Musical Understanding

Do you think you know music? Understanding Music: An Interdisciplinary Study will explore five notable approaches to understanding music, and will help you to think differently about the music you listen to in your daily life. This book will guide you through a brief introduction to western art music before jumping into the five disciplines that are covered: science, linguistics, communication, philosophy, and politics. From learning about the physics of sound waves to debating important music philosophical thought through the ages, this book will encourage you to open your mind to new patterns of thinking about music and provide you with the tools with which to listen to and engage with your preferred music in new, innovative, and intriguing ways. copyright by Golden Meteorite Press, published by Golden Meteorite Press.

Quanti presupposti implica la comprensione della musica in quanto opera? Per rispondere è necessario esaminare l'apparato categoriale che orienta l'at-tenzione dell'ascoltatore. Il " sentire come opera " sembra richiedere almeno due capacità fondamentali: 1) cogliere nei suoni che vengono ascoltati una struttura re-identificabile con valore normativo e 2) dirigere l'attenzione sulle proprietà artistiche sopravvenienti su una base costituita dalle proprietà espressive (a loro volta sopravvenienti sulle proprietà fisico-fenomeniche). Le conoscenze storico-artistiche e più generalmente contestuali costituiscono il principale catalizzatore in grado di rendere effettiva tale esperienza.

L’intérêt de l’« entendre-comme » en tant qu’outil susceptible d’éclairer nos manières de comprendre la musique est testé à partir de quelques objets et situations-type. Une telle formulation oriente la réflexion vers nos capacités à retrouver des conceptions spécifiques non seulement dans une interprétation mais dans une expérience effective de la musique. Plus particulièrement, l’invite à « entendre (x) comme une œuvre » met en relief l’aptitude à entendre l’objet à la lumière des connaissances contextuelles aptes à faire ressortir son individualité dans un cadre historique et stylistique donné.

Since the early writings of Hermann Kretzschmar and Arnold Schering, the project of a musical hermeneutics has faced a major hurdle, that of identifying a key to the relationship between musical structure and its verbal description; their work is marked by contradictions, in particular the ambiguity between the aim of tracing the intentions of historical musicology and of creating a systematic musicology themselves. A firmer paradigm guides Wilhelm Dilthey's reflections according to which art is one of the forms of expression of life and individual sentiment. His reconstructive work seeks to give relativity to historical periods owing to the specific character of the experiences (Erlebnisse) that enable the critical interpreter to define the essence of the musical experience of the past; the interpretation is not so much attached to works as to musical forms, which are much more representative for the common consciousness. But this perspective is also limited: once we have passed beyond the positivist horizon, the need to focus on an alien psychologism destroys temporal distance, leading to the loss of the most specific value of a historicity in which the structural connections of living entities are inscribed. In 20th-c. hermeneutics, resolution is sought for the aporias of psychologism by shifting the question of the work to the ontological level. Hans-Georg Gadamer has noted, however, that the goal of understanding seems to appear less in the critical discourse than in the experience of the work, that is in a hearing or performance capable of corresponding to the function of 'stopping and staying', which characterizes the forms of understanding in general.

Sur la question de la signification musicale, Boris de Schlœzer soutient une position à la fois formaliste et réaliste :  pour lui la musique n’a pas un sens (qui lui serait en quelque sorte extérieur), mais est un sens. Cette perspective immanentiste s’accompagne d’une forme singulière d’ascétisme esthétique : aucun plaisir sensoriel n’est censé entrer en ligne de compte dans la saisie des relations à l’œuvre dans une compréhension musicale. Mais celle-ci peut-elle vraiment être réduite à un tel acte intellectuel ? Peut-elle vraiment coïncider avec une pure saisie de relations internes, en excluant d’entrée de jeu toute référence au monde extérieur ? En tentant de répondre à ces questions, nous voudrions faire ressortir l’intérêt, la cohérence mais aussi les limites de la conception de la compréhension musicale de Boris de Schloezer.

La tesi difesa in questo articolo è che la percezione aspettuale inerente alla comprensione musicale, pur manifestando un livello categoriale, non richiede necessariamente l’intervento di giochi linguistici. Tale intervento risulta necessario nell’articolare i modi in cui la musica viene fatta oggetto di un giudizio estetico, operando all’intero di specifiche forme di vita.

Disagreeing with Jerrold Levinson's claim that being conscious of broad-span musical form is not essential to understanding music, I will argue that our awareness of musical architecture is significant to achieve comprehension. I will show that the experiential model is not incompatible with the analytic model. My main goal is to show that these two models can be reconciled through the identification of a broader notion of understanding. After accomplishing this reconciliation by means of my new conception, I will close the paper by discussing some reasons to accept an enhancing notion of musical understanding that includes levels and degrees of understanding.