Investigations Concerning Music and the Soundscape: Heidegger, Ingarden, Reik
Open Access
- Author:
- Kopf, James
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- June 18, 2021
- Committee Members:
- Samuel Frederick, Major Field Member
Daniel Purdy, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jonathan Eburne, Outside Unit & Field Member
Rolf Goebel, Special Member
Sabine Doran, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Daniel Purdy, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- music
philosophy of music
deconstruction
sound studies
phenomenology
experimental music
La Monte Young
Martin Heidegger
Theodor Reik
Roman Ingarden
Jean-Luc Marion
soundscape - Abstract:
- Investigations Concerning Music and the Soundscape: Heidegger, Ingarden, Reik seeks to approach the phenomenon of music from the level of perception, as opposed to presuming a definition of music as either prima facie known or gleaned solely from a specific cultural tradition. Methodologically, this work draws from phenomenology, particularly the field of modern phenomenology as inaugurated by Edmund Husserl and its promulgation by Martin Heidegger, sound studies, and, in terms of rhetorical style, deconstruction, though it considers the work of thinkers from a wide variety of other fields, from Theodor Reik’s psychoanalysis (albeit short-circuited through phenomenology) to archaeology to Ato Sekyi-Otu’s political writings. Performing a slow argument throughout, this work unfolds not unlike a piece of music itself. After identifying common rhetorical missteps in terms of approaching music from a few archetypical thinkers of music, most especially Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, the argument begins by questing after the lowest level of perception in the experiencing of what has traditionally been called “music,” viz. listening. Reading Heidegger’s examination of listening, especially as it is presented in Being and Time, in tandem with the founder of R. Murray Schafer, widely acknowledged as the founder of sound studies, in addition to using my own phenomenological ear, I conclude that listening is related inherently to a separation from the origin of a sound (that is, we never have unmediated access to the origin of a sound) and, in fact, apprehends the soundscape (the entirety of one’s sonic surroundings) monolithically, prior to the sounds being sorted and categorized according to experience and concepts. These two conclusions are applied to “normative” music (i.e., the song, the ‘work’ of music, etc.), in particular as it is elaborated by one of the most trenchant thinkers of the phenomenology of music, Roman Ingarden, to arrive at the point that there is no meaningful separation of music and the wider soundscape – what I now called the musical manifold. I develop the musical manifold in conjunction with the typographical compositions of La Monte Young, the music of the Mbuti tribe, the poetry of Ernst Meister, and Theodor Reik’s idea of the “haunting melody,” to argue for music, broadly construed, as being understood as a series of schizophonic mimesis – essentially a manifold of haunting, mediated access, echoes, and resonances. This has implications for the constitution of the self, which is to say ontological implications; if the body is viewed as a resonating chamber, it both receives and contributes to the musical manifold in a way that marks the self as constituted by and constitutive of this haunted existence, in a way that is both the subsumption of the self into the musical manifold but always deeply individual simultaneously. The fact remains, however, that this is not the prevailing mode of perceiving music that passes over this ontological understanding. Mobilizing the earlier research in Heidegger in tandem with the phenomenological writings of Jean-Luc Marion, the possibilities and limits of understanding music on this ontological level are explored, particularly by looking at music from the perspective of Marion’s “saturated phenomenon,” albeit with a Nietzschean twist – music as satyrated phenomenon. Through several studies on the various modalities of existence that can render the individual open to experiencing the musical manifold as such, including a novel interpretation of Peter Brötzmann and Han Bennink’s Schwarzwaldfahrt and a reading of Daniel Paul Schreber’s memoirs, I arrive at the conclusion that “music,” as a linguistic signifier, is ultimately a paleonym, but this need not be the case. The rest of the work is spent exploring a variety of ethical possibilities that are concomitant with this sort of understanding of music and sound, on the levels of community, postcolonialism, the body, ecocriticism, and, finally, politics as such. Ultimately, this work spins into the very hall of echoes that it describes, seeking various paths forward with an eye towards overturning the Enlightenment’s outward spread of its universalizing agenda. If this is a universalizing project, in that it intends to seek a non-exclusive understanding of music, it is one that actively disavows the universalism inherent in the logic of the modern age – the logic of capitalism, the logic of the cult of reason, and the spread of that logic throughout the world with little compunction.