Abstract
What is initially striking about Alfred Schutz’s phenomenological account of the musical experience, which encompasses both the performance and reception of music, is his apparent dismissal of the corporeal and spatial aspects of that experience. The paper argues that this is largely a product of his wider understanding of temporality wherein the mind and time are privileged over the body and space, respectively. While acknowledging that Schutz’s explicit or stated view is that the body and space are relatively insignificant to his account, the paper reveals how they actually feature significantly in the latter, but in ways that remain largely implicit. First, the analysis demonstrates that the mental and temporal aspects of Schutz’s phenomenology of the musical experience cannot be considered independently of their interrelations with the equally important, albeit under-examined, corporeal, and spatial aspects. Concepts from Nietzsche’s early aesthetics are recruited to fulfil this task. Second, the analysis challenges Schutz’s dismissal of space in his theory of music perception. Lastly, it reveals the crucial, yet implicit, role of the body and space in his key examination of the intersubjective phenomenon he terms “making music together”. By presenting the above arguments, the paper aims to draw out the implicit dimensions of Schutz’s phenomenology of music and thereby enrich his influential account.
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Notes
Stascheit (2010: 312) further notes that Schutz’s everyday life was deeply intertwined with music, via comprehensive and frequent practice of both piano and chamber music, and exposure to “a remarkable variety of music performed by world famous artists in Vienna’s concert halls and state opera”.
For example, in the area of music education, commentators like Judy Lochhead (whose work I will discuss in detail later) suggest that providing students with access to the corporeal and spatial aspects of music performance improves their grasp of “musical meaning” (1995: 38f.). Similarly, and drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological views of embodiment, Alerby and Ferm (2005: 181 and 183) claim that “music learning” occurs when “experiences and knowledge are incorporated in the body”. Also influenced by Merleau-Ponty’s “phenomenology of embodiment,” Wilson’s (2013) analysis of Helmut Lachenmann’s piece, Serynade, demonstrates how the dynamic connections between the “body and technology” can help to explain the transformative relationship between the “instrument” and the “instrumentalist” that is present during a musical performance.
For example, while the commentator, Pedone (1995: 208f.) takes issue with what she perceives as Schutz’s neglect of space in his theory of music perception, her criticisms, while astute, could be more fully developed. I critique Schutz’s theory of music perception later in the paper, with reference to Pedone’s views. Moreover, although Zaner (2002) critiques Schutz’s mind/body dualism, his critique is not centred on Schutz’s views of music but is mainly conducted to evaluate Schutz’s overall theory of intersubjectivity in light of that of Edmund Husserl, Eugen Fink, and Max Scheler.
According to Fred Kersten (1976: 6), “Fragments on the Phenomenology of Music” is an unpublished manuscript initially written in 1944. While I acknowledge that “Fragments” remained unpublished, this work is nevertheless central to my analysis because the key insights into Schutz’s views of musical spatiality found there are absent from his published essays, “Mozart and the Philosophers” and “Making Music Together: A Study in Social Relationship” (Skarda 1989: 59).
Bergson’s notion of “attention to life,” as Schutz (1962a: 212) describes it, is the “basic regulative principle of our conscious life [that] defines the realm of our world which is relevant to us”. According to this principle, “action represent[s] our highest interest in meeting reality and its requirements, dream being complete lack of interest” (1962a: 212). These differences in the amount of “interest” or “attention” directed towards our life in turn correspond with “different degrees of tension of our consciousness,” with the “plane of action showing the highest, that of dream the lowest degree of attention” (1962a: 212).
While, for Schutz, “civic or standard time” relates primarily to the outer world of everyday life, it is still located at the “intersection” of inner and outer time (1962a: 222), which he calls the “vivid present”. Specifically, “civic or standard time” relates to the point where outer time overlaps with a “peculiar aspect of inner time […] in which the wide-awake man experiences his working acts as events within his stream of consciousness” (1962a: 222).
See Bergson (1965: 50f.) for how he differentiates between durée and “spatialized” or “measurable time” in terms of two different facets of “motion”. To explain durée, Bergson suggests that we draw a line with our finger while closing our eyes, and claims that the “unfolding” motion that is thereby experienced within our stream of consciousness is “indivisible” and “uninterrupted” (1965: 50f.). Pursuing this example further to explain the contrasting notion of “spatialized time,” Bergson then asks us to open our eyes so as to examine the line we have just drawn (1965: 50). According to him, we now perceive a “track left in space,” by which the motion that has already “unfolded” can be “divid[ed] and measur[ed]” (1965: 50f.).
Bergson suggests that we can grasp a sense of “pure duration” by perceiving a melody solely in terms of its “fluid continuity in time” (1965: 49). This, he claims, is achieved by casting aside any notion of space, that is, by momentarily eliminating any thoughts of the spatial layout of the “notes” on an “imaginary keyboard” and/or in a musical score from our minds (1965: 49).
While not the focus of this paper, it is worth noting that another key way that Schutz emphasises the role of the mind is by designating “thought” as the locus of musical meaning in his conception of a musical work. He classifies a musical work in Husserlian terms as an “ideal object,” defined as “any of the so-called social and cultural objects which are meaningful” and whose meaning is also disclosed in “thought” (1962b: 110, 1976: 28). Schutz differentiates “ideal objects” from what he calls “real objects” or the “visible or audible objects” that populate the outer world (1976: 28). Regarding music, Schutz argues that real objects (e.g., the musical score or performance) do not actually bring the ideal object (i.e., the “musical thought”) into existence but rather represent the mere mechanisms by which this thought is communicated to other people (1964: 164f., 1976: 28).
The Apollonian and Dionysian also express two opposing cultural principles in Nietzsche’s philosophy. Central to the Apollonian principle of individuation is the stringent demarcation of the “boundaries of the individual,” by advocating “measure” and repudiating all forms of “excess” (Nietzsche 1967: 36 and 46). This principle also manifests itself more broadly in the demarcation of the borders between the various socio-political and cultural institutions within the state, as well as between the various states themselves (1967: 124). By contrast, the Dionysian principle, Nietzsche argues, not only eliminates the “gulfs” between people, but also undermines the apparently strict distinctions between the socio-political institutions that carve up the “state and society” (1967: 59).
Concerning music’s transformative effect, Schutz appears to diverge from the widespread view that music is a form of escapism or “otherworldly” realm where our troubles simply disappear, leaving us in a calmer state. Instead, he emphasises that aspect of Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian that explains music’s ability to stimulate the affects, that is, its “power […] to immediately excite feelings, to agitate the will” (Schutz 1982: 193f.). This suggests that we should not interpret the reduction of tension that Schutz claims music effects as producing a stupefying or comforting effect on us. Similarly, for the early Nietzsche, music is also not an antidote to the pessimistic aspects of human existence (e.g., suffering). For him, music (re)connects us with the underlying flux of existence, thereby immersing us into a complex terrain characterised by both creation and destruction, by both pain and pleasure.
This link between the “Apollonic man” and a conceptual notion of rhythm can be further explained through Schutz’s analogy between how rhythm, from the Apollonian perspective, only appears after the “melody has faded away” and how “movement becomes space only after it has ceased” (1982: 194, emphasis added). Movement can only be conceived of in spatial terms after it has been “performed and accomplished” because an object only leaves a “spatial trace” after it has moved (Schutz 1976: 30). The measurement of this “spatial trace” involves using a “conceptual scheme” because it requires us to “look back” and segment the completed movement into various parts (e.g., kilometres) by way of conscious reflection (1976: 30f.). Similarly, from the perspective of the “Apollonic man,” Schutz claims that it is only after he has played or listened to a melody that he can “look back” on this experience and conceptualise it in such terms as, “[r]hythmic pattern ‘x’ lasted for the ‘space’ or duration of y seconds”.
For Schutz, another difference between hearing and sight/touch is that, unlike visual and tactile “impressions,” “acoustic impressions” cannot be “interrupted voluntarily” (1976: 36). For instance, while we can choose to avoid seeing something by “closing [our] eyes,” Schutz claims that we cannot simply shut our ears off from “acoustic impressions” (1976: 36). Explaining this concept of “interruption” further, Schutz draws on Husserl’s concepts of “sameness” and “likeness” which partake in Husserl’s theory of the “passive synthesis of recognition or identification” (Schutz 1976: 50f.). Regarding “visible or tangible objects,” Schutz claims that “sameness” can be confirmed following an “interruption” when the “same object” appears to us after we “close [our] eyes and reopen them” (1976: 52). However, whereas we experience “sameness” in relation to “visible or tangible objects” as “numerical unity” (i.e., the persistence of the “same object”), “sameness” in the “sphere of purely auditory experiences” is only experienced as “a recurrence of a like object” (1976: 53f., my emphasis). What persists in music is a “sound”/“tone” that is similar to, but numerically different from, the previous one (1976: 53f.). By pointing out the peculiar meaning of “sameness”/“likeness” in music (compared with the case of visible and tangible objects), Schutz also challenges Husserl’s theory of “passive synthesis”. For further discussion of this point, see Skarda (1989: 72–76) and Kersten (1976: 11–15).
Lochhead is not implying here that “any music which is electronically reproduced will be received negatively” by the listener because the “visual and spatial component of performance” is unavailable to him/her (1995: 38). Rather, her point is that, even without the use of visual aids, students with “prior visual and spatial experience with a particular style” of music would be able to understand a piece of that style better than those without this previous experience (1995: 38f.).
Ultimately, Parker (2008) claims that maintaining a strict distinction between time and space is not a constructive approach to analysing musical works because the boundaries between these two elements are blurred in music. More important than this (unhelpful) time/space distinction, she suggests, is the listener’s “experience” of a work (Parker 2008: 64). Regarding Bergson’s views of musical temporality in particular, she argues that:
Bergson’s use of music as equating “real” time is not as straightforward an analogy as he hopes. Music can create an experience of both the temporal and the spatial. Depending on the type of music, the listener enters into a different complex relationship with the aural object, which manipulates the seeming nature of time and the listener’s perspective of it. (Parker 2008: 69)
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Emeritus Professor Rosalyn Diprose, Dr Simon Lumsden and Mindy Xu for their comments, advice and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper.
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Siu, R.C. Rethinking the Body and Space in Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenology of Music. Hum Stud 39, 533–546 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9399-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-016-9399-z