Empathy and the ecology of musical consciousness

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.