SOME REMARKS ON PHENOMENOLOGY OF MUSIC

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Abstract

The paper shows the necessity to investigate the phenomenology of music, which the author understands as a propaedeutic to the construction of an ontology of music as a specific cultural phenomenon. One cannot proceed towards the task relying solely on experiential descriptions of what music is perceived to be and on excessively metaphoric language commonly in use with music studies. Unlike the natural science, which starts inductively from experience to dive afterwards into a sort of theory backed by rigorous experimentation, understanding cultural phenomena has to begin not with empirical impressions, but with a grounded concept. Otherwise, one risks finding oneself in quest for some other unintended entity. These grounded concepts are still wanted in the field of musical culture studies. Therefore, the notion of conceptual deficit is introduced, denoting the state of affairs in the attempts of philosophy and cultural studies to investigate music. The author analyses the existing approaches to musical phenomenology in the context of philosophy of music, which, unlike the correct phenomenological investigation of music, is rather a set of implications that inevitably arise when traditional and commonplace ideas about music are accepted as the basis for phenomenological research. Some of difficult-to-resolve contradictions to which the tradition of descriptive musical phenomenology comes when attempting to construct ontological models are examined. In the author's opinion this state of affairs contradicts Husserl's guidance «zurück zu den Sachen selbst», which suggests it is necessary to turn away from naïve impressions of some thing to the very thing as it is, towards «to ti ên einai», «the what it was supposed to be», that is, to the solid concept and not a partial example of the thing. The article charts a path of transition from the phenomenological study of music to a genuine investigation of the paradoxes and problems of the ontology of music as a specific cultural phenomenon.

Music as the very thing appears to have to be conceptualised not as an acoustic phenomenon, not as an immediate emotional experience, not as a sentence with obscure and fluid meaning from a language purportedly capable to express the inexpressible, but as a radically different thing, an entity that exists as an enigma, a problem to be talked about and to be solved, perhaps analytically, to ensure the sound ontology of music as a cultural phenomenon.