This is the third essay in my series, The Phenomenological Papers, a series of three essays on similar topics in phenomenology and metaphysics. You can find the first essay here, and the second here. Unlike the first and second essays in this series, this one is completely new and a culmination of a few different things I have been working on and thinking about: metaphysics, phenomenology, and aesthetics, all in one. It is my attempt at a philosophical anthropology as well as something it can hopefully explain: our enjoyment of music. It is perhaps the most enigmatic thing I have written, so hopefully it makes sense to people. I have published it with Epoché so just supply the link. Enjoy!
Music, Art for the Soul
epochemagazine.org/59/music-art-for-the-soul/
I read this in Epoche which I found when it was still on Medium. Loved it. This is one of my favorite topics.
ReplyDeleteHow to account for the strength of our emotional reactions to music? Perhaps because it involves the body as you say. Even when we are sitting still listening to European classical music our bodies, if the music is any good, are moving in sympathy *inside.* This could account for how I often dissolve into tears over it, most recently at a performance of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony#6 played by the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. Of course I lean into it to get this to happen because who does not love crying over music?
Then there is the privilege of being part of a performance. The feeling of oneness with the group is sheer ecstasy! I'm a good part singer so I get to do this frequently with choirs. Sometimes I even get paid! We will be really into and it will hit me, "I would die for these people." My rational mind steps in to tell me that is ridiculous, but the immediate emotion is real.
Glad you enjoyed! Thanks for reading my work, I appreciate it! Yes, I think the pleasure of music is, or seems to be, 'bodily' in a way that other artforms do not seem to be. I will have to listen to that performance. Another great one for weeping is Hilary Hahn's wonderful performance of Bach's Partita No. 2 (https://youtu.be/ngjEVKxQCWs), which I highly recommend.
DeleteHaha - that sounds like a wonderful experience, and well done you. I know what you mean, though. I have not sung as a group but I have had musical experiences at concerts and the like where I seem to fully absorb into both the surrounding audience and the music itself, it is wonderful. It is the kind of thing that led me to writing this piece. I talk (rather superficially) about group experiences in another one of my essays on Bergson's theory of memory (https://epochemagazine.org/51/recollection-life-bergsons-metaphysics-of-memory/) in the section entitled "Memory and Intersubjectivity".