Abstract
The essence of music engages the human ability to create symbolic meanings from any impression. In our search for this essence, we must first follow the communicative path of a musical performance. The double ontological status of music as both cognitive activity and observable object makes any transition from cognition to object a reduction from thick to thin entity, and any transition from notated/sounded work to interpretation/musical experience a thickening of the music’s properties. The process of elaborating upon the epistemological elements in this communicative chain positions the essence of the musical work as a discourse on relational dimensions that are culturally contextualized by the idea of a musical work.
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Notes
- 1.
This view is in contrast to the fusion of horizons (Gadamer 1960), and more in line with accepting the “inductive cliff”.
- 2.
Some consequences of this model for artistic research are elaborated by Dahl (2017).
- 3.
There are no references to music in Bourriaud’s book, however.
- 4.
Luhmann uses the same concept of information as Bateson in his Steps to an Ecology of Mind (Bateson 1972) and reveals an interesting affiliation to Derrida’s différance.
- 5.
Wolfgang Fuhrmann, in his presentation of Luhmann’s theory, concludes, rather bluntly: Without listeners, there is no music (Fuhrmann 2011: 147).
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Dahl, P. (2019). Where Is the Essence of a Musical Work?. In: Stanevičiūtė, R., Zangwill, N., Povilionienė, R. (eds) Of Essence and Context. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14471-5_15
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