disagreement, preparation, fulfilment, excitation, sudden change, etc.” (1942/1979, p. 228). On account of these qualities, music can evoke an “emotive experience” (Langer, 1942/1979, p. 232) in the listener—a concrete sample of the morphological structure of feelings contained in music. These feelings are situated beyond language. As the structure of discursive symbolism is not inherent in music, which is also “without conventional significance” (p. 241; 1953, p. 31), music is particularly suitable for disclosing something that is nameless.3

Comments Langer argued that, as a result of its inherent patterns, music can cause feelings in the listener that are concrete samples of these patterns. In 1953, she reiterated that “the tonal structures we call ‘music’ bear a close logical similarity to the form of human feeling” (p. 27). She emphasized, “Music is the tonal analogue of emotive life.” However, in her view, these patterns are not only characteristics of feelings, but they are also understood as “the pattern of life itself” (p. 31). The patterns of physical processes as well as those of psychic processes are understood as manifestations of the general patterns of a “vital activity” (p. 126; see also p. 65). There is an epistemological problem here. It is possible to abstract these patterns out of their different forms and to attribute them to a further abstraction like “vital activity.” However, in doing so, these abstractions do not acquire a real existence. Thus, in turning this process of abstraction the other way around, Langer misjudged the process in which concrete activities are recognized as cases of the abstracted universal, taking it for the process of their real origination. If experiencing feelings depends on a structural identity of patterns contained in the “physical or mental … so-called ‘inner life’” (Langer, 1953, p. 228) and in music, the question arises as to why music evokes feelings and not other aspects of our inner life. Even if we were to assume, like Brakel (2007), Ehrenzweig (1953), Kohut (1957), Kris (1952), Noy (1993), and Sand

3. Eissler (1967, p. 35) shared this idea: The effect of “music is to penetrate to layers of such archaic intimacy that any attempt to translate it into a rational syntax is bound to fail.”

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and Lewin (1992), that our psychic life is dominated by the primary process when listening to music, the status of these patterns does not change into a condition sufficient for generating these feelings. On the contrary, because “everything belongs with everything that shares an attribute of it” (Rapaport, 1951, p. 708; Freud, 1940, p. 168) when operating on this level, such differenc- es between aspects of our physical and mental life are suspended, the questions of why music is able to evoke feelings in us and how we can recognize them by their dynamic patterns become even more mysterious. Furthermore, Langer was convinced that music, with the exception of imitated natural and cultural sounds, is without any personal and conventional “literal meaning” (1942/1979, p. 232; 1953, p. 31). I do not believe that the radical form of her thesis can be upheld. Nobody will deny the possibility that a person who associates music with personal experiences can recall these experiences when listening to this music again. In the cases of national anthems or the signature tunes of television series like Two and a Half Men, it is not only personal, private connotations but also conventional meanings that have to be assumed. L. B. Meyer (1956/1961, pp. 258–259), in particular, called attention to culturally produced asso- ciations between aspects of musical organization and non-musical experiences. In the Western world, he argued, death, for example, is usually depicted by slow tempi and low ranges, organ music is associated with the church and, thereby, with piety and religious beliefs and attitudes, and certain intervals may be used to indicate special concepts or states of mind. For instance, the diminished fifth was closely associated with expressions of grief and anguish during the baroque period.

What Does Music Symbolize? Although music can refer to personal and conventional connotations, and despite the fact that Langer did not indicate why music is able to evoke feelings, her idea “that music articulates forms which language cannot set forth” (Langer 1942/1979, p. 233; 1953, p. 39) should not be simply discarded. At first sight, it seems as if one would have to take language categories absolutely and insinuate that every other semantic makes the same dis- tinctions as does discursive thinking. This idea seems to be supported by the fact that, with regard to its personal and conventional significance, music acquires the character of individually and culturally produced “rep- resentational signs” (Klaus, 1962/1973, pp. 87) that, like words, are arbitrary and refer to concepts. Akin to the relation between words and concepts, the relation between music and conceptualized issues is formal and not based on content. In this case, the “real stimulus,” Meyer (1956/1961, p. 258)

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stated, “is not the progressive unfolding of the musical structure but the subjective content of the listener’s mind.” Since music has conceptualized connotations, it seems as if music can only duplicate the capabilities of language. However, if one were to justify music’s resemblance to language by arguing that language and music both refer to conceptualized issues and can be distinguished only by the character of their signs, one would overlook two issues. As Schneck and Berger (2006, p. 30) remarked, whereas the understanding of speech requires learning the semantic references for the sound utterances, music is immediately understood; there is no need to know anything about music to be affected by its presence. Furthermore, one would also fail to notice that the status of music as a presentational symbol is not questioned by these individually and culturally ascribed meanings. The qualities of music as a sign and as a symbol are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, the symbolic form of music can even become the prerequisite for its character as a sign, for instance, if we combine the scene in which a piece of music caused feelings in us with the music to which we listened. Music can have both of these qualities at the same time. Therefore, by arguing that, like words, music refers to conceptualized issues, Adorno’s objection to the equation of language and music is not invalidated. “Music is not identical with language,” Adorno (1956/1992, pp. 1, 6) objected, and anyone who takes the resemblance “literally will be seriously misled … It is by distancing itself from language that its resemblance to language finds its fulfilment.” Even if music can acquire the quality of signs, Langer’s understanding of music as a presentational symbol is not seriously questioned, although it remains unclear what qualities enable music to give rise to such feelings and what music symbolizes. If music is both a symbolization and the origin of feelings, there must be a structural similarity between them more specific than Langer assumes. Not being able to detect anything more specific to both, I began to ask myself whether music might symbolize not feelings as such but rather the condition under which feelings occur. One might say that music reflects the morphology of a mental state while at the same time creating this state. As a consequence, there should be a structural similarity between music and that mental state. I hoped to find references to this mental condition in descriptions of experiences when listening to music. I found a hint indicating what I should search for in Sloterdijk’s (1993) structural discrimination of ocular and auditory perception. Whereas seeing implies a distance between the individual and what is seen, when hearing,

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such distance is missing. “The ear,” Sloterdijk (p. 296; author’s translation) stated, “does not know any vis-à-vis, it does not develop a frontal ‘view’ on distant things because it has … ‘things’ only to the extent it is in the midst of the acoustic event—one could also say: insofar as it floats … in the auditory space.” When listening to music, there is no such distance. In this case, the “mode of being-within-sound” (ibid.) is valid, and the dissolving of borders poses the question of whether something similar could be found in our inner life when listening to music that we like. To my surprise, I found quite a few reports of the dissolving of ego bound- aries under the influence of quite different musical pieces. J. W. Goethe, for instance, after listening to a piece of music by Johann Sebastian Bach, wrote on 27 June 1827 to Zelter (1827/1834, p. 338; translated by David & Mendel, 1966, p. 369), “It is as if the eternal harmony were conversing within itself, as it may have done in the bosom of God just before the Creation of the world. So likewise did it move in my inmost soul, and it seemed as if I neither pos- sessed nor needed ears nor any other sense—least of all eyes.” Hans Küng (1991, p. 39; author’s translation) described his condition when experiencing Mozart’s music: “I feel that I am totally turned inward, with eyes and ears, body and mind; The ego is silent and all that is outside, all the oppo- site, all the splitting of subject and object is overcome for the moment.” A dissolution of borders between ego and non-ego was also expressed by Coriat (1945), Dreifuss (2001), Kohut and Levarie (1950), Racker (1951), Rechardt (1987), Sterba (1946), and Weinstock (1993). Richard Sterba (p. 42), for instance, described the experience when playing music as a state in which “the dissolution or the non-existence of the barriers between external and internal” dominated, a kind of “Ego-universe identity called the ‘oceanic feeling.’” By this term, Sterba referred to the term that Freud (1930, pp. 64–65) used to describe “a feeling of an indissoluble bond, of being one with the external world as a whole.” Freud, according to Jones (1957, p. 364), traced it back to the earliest stage of infancy, “to a time when no distinction is made between the self and the outer world.” When reading these and other statements, I remembered that I once thought of the coal mine in Merlebach when listening to Leonard Cohen’s music. I had left my colleagues, who had descended 1450 metres into the mine with me, walked around alone for awhile, and sat down. I sat in the dimness, saw the tubes on the walls, and heard from a distance the sounds of hammer blows, machines, and voices. For me, it was as if I were dissolving into these noises, and I felt infinitely safe in this coal mine, although— or perhaps because—I was alone.

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As is the case with other people, music moved me into a condition that could be described only metaphorically. Taking a closer view of these metaphorical descriptions, one recognizes that “feeling of oneness … almost impossible to describe” that Gustav Dreifuss (2001, p. 690) named when listening to a quartet by Franz Schubert, that state of “oneness” that Sandler (1987, p. 47) had described as a confusion of subject and object, of self- and object-representations, indicating it as a stage in development and as the outcome of regression (Zepf, 2009). Seen in this perspective, the function and effectiveness of church music become also understandable. Coltrera (1962) pointed out that church music—hymns in particular—establishes a unity of the believers as well as their unity with Christ. It is well known that Freud (1921, p. 107) understood the unity with Christ as the condition for the unity of the believers. Together, they identify themselves with Christ, introjecting “their substitute father” (p. 94), and therewith they have consequently identified themselves with one another (p. 116). According to Sandler (1960, p. 150), these secondary identifications give rise to the illusion of the initial primary identification. In Freud’s view, this kind of identification is not to be seen as a process but rather as that state Sandler (1987, p. 26) describes as “oneness” (for more details, see Zepf, 2009). In religious communities, church music supports identifications that lead into such a state of oneness. Moreover, it appeared to me that the confusion with other persons is not only supported by church music. In concerts, by mutually reducing ourselves to listeners who devote ourselves to the same music, we also cre- ate the illusion of unity with other persons. Comparing the qualities of such a mental state with those that Langer emphasized as essential features of music, the structural identity between both can hardly be overlooked. Similar to my experience of having dis- solved into a unity while alone, in music its meaning is “telescoped into one single expression” (Langer, 1942/1979, p. 191). As carriers of meaning, single tones dissolve in the whole. Seeing that music owns that “logical form” that the “object could also take” (p. 225), music can truly be con- ceived as a logical formulation of this facet of our “‘inner life’” (p. 228). At this point, several issues become recognizable. The logical wording of this phenomenon in music resembles Freud’s conception of the relation between a symbol and the symbolized repressed. Although this phenomenon is not an object of “repression proper,” it is unconscious in the sense of the “primally repressed,” which never had any “psychical (ideational) representative” (Freud, 1915, p. 148). Like the relation between symbol and the symbolized unconscious, which have a tertium

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comparationis (a common element of content) (1916–1917, p. 152), this phenomenon of our inner life is symbolized in music by common elements. In a certain sense, music, too, has to be understood as a genuine means of acquiring knowledge. By virtue of their internal content, concepts enable us to recognize the diversity in what is invariant (details on this subject in Zepf, 2011). In its general structure as a presentational symbol, music allows us to recognize the one-identical-fact: our former factual oneness with the world. For both processes of acquiring knowledge, Kröber’s (1964/1970, p. 503; author’s translation) statement is valid: “The abstract identity is indispensable for characterising the one-identical-fact about which one is talking as this one-identical-fact. The function of the abstract identity relation is to formulate the universal fact in such a way that it can be recognised as that-one-identical-fact in all its different modes of appearance.” The information we acquire through music is similar to what we acquire by substitutive formations. As I indicated above, substitutive formations have a tertium comparationis with the object they substitute. Akin to substitutive formation, in whose guise we experience and recognize mystified what we have excluded from our consciousness via repression, we consciously experience and recognize in music in a mystified manner what never entered into consciousness. Assuming that music moves us into such a state of oneness, it becomes understandable why the feelings we experience exist beyond language. As there is no subject, these feelings cannot be “mentalized,” be expressed in linguistic terms. When we move up to the secondary process, this pre- linguistic state can be described only metaphorically. It is the “oceanic feeling” that belongs to this state and feelings that indicate the loss of this state, the longing for it or the fear of it; after all, this state entails a loss of personal identity. A variety of other feelings can be experienced when one is under the influence of music. If music reminds one of past people or events, feelings can be revived that were associated with them. These feelings can reappear under their original names. They can also be excluded from their names via defensive operations. As “affect-equivalents,” they are reduced to bodily sensations and are no longer recognizable as feelings. They can also be displaced. In this case, they reappear in consciousness signified by names that did not originally belong to them. As “there are alternative forms for every content” (Langer, 1942/1979, p. 226), we can assume—as a provisional appraisal—that music generally causes this state and that we can react to it differently. Depending on our life histories, the same piece of music can invoke different feelings.

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Music as a Presentational Symbol of Bodily Experiences Even though it seemed reasonable that my feelings were related to this state of oneness, I was still insecure about whether the assumption that music symbolizes the morphology of a state in which we were united with the world would suffice to qualify music as an adequate condition of such a state. My reservations came from Langer’s understanding of paintings, which she also understands as presentational symbols. They meet the same criteria she applied to music. Here, too, the whole defines the meaning of the particular. We may pick a certain curve in a certain painting, she (1942/1979, p. 95) said, which represents a specific item; yet, in another place in the same painting or in another painting, the same curve would have an entirely different meaning. Akin to tonal entities in music, a single line in a painting has no fixed meaning apart from its context. Although there is the same relation of part and whole in paintings and in music, looking at a painting will hardly put us into the same state that we can experience when listening to music. That is, something must be contained in music that is not found in paintings and that opens up the possibility of such an experience. This link is possibly to be seen in the fact that music not only appeals to our former oneness but also pictures that bodily situation that we had experienced before that state. Music, Schneck and Berger (2006, p. 26) emphasize, “speaks directly to the body through intuitive channels that are accessed at entirely different levels of consciousness from those associated with cognition.” It is well known that music has a marked effect on pulse frequency, respiration, blood pressure, galvanic reflex, and the excitability of spinal motor neurons (e.g., Berger, 2002; Mursell, 1937, p. 27; Thaut, Kenyon, Schauer, & McIntosh, 1999). However, it seems that music does not take action as a mere stimulus, as Schneck & Berger (ibid.) pre- sume, but rather affects our physiology for semantic reasons. There is a good reason to argue that music also captures the abstracted invariant features that are common to the sensory experience of certain bodily processes. For instance, Di Benedetto (1991, p. 418) underlined that rhythm represents the heartbeat; that harmony, which acts as an element of cohe- sion, is basically analogous to the experience of a connective tissue; and that melody, which consists of rising and falling sounds unravelling along a sinuous line, is similar to breathing. In line with Langer’s considerations, it appears that it is not bodily features in general but rather the bodily sensations that we experienced in our initial situation that are revived and recognized when we listen to music. Langer described the musical representation of motion, time, and space in

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a way that leads us to suspect a logical formulation of the form in which we might have experienced something like motion, time, and space in the womb. “All music,” she argued, “creates an order of virtual time, in which its sonorous forms move in relation to each other—always and only in relation to each other, for nothing else exists there” (1953, p. 110), and she underlined that “in their motion nothing is removed” (p. 109). Structurally, this corresponds to the motion the fetus might have experienced in the womb. In this situation, neither the womb nor the fetus can remove itself from the other. They can only move in relation to each other, and “nothing else exists there” (p. 110). With regard to the representation of time in music, Langer (1953, p. 109) remarked that “tonal entities” move in a realm of “pure duration” that is not an actual phenomenon like a period. It is something radically different from the time in which our public and practical life proceeds. Musical duration “might be termed ‘lived’ or ‘experienced’ time—the passage of life that we feel as expectations become ‘now,’ and ‘now’ turns into unal- terable facts. Such passage is measurable only in terms of sensibilities, ten- sions” (ibid.). Similar to the way in which we are “out of [normal] time” (Langer, 1953, p. 110) when listening to music, in the womb we do not yet experience ourselves as being in that normal time. Taking into account the facts that the neonate, probably already in utero, has a remarkable capacity to develop an expectation of when events will occur (e.g., Beebe & Lachmann, 1994; DeCasper & Carstens, 1980; DeCasper & Fifer, 1980), and that the continuity of sounds is frequently interrupted by the absence of certain sounds and restored again by their reappearance, we also find the time concept that Langer suggested regarding music in the intrauterine situation. The same holds true for the musical concept of space. “‘Tonal space.’” Langer stated, is a “genuine semblance of distance and scope,” yet “unrelated to the space of actual experience.” It derives from harmony: “[H]armonic structure gives our hearing an orientation in the tonal system, from which we perceive musical elements as holding places in an ideal range … the space of music is really an attribute of time … It simply arises from the way the virtual time unfolds” (Langer, 1953, p. 117; see also 1967/1980, pp. 231–237). When listening to music, we expect that its elements are situated within the developing harmonic structure. We recognize whether these elements belong to this ideal range when we hear them. In this sense, Didier-Weill (1976, pp. 43–44) describes the appearance of Chopin’s “Note Bleue” in a jazz improvisation as the fulfilment of the promise of the preceding notes.

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As musical space unfolds in a manner dependent on our expectations, its unfolding is an attribute of the time that Langer conceptualizes in a specific way. The relationship between harmony and musical elements corresponds to sounds in the womb. Sounds can sometimes be absent, thus giving rise to expectations similar to those that we have when waiting for certain musical elements due to the harmonic structure of the music. Like musical elements, these sounds hold places in an ideal range, and the fetus recognizes whether they fulfil its expectation only when they appear to restore their disturbed continuity. Similar to music, the space that the fetus experiences is an attribute of the time existing in expectations. Motion, time, and space as they appear in music can be understood as logical formulations of experiences in the womb. Similarly, the two characteristics Langer ascribed to motion, time, and space in music in common—all of which differ fundamentally from their popular understanding and their recognition is reduced to hearing—are also present within their intrauterine experience. Their experience is basically different from our popular understanding and is restricted to hearing. Music may make motion, time, and space audible in a manner similar to the one in which we experienced them in the womb. Since musical parts also relate to each other in a way similar to their organization in the object in this case, music can also be understood as a logical formulation of the sensory experience of these bodily processes. That is to say, the statement Schneck and Berger (2006, p. 33) make, that “music speaks in ‘physiological tongues’” is not to be taken metaphorically but substantially. The structural identity of rhythm, harmony, and melody with registered sensory perception seems to be the main reason why music can touch our physically registered sensory experiences during our first months of life. Tomatis (1994) talks of “the sound world womb,” and it seems as if prenatally we are not only wrapped in an “envelope of sound” (Anzieu, 1979, p. 30) but are also aware of these sounds. It is well known that the fetus is able to hear four to five months before birth (Drife, 1985; Lichtenberg, 1983; Liley, 1972; Parncutt, 1993; Piontelli, 1987). An example of this “audio-phonic skin” (Anzieu, 1979, p. 23) surrounding us is provided by Verny and Kelly (1981/2010, p. 8). They quoted an interview given by Boris Brott, conductor of the Hamilton (Ontario) Philharmonic Symphony, in which he talked about his ability to conduct certain pieces unseen: “I’d be conducting a score for the first time and, suddenly, the cello line would jump out at me; I’d know the flow of the piece even before I turned the page of the score. One day, I mentioned this

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to my mother, who is a professional cellist. I thought she’d be intrigued because it was the cello line that was so distinct in my mind. She was; but when she heard what the pieces were, the mystery quickly solved itself. All the scores I knew sight unseen were ones she had played while she was pregnant with me.” In Glenn Gould’s life, one also finds a reference to hearing music in the womb. His mother, who was a music teacher, organist, and pianist, wanted her son to become a pianist. During her pregnancy, she had the radio permanently playing classical music, and she kept playing her instruments when teaching her pupils (Ostwald, 1998, p. 39). It is possibly Glenn Gould’s intrauterine experience that appears in a recollection of his: “In the privacy, the solitude … the womb-like security of the studio, it was possible to make music in a more direct, more personal manner than any concert hall would permit” (Payzant, 1978, p. 36). One would hardly regard such anecdotes and similar statements— Verny and Kelly (1981/2010, p. 26) also reported that Arthur Rubinstein and Yehudi Menuhin made the same claim—as proof that music revives the “audio-phonic skin” in which we were wrapped in the womb. Some findings substantiate the assumption that babies remember sounds they heard in the womb and recognize them well into later life. Simon (1974, p. 115), for example, recorded the heartbeats of mothers in such a way that a sound pattern evolved that, according to his view, the fetus had heard while in the womb. About eight hours after birth, he let the infants listen to these sound sequences. The infants showed tense attention, seemed to be touched, and, if they had been restless, became quiet and started to fall asleep. Salk (1973; see also Jaedicke, 1967) also recorded mothers’ heartbeats and played them to crying infants. All of them calmed immediately, and most of them even fell asleep. If he stopped playing the tape, the infants immediately became restless again. In both investigations, this effect occurred only when the infants heard their mothers’ heartbeat. The same situation also holds true for the maternal voice. For example, Tomatis (1994, pp. 23–24) isolated the maternal voice as heard in the womb from all organ noises and deeper frequencies. He reported on a raging, unbearable, destructive 11-year-old boy for whom he played the voice of his mother filtered in that way. When the boy heard this voice, he stopped raging immediately, turned off the light, crawled to his mother, sat on her lap, put her arms around him, and curled up like a fetus. The findings of Beebe, Lachmann, and Jaffe (1997), Bosma, Truby, and Lind (1965), DeCasper and Fifer (1980), DeCasper, Lecanuet, Busnel, Granier-Deferre, and Maugeais (1994), Fernald (2004, p. 57), Fifer and Moon (1994, 1995), Karmiloff and

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Karmiloff-Smith (2001, p. 43), Kolata (1984), Mehler, Bertoncini, Barriere, and Jasik-Gerschenfeld (1978), Nazzi and Mehler(1998), Querleu et al., (1984), and Truby, Bosma, and Lind (1965) point in the same direction. These authors found that, after birth, newborns immediately react to their mothers’ voices differently than to those of other females. According to DeCasper and Spence (1986), the neonates differentiate their mother’s voice by the specific shape of the non-lexical elements of their mothers’ language, such as rhythm, intonation, change of frequencies, and other phonetic components that are recognized by a prenatal “priming.” Moreover, certain investigations suggest that in addition to register- ing its mother’s heartbeat and voice, the fetus is also capable of register- ing the music heard regularly by its mother during the last months of her pregnancy. For instance, Feijoo (1981) played the bassoon theme from Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf at fixed times to pregnant women. After birth, the infants stopped crying and calmed immediately when they heard this music. A study conducted by Lamont (2001) showed even more precisely that babies can remember and recognize music that they heard before they were born. Lamont’s study involved 11 pregnant mothers who played a single piece of music to their babies regularly during the last three months before birth. The music was chosen by the mothers and includ- ed classical, reggae, and pop music. Over 12 months after birth these 11 babies showed a significant preference for these pieces of music, compared with pieces they had not previously heard. None of these babies had been exposed to the prenatal music in the period from birth to their first birth- day. The babies’ preference was demonstrated by the amount of time they spent looking towards the source of the music. A control group of 11 babies whose mothers did not play music during the last three months of their pregnancy were tested with the same pieces of music. These babies showed no preference for a particular piece. Of course, this information does not exist in the form of psychic representations. Casoni (2002; see also Cortina, 2001; Lewis, 2003), for instance, noted that an infant’s capacity to build representations depends on the maturation of the orbito-frontal lobes of the prefrontal cortex and the myelination of the catecholaminergic tracts that connect the limbic system with the prefrontal cortex. The myelination of these tracts does not begin until the sixth month of postnatal life and continues through the first year. The brain’s cortex, in particular the frontal lobe, is not yet sufficiently mye- linated and thus is not functioning at a level that would allow the infant to represent information either cognitively or structured in the form of affects. However, in view of a variety of similar findings that confirm that

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there are fetal registrations (see, e.g., Chamberlain, 1997; Flanagan, 1962; Gonzales-Gonzalez, Suarez, Perez-Piñero, Armas, & Bartha, 2006), nothing refutes the assumption that experiences in the womb are registered as stimuli that are bodily registered in the form of engrams, both as one-to- one reactions (via the brainstem) and as more complex programs (via the limbic system). Because these bodily experiences exist merely as stimuli, they can be encoded only as “somatic memories” (Droga, 1997) in the “implicit-procedural memory” (Howell, 2002). Experiences made in the womb cannot be remembered or recognized cognitively; they exist as stimuli encoded in body-engrams. Under these circumstances, “remembering” means having renewed experience of the same reaction pattern in different situations. The actualization of the closed circuit of stimuli and reaction is the remembered experience and at the same time its recognition. Thus, if we assume that noises and sounds like the maternal heartbeat and the tonal qualities of the maternal voice are stimuli configurations that are registered physically, one comes to understand why music can touch us so deeply. Unlike other presentational symbols, as the result of its structural identity with the bodily registered sensory experiences of our former “envelope of sound,” music can revive this envelope by its sound, tonal configurations, and rhythm, thus allowing us to remember our intrauterine situation and to recognize our former state of “oneness” in its guise. In the context of Langer’s concept of presentational symbols, it can be argued that, by virtue of a “temporal regression” (Freud, 1926, p. 127) that is mediated by bodily remembrances of our intrauterine experience, music can take us back into the mental state of “oneness” in which this situation returns on a mental level. It is a regression in the service of the ego in which, as Bellak (1958, p. 368) specified, a topological regression of the cognitive processes takes place, “which involves simultaneously a temporal regression to primary process levels; the synthetic function does not regress at all but remains, or rises in fact to optimal levels.” In principle, this applies to every piece of music. In view of Langer’s (1942/1979, p. 227) remark that all art is but a “symbolic transformation” of experiences “from one domain of sense to another,” this notion is by no means astonishing. Understood as an artistic activity, in composing music this mental state and its accompanying sensory experiences are presented in music via their symbolic transformation in a mystifying manner. As Langer (1953, p. 126) wrote, “The essence of all composition—tonal or aton- al, vocal or instrumental, even purely percussion … —is the … illusion of an invisible whole.”

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However, this does not mean that every piece of music puts every individual, under all circumstances, into such an illusionary state when hearing it. For instance, if, in a neighbouring apartment, the C-major prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier by J. S. Bach resounds, it can mean to the listener nothing more than that a neighbour is home again, is practising, or has started to play a CD. As Karbusicky (1986, p. 2) emphasized, one necessary condition for this state is the attitude of the listener. One must be willing to listen and to engage oneself in this music. A further condition is that the music we listen to is a piece of music that we like. All of us have musical preferences that essentially arise out of our socialization. Similar to the way in which we take our preference for a language and mode of expression from the language culture in which we are socialized, we also build up our preferences for a certain type of music from the musical culture surrounding us, into which our intrauterine world of sounds develops. Following Brott, Gould, Feijoo, and Lamont, it is of course also possible that we like music because we perceived it in the womb or because its structure corresponds to the rhythmic organization of sounds in our former “audio-phonic skin.” This notion is not only implicit in Emile Cioran’s (1986/1995, p. 38) quotation cited at the beginning of this article but also in Paul Hindemith’s (1952) conception of how we evalu- ate music. Any evaluation of music can always traced back to compari- sons of preceding musical experiences. Thus, musical sound formations must have been previously registered. It is in this context that Hindemith argued that every human being must have something like a “primordial musical experience of very primitive nature” that “comes into existence in the undeveloped being’s mind” (p. 22).

A Possible Answer If I take Maiello’s (1995) note into consideration, my previous ambivalence towards listening to Cohen’s music becomes understandable. Maiello pointed out that the mother does not speak continually during her pregnancy. She argued that, by the absence of the maternal voice, the intrauterine continuity of sounds would be interrupted and restored again with the renewed appearance of the mother’s voice. Regarding the sound of the maternal voice heard in the womb as a mental root of my interest in music—my mother told me that she sang in a men and women’s choir during her pregnancy—it seems indeed as if I remembered this physically registered experience in the guise of listening to music. The choir in which my mother participated primarily sang rather ponderous and melancholic Swabian folk songs. Thus, my preference for

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a certain type of music was understandable. That music was the type of folk rock represented, in particular, by Leonard Cohen, Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton, Judy Collins, and Eva Cassidy. It appeared to me as if my former audio-phonic skin made itself recognizable in this type of music. Whenever I heard this music, I was often unable to decide whether I would like to listen to it. This music was able “to flood the listener” (Bloch, 1959/1995, p. 1062), to remove me from control and to navigate me to a place where, perhaps, sleep might go. That is to say, I did not get lost in the music as I thought at the beginning of my paper; the truth was that the music enabled me to get lost within myself. It was true, music was initially a “phosphorescence from para- dise,” as Sloterdijk (1993, p. 301; author’s translation) assumed, and worked against parting. Therefore, music was comforting me. However, this phosphorescence darkened as time passed and reality re-entered into my life. My revived closeness with what I had lost turned out to be an illusion and changed into a memory. Music became a “revelation that never comes” (Borges, 1952/1974, p. 635), a “call to what is missing” (Bloch, 1959/1995, p. 1059; italics in the original) that I could not bear to lose. From this moment on, I became addicted to a song by Leonard Cohen, which I then could not listen to anymore. A verse of this song gave my emotional state the following wording:

I see you standing on the other side. I don’t know how the river got this wide. I loved you, baby, way back when. And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed, but I feel so close to everything that we lost. We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again.

The only comfort that remained was that I could not lose again what I had lost already. However, this was no relief at all; instead, it signified my loss as a definite one. I think that this was the reason I denied myself this music; I was not willing to let my longing end in hopelessness. In closing his essay, Sloterdijk (1993, p. 307; author’s translation) answered his question about where we are when we listen to music: “The address remains indistinct—it is only for certain that when listening to music one cannot be wholly in the world.” At the end of my considerations, it is—perhaps not for all, but at least for myself—possible to locate this place not just negatively. I believe that, when listening to music we like, we can recognize ourselves at a place that becomes visible in the unique

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paraphrase of Anne Louise Staël-Holsteins (1807/1987, p. 100), known as “Madame de Staël”: “Rien ne retrace le passé comme la musique; elle fait plus que le retracer, il apparaît, quand elle l’évoque, semblable aux ombres de ceux qui nous sont chers, revêtu d’un voile mystérieux et mélancolique.”

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Siegfried Zepf Narzissenstraße 5 D-66119 Saarbrücken, Germany [email protected]

Résumé traduit par Anouk Lanouette Turgeon [email protected]

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