Analysis of the temporal structures underlying the listeners' experience of tension

When listening to music, listeners experience a sense of tension which is in part determined by the music itself and in part by the way they perceive it. In particular, listeners recognize that the music has an objective structure characterized by a vectorial movement directed toward a specifi c goal. Subjectively, the sense of tension that they experience is developed through the temporal movement of human consciousness. This determines the kind of musical experience that they have at the perceptual level. But how can we describe the listeners’ subjective experience of tension and its relation to the “vectoriality” of music? Which are the temporal structures that characterize such experience and determine the meaning and understanding of music? I discuss the problem from a phenomenological point of view and starting with a theoretical distinction aimed at describing the sense of tension experienced by the listener. In particular I analyse the temporal structure of human consciousness and the levels that characterize its development toward the future: protention, expectation and anticipation. The goal is to analyse how their movement and the encounter with the form of music determine the subject’s musical experience: its meaning and the listener’s comprehension of music.The distinction between expectation and anticipation is also aimed at better describing the way the vectorialityof post-tonal music is experienced by untrained listeners. In this case, do the listeners still perceive a sense of tension? Are they able to create expectations and anticipations? I argue that they are able to experience tension because they create expectations ‘in the moment’ which may lead to emotional responses. Despite of this the vectorial aspect of this music is not experienced in its fullness because of a lack of anticipation. To develop this idea I take into account the specifi c case of timbre based expectations.Through this analysis I suggest that we can better defi ne the listeners’ musical experience and describe how they ‘resonate’ with the environment to create emotional, meaningful experiences while listening to every kind of music.