A phenomenon is anything that is perceived, and that means anything that one perceives by means of the consciousness. The act of expressing music should also be performed consciously. Therefore, the method of phenomenological inquiry—perception—can be considered entirely apposite to the interpretation of musical works.

Phenomenology is a philosophical discipline which inquires into the essences inherent in phenomena and serves to critique sensory cognition. To experience something phenomenologically means to experience consciously what we would normally experience by relying solely on the automaticity of our skills. “‘Expression’ is the utterance of something internal and refers to the subjective. ‘Appearance’, on the other hand, names the objective […]. Appearances are objects, the objects of experience.”Footnote 1

By rejecting ready-made schemes, the phenomenologist seeks to reveal the essence of the phenomenon; this means that they want to reveal exactly what makes it specific, what prevents it being explained as something other than itself. Without cognition of the subject, its becoming is chaotic and meaningless. One needs to know what should emerge. But there is an “ignorant” perception of music which loses sight of the eidetic (idea-based) essence of a musical work and which fails to grasp its individual aesthetic being. Phenomenological action does not apply common rules to different phenomena, but captures each phenomenon on the basis of its essential properties. This methodology sees its objects of attention not only as facts, but views them from the perspective of their causal connections with meaning. And this is the goal of interpretation—the discernment and expression of the meaning of a work.

Phenomenology [is] inquiry into the essence, and observation of the essence. […] By elucidating the essential nature of all possible phenomena, defining their various domains and the interrelationships of their domains, and by establishing the necessary interrelation between the contents of consciousness and the relevant acts, phenomenology provides a solid foundation for all sciences.Footnote 2

The processes of consciousness are called intentional; the word “intentionality” means nothing other than the universal, fundamental characteristic of consciousness, namely that it is always directed towards an object. Consciousness is always the consciousness of something. The intentional experience of music is related to the representation of its semantic content—that is, to the fact of the material of musical perception. It highlights two poles through which musical consciousness continuously acts: the objective pole of the work itself (related to the subject matter), and the pole of the “I” as the subject of all experiences and perception. A relationship with the true musical phenomenon is possible only by experiencing music as an aesthetic phenomenon through its aesthetic being. The aesthetic being is related to a particular special form of subject matter. But it must be emphasised that the relationship between the artistic form and the artistic fact is antinomical. Phenomenology

does not recognize the bare fact, it does not look for anything standing behind it, but it recognizes the phenomenon in its essential purity. A fact is something which is explained by something else, while a phenomenon is understood from itself. A fact is what we see positively, while a phenomenon is something spiritual, which resists any closer definition.Footnote 3

From the perspective of fact, the form is adequate to the work, but, from the perspective of meaning, the form is distinguishable from it (the fact): the meaning of the work is different from the meaning of the artistic form. Although music is the physical sounds which constitute that form, at the same time music is not just the physical sounds, and their adequacy to the form is still not beauty. After all, beauty, according to a widely accepted definition, is the manifestation of an idea in material form or the spiritualisation of matter (the sound matter) through the perception of an idea. Beauty is born when the essence of the structures of the work is opened up and revealed by appropriate means. Perception of the inner form of the work is especially important. Sounds—which are not beauty in themselves (although they are necessary to create meaningful expression)—must acquire a particular form in order to be artistic, by fulfilling the obligations of the eidos (the artistic idea), and only then become a source of beauty.

Edmund Husserl stresses the knowledge of the essence of phenomena. He refers to this essence by the Greek word eidos, meaning idea. “Every experience of an individual entity can be transformed into eidetic experience or eidetic intuition (intuition being used here in its etymological sense of ‘seeing into’). The object of such an intuition is the eidos, and Husserl envisioned phenomenology as becoming a science of essences or eidetic science.”Footnote 4 The interpretation of music is precisely the grasping of the essence and its expression. Consequently, the beauty of the work is established through the sound, which takes on the characteristics of the eidos—the idea, that is, the tone. The idea of the work is revealed through the intonation, which supplies the act of interpretation with the means of expression which the eidos—the idea—requires.

In defending the path of perceiving music aesthetically, the Russian phenomenologist Aleksei Losev rejects the primitive salon-style feeling in music or the sensual, often physiological, response to a sound stimulus. He argues that music expresses feelings of a higher level than those of the everyday, of ordinary life; rather it expresses aesthetic feelings or feelings of beauty. It is not the feeling which arouses a sense of beauty. Rather, it is beauty which arouses corresponding feelings: feelings evoked by the expression of the work after it was understood. This is served by the processual nature and dynamism of the phenomenon of music. Music is constantly moving and pressing; the characteristics of fluidity are at play within it. They are close to the dynamics of change in the human emotional condition. It is rightly said that music is an analogue of emotive life.Footnote 5 The features of processuality, dynamism, fluidity, and, consequently, change in time are characteristic of both physical and mental reality. And the characteristic of music as a temporal, processual art is becoming, transformation—which is constituted by certain sound modulations connected with the idea of the work, and not by a static actualisation of the facts—the signs of the notes. The act of interpretation seeks to give the work meaning through the revelation of its artistic truth, and the truth is the state in which the being of the phenomenon of transcendence is opened up.

Pure musical being is, of course, the affirmation of the self through the work. “Being is what appears or may appear after cognition. Being is therefore the known being, or being in truth.”Footnote 6 This means that musical truth is equal to musical being, and musical being is consistent with a certain norm of expression. The work speaks for itself, and the purpose of expression is to understand the language in which the work addresses us. “In pure musical being there can be no greater or lesser validity, but there is […] a greater or lesser degree of musical being, a greater or lesser tension of musicality.”Footnote 7

Musicality becomes effective only on the basis of prior understanding or conviction. In the process of forming musical consciousness, the intersubjective relations of the subject cannot be ignored. Intersubjectivity is only possible when there is a dialogue between the individual subjects. A dialogue or relationship—not only between the subjects, but also between the objectivised results of the activity of particular subjects. The “Other” (in a broad sense) is understood as the basis for the emergence of the “I.” Consciousness is nothing without its objects, meaning not an empirical (superficial) object but an ideal object, or more precisely, the essence, the eidos. According to Husserl, the “Other” can be understood as the spiritual, personal and transcendent “I.” Thanks to the establishment of intersubjective consciousness, the alien “I,” supplied through the musical work, comes into contact with the “I” of the perceiving subject.

What is the basis for the norms and the normal (i.e. norm-based) intersubjective relationships? Unlike direct bodily—individual—normality, personal normality is determined by the values on which this or that culture is based. The harmony of norms is the recognition of the transcendent Ego—the “Other.”

To all unprejudiced reflection it is clear that all art is from its origin essentially of the nature of dialogue. All music calls to an ear not the musician’s own, all sculpture to an eye not the sculptor’s; architecture in addition calls to the step as it walks in the building. They all say, to him who receives them, something (not a “feeling” but a perceived mystery) that can be said only in this one language.Footnote 8

There is no I as such but only the I of the basic word I-You and the I of the basic word I-It.Footnote 9

In spiritual life there is a constant struggle between the “letter” of the narrative (the text) and the “spirit” of the address. The work is the address which awaits our response in its understanding and expression. “This is the eternal origin of art: a human being confronts a form which wants to become a work through him. Not a figment of his soul but something that appears to the soul and demands the soul’s creative power. What is required is a deed that a man does with his whole being: if he commits it and speaks with his being the basic word to the form that appears, then the creative power is released and the work comes into being.”Footnote 10

In summarising the relevance of the phenomenological explanation of music, it is useful to mention a number of principles which form the basis of the phenomenological approach.

  1. 1.

    The phenomenon of music must be analysed on the basis of the principles of musical eidetics. This principle, expressed in Husserl’s statement “back to the things themselves”, is also applicable to the interpretation of musical works. According to Husserl, “[A] thing is a phenomenon, that is, anything of which one is conscious.”Footnote 11 Consequently, the work must be interpreted as such and not according to the habit of the interpreter or according to established tradition. Expression based on the perception of the inner form of the work is found through intuition, which has been enriched by the experience of insight into meanings.

  2. 2.

    The eidetic meaning cannot be detached from or lack the foundation of the specifics of the work, its musical characteristics, that is, its texture. But this does not mean that music is exhausted only by the acoustic material, that there are no metaphysical values behind its tones, that there is only a “letter” without a “spirit.” It is those tones, that sound form, which is created by actions stimulated by certain spiritual values. A phenomenological action requires what is called reduction, when a complex problem is reduced to, or simplified to, its fundamental elements. “Reduction involves a narrowing of attention to what is essential in the problem […]. By narrowing [our] attention to what is essential, [we] hopefully will discover the rational principles necessary for an understanding of the thing (or phenomenon) under investigation.”Footnote 12 The process of reduction encourages us to go beyond the mere realisation of the sign form of a work. That is exactly the form which we need to transcend.

  3. 3.

    In musical reduction, there occurs a transition from the (subjective) sensation of the music to the cognition of the very essence of the musical work (the cognition of that work as such) when it is presented in an act of interpretation. The action of musical reduction enables a pure sense of objectivity to be opened up, abstracting oneself from a personal standpoint towards the being of the work itself. There occurs a leap from “how it seems to me” to “how it really is.” This can only happen through a transformation (metanoia) of the thinking of the person-perceiver—a transition to another state—whose otherness is nothing other than cognition of a new path, a different value orientation.

  4. 4.

    The art of music (and thus its interpretation as the form of putting it into being) exists not only in the space of personal intention and consciousness, but also in the space of culture. A musical phenomenon cannot be properly realised if there is no connection between the parameters of feeling—mind—culture.

  5. 5.

    A musical phenomenon is an identical singularity. It opens up what makes it specific and precludes one from explaining it in an inert way, by use of schemes and clichés.

The work wants to become itself. The explanation of the French phenomenologist Mikel Dufrenne helps us to understand music as a special phenomenon. “The object of the music is always hidden in the work until I complete it by perceiving it. It becomes real only in the sensual given. The latter emerges as a common act of the perceiver and the perceived. A work of musical art becomes such exclusively through perception. The musical object and musical perception, and the aesthetic object and aesthetic perception, are for Dufrenne inseparable and even synonymous.”Footnote 13 “We could say,” he states, “that music calls forth space in order to manifest to what extent it is irreducible to the subjectively perceived”Footnote 14; in other words, music is an idea disseminated by interpretation.

Ernest Ansermet, whom we have mentioned earlier, states that “music is the time that has been experienced.”Footnote 15 Ansermet associates all the talents necessary to achieve an affective experience with culture or with a favourable environment, “where a certain world of feelings reigns, […] a certain ethics of feelings to which the musical forms correspond. In the realm of culture, the act of transcendence inherent in all musical experience happens by itself because what it presupposes by way of affective experience is nothing other than this very culture, which the music only reflects.”Footnote 16