(Un)consciousness? Music in the Daoist context of nonbeing

This chapter explores the interpretation of music as a philosophical concept within the context of Chinese aesthetics. A particular focus is the Daoist connection of music with psychological concepts such as consciousness, the experience of time, and the emergence of memory in space and time. The human body, regarded as both physical and spiritual, is an integral element of Daoism, which offers a route to understanding consciousness as coterminous with being and nonbeing, and to linking the latter to music. In the Daoist tradition nonbeing, in musical time, brings forth dynamic and temporal connections between the conscious and the unconscious through memory. The chapter uses the programmatic title and literary preface of Seagulls and Forgetting Schemes, a Song dynasty qin piece, as an exemplar of the Daoist aesthetic of (un)consciousness, approached as both an ideal comprising a world or state of enlightened detachment and an aesthetic activity for cultivating such a world or state.

What kind of conscious activity is ‘listening to music’? A contribution from Theodor Adorno by way of psychoanalysis

This chapter elaborates Theodor Adorno’s notion of genuine music listening and the role of consciousness within it by analogy with the psychoanalytic conceptualization of listening in the analytic dialogue as described in Freud’s model of the free-association process. Crucial in both models of listening is the simultaneous restraining of conventional expectations and the reception of what is new in what is being heard. For both, listening is collaborative work (between patient and analyst, or between listener and the musical composition), engaging the interaction of consciousness and the unconscious by confronting resistances and bringing new meaning into conscious awareness. Implicit in Adorno’s conception of music listening, as part of his critical theory of society, is a socio-historical dimension: the collaboration between genuinely advanced music like that of the Second Viennese School and the individual engaged in genuine listening works against false consciousness to further an authentic subjecthood..

Situated approaches to musical experience

Informed by a review of recent attempts in cognitive science to overcome head-bound conceptions of the mind, this chapter investigates the contribution of ‘situated’ approaches to understanding music and consciousness, focusing on musical experience. It develops a systematic framework for discriminating between situated approaches, and based on this framework and an analysis of specific scenarios discusses the ways in which musical experience may be conceptualized as ‘situated’, elucidating the implications and explanatory potential of different approaches. Finally, there is a consideration of the framework’s value as a research tool for the analysis of situated aspects of musical practices. The aim is to advance an understanding of music and consciousness by contributing to conceptual clarity and by enriching the relationship between theoretical considerations and observation of musical practice.

Introduction

This successor to the edited volume Music and Consciousness: Philosophical, Psychological, and Cultural Perspectives represents a further collection of essays from a growing and ever-mutating community of scholars with a concern for the interdisciplinary space between music studies and consciousness studies. Just as the first book (...

Music, phenomenology, and the ‘natural attitude’: Analysing Sibelius, thinking with Husserl, reflecting on Dennett

This chapter explores the intersection of music and phenomenology as potentially fertile ground for the study of consciousness. Taking the philosophy of Edmund Husserl as a touchstone, and the Violin Concerto, Op. 47 of Jean Sibelius as a case study, the chapter considers how phenomenological concepts such as epoché, noesis, eidos, and the transcendental subject all find resonances within a formal analysis of this musical work. The chapter also juxtaposes Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and his critique of the ‘natural attitude’ against Daniel Dennett’s physicalist account of consciousness and Wilfrid Sellars’ concept of the ‘scientific image’. In negotiating a pathway between these positions, the chapter considers whether music—and its determination of an autonomous aesthetic sphere—may offer a productive alternative perspective to the often competing claims of philosophy and science in our understanding of consciousness.

Absorption and openness to experience: An everyday tale of traits, states, and consciousness change with music

In what ways may individual differences in personality, age, and training shape subjective experiences with and of music? And how far is it possible to determine whether particular personality characteristics may predict the capacity for certain subtle shifts of consciousness such as episodes of spontaneous, effortless involvement? This chapter examines the construct of openness (the fifth and most variably defined ‘Big Five’ dimension) and the associated subconstruct of absorption, both of which have attracted increasing attention from researchers in the last five years. Drawing on a subset of findings from a mixed-methods study of 10–18 year olds’ involvement in music in daily life, the chapter outlines what trait and state models can and cannot reveal about the phenomenology of musical consciousness.

Practical time consciousness in musical performance

This chapter examines the idea of time consciousness in performance as constitutive of musical practice, and as itself being a form of practice. It introduces practical time consciousness, directed towards two forms of temporal engagement—timekeeping and timeliness, which correspond to the Greek understanding of chronos and kairos—that together underpin the collective coherence and the singular expressive qualities in music. With reference to practice theory, the chapter also explores the pre-reflective awareness of time in music and musicians’ focused attention to time, and how these might change in the moment of performance and in the development of players over time. Drawing on interviews, excerpts from recordings, and a semi-controlled study, this account examines these awarenesses as practices in themselves, occurring at distinct timescales and within different socio-cultural milieux. The chapter concludes with the idea that a practical time consciousness suggests a timeworld, an overarching horizon within which musical time is experienced and practised.

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.

Musical imagery and the temporality of consciousness

Musical imagery can be defined as the conscious experience of an internal representation of music—a form of inner hearing. This chapter adopts a psychological approach to considering temporal aspects of musical imagery, from the characteristics and frequency of episodes ranging in scale from seconds and minutes (e.g. the mental continuation of interrupted music), to the potential impact of circadian (24-hour) rhythms upon the subjective experience of musical imagery. The common ground between musical imagery and other forms of spontaneous cognition, combined with evidence of temporal fluctuations in our conscious awareness of inner music, suggests a new cyclical model of musical imagery. Exploring the music in our ‘mind’s ear’ has the potential to shed light on the time course of consciousness, with consequences not just for what it means to re-present music in the mind but also for how and when new ideas come to be experienced in our imaginations.

The impact of musical structure on enjoyment and absorptive listening states in trance music

The act of listening to music to reach altered states of consciousness is common across many different cultures around the world, ranging from tribal settings in Central Java, Indonesia, to EDM (electronic dance music) dance clubs in the Western world. Despite the widespread listenership to trance music, we lack a comprehensive, scientific account of how features of the musical surface and structure map onto the psychophysiological experience of music. This chapter provides an overview of existing research that connects the phenomenology of trancing to psychological and neurophysiological findings. It highlights two recent empirical studies that investigate how listeners’ enjoyment and self-reported altered states of consciousness are influenced by harmonic repetition and complexity in uplifting trance (UT) pieces. This leads to a discussion of the connection between the structural properties of trance music and their impact on listeners’ enjoyment and on altered states of consciousness.