Performative passivity: Lessons on phenomenology and the extended musical mind with the Danish String Quartet

Abstract

Based on interviews with the Danish String Quartet, this chapter points to limitations in the philosophical literature that construes musical absorption primarily as involving various forms of reflective and pre-reflective self-awareness. It then shows the paradigmatic experience of musical absorption as being expressed in statements such as ‘It wasn’t I who played the music’ or ‘The music played/came by itself’. To understand this type of experience, the chapter presents a new framework of ‘performative passivity’, relying on an analysis of the Husserlian notion of passivity or passive synthesis. Finally, it shows how the body, the performer’s emotions, and the nature of the performed music are centrally involved in performative passivity.