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M U S I C T H E O R Y O N L I N E
A Publication of the
Society for Music Theory
Copyright (c) 1995 Society for Music Theory
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| Volume 1, Number 1 January, 1995 ISSN: 1067-3040 |
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All queries to: mto-editor@husc.harvard.edu
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AUTHOR: Richard Cochrane
TITLE: The Ideal Four Minutes and Thirty-Three Seconds: Response to Covach
KEYWORDS: Covach, Heidegger, phenomenology, fundamental ontology,
hermeneutics, structure
REFERENCE: mto.94.0.11.covach.art
Richard Cochrane
Dept. of Philosophy
University of Wales College of Cardiff
Cardiff
Wales
senrc@cf.ac.uk
[1] When Cage composed *4'33"*, he composed the physical
background which informs all musical experience; the noise
which is the degree zero and condition of possibility for any
musical experience. He did this, in that piece, on a largely
physical level, although his other "silent" pieces have more
philosophical intentions (1). Perhaps there is something of this
in John Corvach's paper, "Destructuring Cartesian Dualism in
Musical Analysis". In this brief commentary, I would like to
suggest some of the directions in which this paper's
considerable phenomenology may be taken.
============================================
1. Cage "wrote" two further silent pieces, entitled *0'00"* and
*0'00"#2*. In *For The Birds* (with Daniel Charles: Boston,
M. Boyars, 1981), their implications are discussed at some
length.
============================================
[2] John Covach speaks of "musical worlds" which, if they are
to be true to their Heideggerian parentage, must be prior to any
musical object; they are "ready-to-hand", an environment,
rather than "present-at-hand" as objects of our reflective
judgement. The musical world is thus not composed of musical
objects (i.e. "pieces of music") at all, but pre-musical
phenomenological structures of some kind -- indeed, perhaps,
the non-musical as such.
[3] For this reason, at least one of the problems raised at the
end of the paper is not a problem at all, but a solution. John
Covach writes that "There are a number of other kinds of
music... for which the idea of a musical 'work' does not apply"
(para. 20). Indeed, we should be looking to such musics for
examples of a musical world prior to the Work; the music of
India, which is entirely improvised, might serve as an
example. It is predicated upon a series of complex combinatory
rules (the *talas* and *ragas* and their permutations) which
in turn serve to illuminate the pure, cosmic resonance (the
OM). This tradition actually enshrines the opposite kind of
movement from that of Western Classicism; its conventions
serve to draw the performance into the musical world, the
ontological condition of possibility for music, the non-musical,
the pure vibration. Indian musical practice, one might even
say, is more authentic than that of the West. It certainly has its
own share of being-towards-death(2)
============================================
2. It occurs to me that this is something like what Heidegger
meant by the authenticity of *Dasein*; to be in a world whose
phenomenological structure is one of *aletheia*, of
withdrawing into its Other as it reveals itself. Perhaps this is
close to the deep meaning of Being-towards-death.
============================================
[4] The musical world, prior to any music whatever, produces
out of itself musical structures, conventions and so forth. These
conventions may contribute towards what we might call an
"authentic" musical practice (withrawing the music into its
own ontological foundations even as it appears), or they may
hypostatize it into an object for a subject. Yet how can the
musical world found the structurality of music?
[5] The musical world is a kind of ideal space. Let us say that
it is a stage, in the theatrical sense. The musical world is then
a *mise en scene*, a stage-setting, which is always there, and
always changing, on which performances take place. We
should also take note of Heidegger's example of the actor in
the No drama who, with a single gesture on an empty stage,
brings forth a world. The stage is empty -- the metaphor must
not be taken to mean that the musical world fills the stage with
past musical experiences. The musical world *is* the stage,
the performance space, the ideal 4'33" which forms the
necessary context for musical experience. This experience,
then, is like the gesture of the actor (3). It uncovers (and
conceals) the world of the music.
============================================
3. The phenomenological structure described here must be
carefully understood; the actor is nothing (as the musicians are
nothing) as far as the piece of music *per se* is concerned.
Only the gesture, the physical sign, is important. The gesture
without actor is pure movement, the irriducible vibration of air
which is not the same thing as "music" at all.
============================================
[6] It is absolutely essential that this space is not considered to
be a static space. "How do our musical worlds change as our
experience grows?" (Para.20) is a valid question, but its
answer is already at hand. The metaphor of the stage must be
carried to a more abstract level, and we can see that it must be
a mobile space, if only because *Dasein* is necessarily
temporal, and so therefore is all musical experience. This
much is fairly obvious; yet how will the current musical
experience transform our musical world?
[7] Perhaps we need to be clear about what we mean by a
musical world. John Covach defines it as follows: "a number of
other works that form a kind of background -- a body of other
pieces that create a purely musical context for some particular
piece" (Para.16). On my reading, which is admittedly
thoroughgoingly Heideggerian, the musical world cannot be
precisely as it is described here since, if it were, the condition
of possibility for works would simply be other works, which
leads to an ontological infinite regress and a hermeneutic
circularity.
[8] Let us consider how a musical world might function. It is
certainly constituted from musical experiences (what else
could constitute it?), yet it does not contain works of music. It
is, rather, a space created by *experiences* of music,
engagements with music as "equipment", as environment.
Thus, it is an *aesthetic* space. These experiences cannot be
differentiated -- again, we are speaking of a space, not its
contents, and the musical world is not a taxonomy of previous
experiences, which may be recalled individually at will. They
instead conbine to form a space or stage in which other
musical experiences may "take place".
[9] This immediately points to a solution to the problem of the
mobility of this space. There is something like a dialectic
(although not in the Hegelian sense) at work between the space
and its contents, and this dialectic takes the form of the
ontological difference. This much is clear. Yet this difference
is also a deferral (4) or referral which captures both the space
and its object in a process of change. As the space effects the
object (radically; the space enables the object to be what it is),
so the object effects the space. For what cannot be objectified
in the experience of the piece of music itself goes to mutate the
space, the musical world itself. That which can be objectified
will be removed from musical experience altogether, and
passed into a different mode of thought,such as the
mathematical, cultural or historical.
============================================
4. The idea of difference as deferral is evident in Heidegger's
early work, and was brought out by Derrida, who is usually
credited with inventing it. See "Differance" in Derrida,
Jacques, *Margins: Of Philosophy" (Brighton: Harvester,
1982).
============================================
[10] What we are speaking of, then, is a staging of the musical
work in which work and stage undergo a metamorphosis at
one another's hands (to mix a metaphor). The purely
subjective-experiential space is infolded within the musical
work; it is its secret, what Adorno would call its "enigma", the
kernal of non-music within music, which makes that music
possible (5). Perhaps this is one way in which we could escape
the solipsism which threatens this project. While the musical
world is experiential, it is also in the realm of ideas, and these
ideas may be (are necessarily?) ideological. Thus we get to
Adorno via Heidegger, in spite of Adorno's protestations to the
contrary. That contradictory kernel could easily be seen quite
simply as the contradiction which, in the course of negative
dialectics, comes to be a negative kind of truth, an escape from
ideology which is wholly negative. Thus, the musical world,
although still subjective, is nevertheless social and political.
============================================
5. See "How Marx Invented the Symptom" in Zizek, Slavoj,
*The Sublime Object of Ideology* (London: Verso, 1989) for a
discussion of this idea from another, very thought-provoking
angle.
============================================
[11] It is to be hoped that some of these ways of thinking may
be helpful to those engaged in the relationship between
fundamental ontology of music and its relation to
hermeneutics. Anyone interested in discussing any of these
issues is welcome to contact me by e-mail.
--
Richard Cochrane
Dept of Philosophy
UWCC
Cardiff
Wales
email: senrc@cf.ac.uk
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END OF MTO ITEM