{"title":"Music, phenomenology, and the ‘natural attitude’: Analysing Sibelius, thinking with Husserl, reflecting on Dennett","authors":"D. Clarke","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the intersection of music and phenomenology as potentially fertile ground for the study of consciousness. Taking the philosophy of Edmund Husserl as a touchstone, and the Violin Concerto, Op. 47 of Jean Sibelius as a case study, the chapter considers how phenomenological concepts such as epoché, noesis, eidos, and the transcendental subject all find resonances within a formal analysis of this musical work. The chapter also juxtaposes Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and his critique of the ‘natural attitude’ against Daniel Dennett’s physicalist account of consciousness and Wilfrid Sellars’ concept of the ‘scientific image’. In negotiating a pathway between these positions, the chapter considers whether music—and its determination of an autonomous aesthetic sphere—may offer a productive alternative perspective to the often competing claims of philosophy and science in our understanding of consciousness.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"21 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116880732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"(Un)consciousness? Music in the Daoist context of nonbeing","authors":"Lanlan Kuang","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0018","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the interpretation of music as a philosophical concept within the context of Chinese aesthetics. A particular focus is the Daoist connection of music with psychological concepts such as consciousness, the experience of time, and the emergence of memory in space and time. The human body, regarded as both physical and spiritual, is an integral element of Daoism, which offers a route to understanding consciousness as coterminous with being and nonbeing, and to linking the latter to music. In the Daoist tradition nonbeing, in musical time, brings forth dynamic and temporal connections between the conscious and the unconscious through memory. The chapter uses the programmatic title and literary preface of Seagulls and Forgetting Schemes, a Song dynasty qin piece, as an exemplar of the Daoist aesthetic of (un)consciousness, approached as both an ideal comprising a world or state of enlightened detachment and an aesthetic activity for cultivating such a world or state.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"115 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122496601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What kind of conscious activity is ‘listening to music’? A contribution from Theodor Adorno by way of psychoanalysis","authors":"Shierry Weber Nicholsen","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0013","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter elaborates Theodor Adorno’s notion of genuine music listening and the role of consciousness within it by analogy with the psychoanalytic conceptualization of listening in the analytic dialogue as described in Freud’s model of the free-association process. Crucial in both models of listening is the simultaneous restraining of conventional expectations and the reception of what is new in what is being heard. For both, listening is collaborative work (between patient and analyst, or between listener and the musical composition), engaging the interaction of consciousness and the unconscious by confronting resistances and bringing new meaning into conscious awareness. Implicit in Adorno’s conception of music listening, as part of his critical theory of society, is a socio-historical dimension: the collaboration between genuinely advanced music like that of the Second Viennese School and the individual engaged in genuine listening works against false consciousness to further an authentic subjecthood..","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"56 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133897607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of musical structure on enjoyment and absorptive listening states in trance music","authors":"Kat R. Agres, Louis Bigo, Dorien Herremans","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0015","url":null,"abstract":"The act of listening to music to reach altered states of consciousness is common across many different cultures around the world, ranging from tribal settings in Central Java, Indonesia, to EDM (electronic dance music) dance clubs in the Western world. Despite the widespread listenership to trance music, we lack a comprehensive, scientific account of how features of the musical surface and structure map onto the psychophysiological experience of music. This chapter provides an overview of existing research that connects the phenomenology of trancing to psychological and neurophysiological findings. It highlights two recent empirical studies that investigate how listeners’ enjoyment and self-reported altered states of consciousness are influenced by harmonic repetition and complexity in uplifting trance (UT) pieces. This leads to a discussion of the connection between the structural properties of trance music and their impact on listeners’ enjoyment and on altered states of consciousness.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122201781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Practical time consciousness in musical performance","authors":"Mark Doffman","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0010","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines the idea of time consciousness in performance as constitutive of musical practice, and as itself being a form of practice. It introduces practical time consciousness, directed towards two forms of temporal engagement—timekeeping and timeliness, which correspond to the Greek understanding of chronos and kairos—that together underpin the collective coherence and the singular expressive qualities in music. With reference to practice theory, the chapter also explores the pre-reflective awareness of time in music and musicians’ focused attention to time, and how these might change in the moment of performance and in the development of players over time. Drawing on interviews, excerpts from recordings, and a semi-controlled study, this account examines these awarenesses as practices in themselves, occurring at distinct timescales and within different socio-cultural milieux. The chapter concludes with the idea that a practical time consciousness suggests a timeworld, an overarching horizon within which musical time is experienced and practised.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"109 ","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120970326","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Empathy and the ecology of musical consciousness","authors":"E. Clarke","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Consciousness, both generally and in music, has been regarded as an individual capacity or attribute, despite increasing recognition of the extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive character of the human mind, and the intersubjectivity of human experience. This chapter proposes empathy as a fruitful way to engage with the collective quality of musical consciousness. It touches upon broader and narrower conceptions of empathy, and considers the ways in which aesthetic objects, including music, as well as living subjects, can afford empathic engagement. A discussion of neuroscientific, psychological, and cultural understandings of empathy leads to a consideration of empirical evidence for musically mediated empathy, and a more speculative attempt to understand people’s ‘strong experiences with music’ in terms of empathic musical consciousness—with a particular focus on the voice. Recordings of performances by Janis Joplin and Chet Baker illustrate what it is about their voices that may afford empathic engagement and a palpable sense of intersubjective musical consciousness.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"17 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122155822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Dual consciousness and unconsciousness: The structure and spirituality of polymetric tabla compositions","authors":"V. Virani","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0017","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the question of the extent to which composers can manipulate the conscious and unconscious experience of performers and listeners. It addresses a subset of solo tabla compositions by Suresh Talwalkar called mūrchana racanā, meaning ‘compositions that make one bewildered, insensible, or unconscious’. These compositions are so named due to Talwalkar’s belief that their musical structure, based on a complex polymetre, can facilitate altered states of consciousness (ASC). The chapter analyses these rhythmic structures and their possible effects on consciousness, distinguishing between the experiences of listeners and performers. It also discusses how narratives and experiences of ‘mūrchana consciousness’ draw upon pre-existing cultural and philosophical beliefs underlying the North Indian classical music performance context. It concludes that musical structure, performance setting, and metaphysical beliefs all play essential roles in shaping unique experiences of musically altered consciousness.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"53 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125249021","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Strange loops of attention, awareness, action, and affect in musical improvisation","authors":"David Borgo","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter champions the notion of ‘strange’, paradoxical, level-crossing feedback loops as a means to address the shortcomings of information-processing approaches to cognition, especially as applied to musical improvisation. It highlights the inherent challenges of studying improvisation and consciousness, and suggests ways that embodied and enactive theories of cognition, and emerging ideas in predictive processing and social psychology, may offer productive ways to understand mind and consciousness, and the dynamics of collective musical improvisation. Improvising music together, the chapter argues, involves joint action, embodied coordination, collective attention, and shared intention in ways that challenge conventional understandings of cognition and consciousness.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"84 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134181626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The interplay between conscious and subconscious processes during expert musical improvisation","authors":"Martin Norgaard","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"Musical improvisation is a skill that involves the generation of new material in real time within musical and physical constraints. Qualitative accounts from expert jazz musicians describe two processes that appear to occur simultaneously during improvisation. One process involves consciously focusing on higher-level musical elements, interaction with other ensemble members, and responding to surprising musical events; another subconscious process generates actual note choices. Descriptions by developing improvisers indicate that the subconscious process component is advanced through practice. These accounts align with influential cognitive models—notably the dual-process framework—that can help to describe various aspects of improvisation. The accounts are also supported by traditional and new research in motor learning and by brain imaging studies with improvisers. Specifically, fMRI and EEG research using solo improvisation tasks in which the construction of larger architectural structures was not required, shows deactivation in control areas and less connectivity. These results are consistent with experimental research in which improvisers, forced to focus on an unrelated task, appear to rely on the automated process of inserting learned patterns. On the other hand, if improvisers are focused on interaction with others, improvised exchanges cause engagement of control areas as the higher-level conscious process is engaged.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"40 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125080095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performative passivity: Lessons on phenomenology and the extended musical mind with the Danish String Quartet","authors":"Simon Høffding","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198804352.003.0008","url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":179407,"journal":{"name":"Music and Consciousness 2","volume":"105 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-04-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121214760","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}