Forms as the scheme of construction (from the Greek schēma, meaning appearance, shape, plan) and as the organisation of musical material, or put another way, the organisation of musical movement, are two sides of the same phenomenon, since there is no such thing as immobile musical material. The perception of form as a particular complete scheme thus intersects with the principle of musical form as a process, a becoming.

When dealing with the forms of musical works as constructions which are to become objects of interpretation, we enter a problematic situation, which raises the question: is what one can see—the sign-form of the work—also that which, when it is acoustically realised, will constitute the interpretive action? “[An aesthetic object] is divided into a foreground (Vordergrund) that is given in reality, and a background (Hintergrund) that is unreal and also not realized, but is only an apparent background. This separation, this two-layered structure of the aesthetic object, can be found in all the arts down to the finest detail.”Footnote 1

The form of a work is more than just its external structure. It is the sensory shape of the whole, which speaks to our senses and which we experience as a sign. […] The form of each work, to use Nietzsche’s words, is an arrow shot to the other river bank. That beginning which the form marks, and to which it points, is precisely the content of the work.Footnote 2

What exists—obviousness—is only the possibility of the path which leads to the perception of what does not yet exist—the essence of the work.

Since the two-sided nature of the aesthetic object is a feature of all arts, the art of interpretation is no exception. Our inability to perceive something is not an argument against the meaningfulness of that object or phenomenon. This is a question of the power and experience of the person perceiving. “We perceive the foreground through the senses. To perceive the background, however, a third element is required, the very thing by which one can distinguish [artistic perception] from non-artistic. The third element is a spiritual one. Without it, perception of the background is impossible.”Footnote 3 In the area of cognition there is always an excess of that of which I am not cognisant. The law of layers, or of surface and depth, applies. The upper (semantic) layer determines the lower (semiotic—sign-based). “The appearing of the external, as an experience, is a unity belonging to the consciousness of the internal; and to the consciousness of the internal corresponds the reproduction of the internal.”Footnote 4

The goal (the idea) determines the means of its expression. Sadly, the means become the goal of themselves. A vibrant form is contradicted by a formula, pattern or cliché. A purely superficial conversion into sound of the signs of the notes obscures the aim of perceiving the internal form. “If there were only a passive way of seeing, the world would be reduced to a chaos of luminous dots; but besides the passive way there is an active seeing which interprets by seeing and sees by interpreting, a seeing which is observing. Plato found a divine word for these visions which came from observing: he called them ideas.”Footnote 5 The so-called Aristotelian form is the same Platonic idea, but an idea which lies within things and directs each of them to their goal. This is movement coming from within as a principle of life. It is also the principle of the realisation of music through movement, that is, intonation.

We have to learn “from within”—by sustained exposure and attention.Footnote 6 Experiences are totally non-aesthetic only when no attention is given to intrinsic properties.Footnote 7

Music is a game of tones, that is, materials which are quite far removed from utilitarian purposes of sound expression. “Beauty is being with the attribute of form, penetrating through the aura of commodity meanings, that is, through the aura of pure relation.”Footnote 8 Sequences of sounds (scales; structures of tonal intervals) form a certain whole. Musical hearing (musical, not just pitch-related, hearing) is the hearing of a process, the perception of becoming, as opposed to purely local, sensory hearing which manifests itself through the hearing of a particular moment, that is, of a particular sound. Hearing is not a sense that operates moment by moment but through a process. Music is a temporal art and the form of its manifestation is characterised by process and intonation. The inner hearing is

a spiritual eye endowed with a miraculous ability to embrace and understand sound figures. It embodies a divine mystery belonging only to music and completely inaccessible to the uninitiated; because the ear is able to hear whole musical periods and even works in an instant, although it does not worry about the occasional small gaps and bumps, but leaves them to be filled in and smoothed out in later, calmer moments.Footnote 9

As we pass from the outer to the inner layer, there is a leap—a transition—to another quality of perception, and expression. “The artist creates by relying on the dimension of background, for the latter is unique, it is what must be manifested.”Footnote 10 At the same time this is a different form of reading the texts—where reading does not follow each letter or each note, but is guided by an anticipation of the meaning of the whole, and the meaning is constructed from the separate elements by means of expression in sound.

The formal structure of the work is only one element of the work. There is also the matter, expression, and often the subject matter, as well. When we say that a work is “beautiful”, we are referring to all of these in reciprocal interaction with each other. It is the total work that we are judging. No definition in terms of form alone can explain the meaning of “beauty”.Footnote 11

“This depth of distance exists because of my collaboration, it comes from a structure of relations which my mind interposes between some sensations and others.”Footnote 12 Such a leap from the surface to the depth is possible only if there is relevant experience based not merely on an artisan’s relationship with the interpreted works: “an enlightened person clearly knows that consciousness is what makes something, existing in some way, known, and in this way existing to itself.”Footnote 13 For this reason, “anyone who only has a sense for superficial art effects and is closed to all deeper ones is oblivious of all real art experience.”Footnote 14 The worlds of both sounds and feelings are non-spatial. They are both processes, which exist in becoming, movement, modulations. They are (a) non-material, (b) processual and (c) dynamic. These processes are the material which reveals the musical being. The sound movements which take place in time—intonations—must be capable, through suitable means of expression, of expressing the dynamics of the spiritual processes.

The background or inner form, the insight into the work’s idea, is unattainable without the requisite abilities. This is a matter of experience. “The beautiful is not concealed in the background alone, just as it is not in the foreground alone. Rather, it lies in both planes, in the special relationship of appearance that can be found between the unreal background and the real foreground. […] The aesthetic value of a work of art (and the interpretive act as its completionFootnote 15—J. R.) depends on the correct interaction between the two,”Footnote 16 on the appropriateness of the means of expression for the perceived idea of the work or the background.

In the matter of experience no one can replace me, no one can experience for me by receiving my metaphysical bill of exchange; […] Experience is absolutely individual or rather, absolutely singular.Footnote 17

Interpretation as the art of conscious expression presupposes the existence of musical consciousness acquired through experience, to which the work is “enigmatic,” because it is historically distant from the interpreter and silently “imprisoned” in the signs. Interpretation is, therefore, at the same time, both the expression and understanding of the meaning (the inner form). Jakob Böhme, back in the sixteenth century, still considered any perception as an act of juxtaposition and argued that all objects had their own “signature and invisible substance” or both a “surface” and a symbolic nature. Expression, which is the manifestation of understanding by appropriate means, is an act from the inside to the outside, or the externalisation of the inside. This is indicated by the prefix “ex” (in German “aus-,” in Lithuanian “iš-”). Expression, Ausdruck, išraiška. “An unapparent connection is stronger […] than one which is obvious.”Footnote 18 A connection here is to be understood as “a structure, as what provides unity to the different elements. The unifying structure which underlies it will be ‘more powerful’ and, therefore, ‘stronger and better’ than the structures of the obvious unity of opposites.”Footnote 19 “The unapparent connection” is what still has to be made “apparent” through perception and expression.

Intellectual contact with the interpretation of the musical text should be understood as hearing that sees or seeing that hears, where, by looking at the work expressed by the notes, one sees into its dimension of depth (or meaning) or inner form, and at the same time its interpretive (intonational) plan. Clearly, this is an aspiration and a matter not only of great practical but also great intellectual experience. In order to find the right aesthetic attitude for resolving artistic challenges, there must be a sense of want, and a desire to change one’s attitude towards the still prevalent approach to performance, which has not developed into interpretation based on understanding in any way at all. “The wish precedes the event, the will accompanies it.”Footnote 20