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HORIZON 11 (2) 2022 : I. Research : C. Vassilev : 584-606
ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИЧЕСКИЕ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЯ • STUDIES IN PHENOMENOLOGY • STUDIEN ZUR PHÄNOMENOLOGIE • ÉTUDES PHÉNOMÉNOLOGIQUES
https://doi.org/10.21638/2226-5260-2022-11-2-584-606
THE PHENOMENON OF MUSICAL IDENTIFICATION. A VIEW FROM HEIDEGGER'S EARLY PHENOMENOLOGY
CHRISTIAN VASSILEV
Magister in Musicology, PhD, Research Fellow and Coordinator.
National Music Academy "Prof. Pancho Vladigerov", Center for Music Philosophy
and Humanities "Fundamenta musicae".
1505 Sofia, Bulgaria.
E-mail: cvassilev@fundamentamusicae.bg
The starting point of the following article are statements by various prominent musical performers of the 20th century who have testified to the life-experience of musical identification, i. e. the experience of unity and oneness with music. The purpose of the article is to explore the phenomenological implications of this experience on the basis of Martin Heidegger's early phenomenological work. The article compares Heidegger's early view of phenomenal givenness with that of Edmund Husserl. While Husserl sees phenomenal givenness as constituted by (transcendental) consciousness, Heidegger finds primary givenness in the resonance (Mitschwingen) between the I and its lifeworld. I argue that in Heidegger's early phenomenology it is not the subject, but rather the relation between I and world, which "constitutes" givenness. This viewpoint allows for the exploration of musical identification as a life-experience. Musical identification suspends the difference between subject and object. In musical identification, it is the relation between "I" and music, which is constitutive of both. Thus, music cannot be adequately grasped in phenomenological terms if it is regarded simply as an object, which is the premise of more traditional phenomenological approaches to music such as Roman Ingarden's and Mikel Dufrenne's. Ingarden and Dufrenne both position music at a distance from the subject, as something to be explored in its objective characteristics, without presupposing the constitutive relation between them. Contrary to them, Hans-Heinrich Eggebrecht, Günther Anders and Ilya Yonchev all recognize that the subject-object divide is insufficient for the exploration of musical experience. However, while Eggebrecht ultimately remains within the subject-object-dichotomy, Anders and Yonchev both develop the idea of musical Mitsein, or Being-with-music, which dispenses with the subject-object premise altogether and interprets musical life-experience as a mode of Being within which the sense of the I and musical sense coincide.
Keywords: givenness, life-experience, constitution, relation, Mitsein, subjectivity, attunement, Mitvollzug.
© CHRISTIAN VASSILEV, 2022
ФЕНОМЕН МУЗЫКАЛЬНОЙ ИДЕНТИФИКАЦИИ. ВЗГЛЯД ИЗ РАННЕЙ ФЕНОМЕНОЛОГИИ ХАЙДЕГГЕРА
ХРИСТИАН ВАССИЛЬЕВ
Магистр музыковедения, PhD, научный сотрудник и координатор. Национальная академия музыки «Проф. Панчо Владигеров», Центр философии музыки и гуманитарных наук "Fundamenta musicae". 1505 София, Болгария. E-mail: cvassilev@fundamentamusicae.bg
Отправной точкой данной статьи являются взгляды различных выдающихся музыкальных исполнителей двадцатого века, свидетельствующие о переживании музыкальной идентификации, то есть о переживании единения с музыкой. Цель статьи — исследовать феноменологические последствия этого переживания на основе ранних феноменологических разработок Мартина Хай-деггера. В статье сравнивается взгляд раннего Хайдеггера на феноменальную данность с взглядом Эдмунда Гуссерля. Если Гуссерль рассматривает феноменальную данность как конституируемую (трансцендентальным) сознанием, то Хайдеггер обретает первичную данность в резонансе (Mitschwingen) между «я» и его жизненным миром. Тезис автора заключается в том, что в ранней феноменологии Хайдеггера не субъект, а скорее отношение между «я» и миром «конституирует» данность. Эта перспектива позволяет изучать музыкальную идентификацию как переживание. Музыкальная идентификация упраздняет различие между субъектом и объектом. В музыкальной идентификации только отношение между «я» и музыкой конституирует и то, и другое. Таким образом, музыка не может быть феноменологически понята адекватно, если она рассматривается просто как объект, что является предпосылкой в рамках более традиционных феноменологических подходов к музыке, таких как подходы Романа Ингардена и Микеля Дюфрена. Ингарден и Дюфрен рассматривают музыку как дистанцированную от субъекта, как нечто, подлежащее исследованию в его объективных характеристиках, не предполагая конституирующего отношения между «я» и музыкой. Напротив, Ганс-Генрих Эгебрехт, Гюнтер Андерс и Илья Йончев признают, что субъект-объектное разделение недостаточно для изучения музыкального переживания. Однако если Эгебрехт в конечном итоге остался в рамках дихотомии субъект-объект, то Андерс и Йончев развили идею музыкального Mitsein или бытия-с-музыкой, которая полностью порывает с предпосылкой субъект-объектного отношения и позволяет интерпретировать музыкальное переживание как способ бытия, в котором смысл «я» и музыкальный смысл совпадают. Ключевые слова: данность, переживание, конституирование, отношение, Mitsein, субъективность, настроение, Mitvollzug.
1. INTRODUCTION
Consider the following statements by renowned twentieth-century musicians:
The law of improvisation, which we labelled before as a pre-condition for all true form from the inside out, requires the complete self-identification of the artist with the artwork and its becoming. (Furtwangler & Abendroth, 1955, 68)1
1 „Das Gesetz der Improvisation, wie wir es vorhin gekennzeichnet haben als Voraussetzung aller echten Form von innen heraus, verlangt ein völliges Sich-Identifizieren des Künstlers mit dem Werk und dessen Werden".
Because we too are transformed: the piano player identifies himself with the Piano concerto in E-flat major by Beethoven, when he plays it, the separation between the I of the performer and the I of the Other, of the composer, is suspended. The Principium individuationis melts in the fire of such mystical-musical unification and nothing can be more real, nothing can be felt with deeper certainty than this mysterious act of becoming one between us, the [musical] work and its creator. (Walter, 1957, 31)2
Prepared in such a way, this Something will come, which is unteachable, that favour of the silent hour, because the spirit of the composer is speaking to us, that moment of the unconscious, of the enruptedness-from-oneself, call it, as you may, intuition, mercy — there all bonds, all inhibitions disappear. They are felt as suspended. One does not feel anymore: I am playing, but rather, it is playing, and behold, everything is correct; the melodies flow from your fingers as if from a divine hand, it streams through you, and you let yourself be carried from this streaming and you experience with humility the highest joy of the reproductive artist: to be only a medium, only a mediator between the divine, the eternal, and man. (Fischer, 1959, 36)3
A common theme in all these statements is the sense of unity between the I and music within musical performance, what I would like to call the phenomenon of musical identification. A fundamental characteristic of this phenomenon is the sense that the I does not belong to itself, but is somehow beyond oneself, which is expressed, for example, in the following:
Merk's, virtuosos and showmen: Self-consciousness makes one incapable of music. Capable of music is he, who is "not I," "in state of favour," "inspired," "talking in tongues." The sensitive language calls this "being-outside-of-oneself." (Gulda, 1971, 9)4
„Denn auch wir verwandeln uns: der Pianist identifiziert sich mit dem Beethovenschen Es-Dur-Konzert, wenn er es spielt, die Trennung zwischen dem Ich des Ausführenden und dem des Anderen, des Komponisten, wird aufgehoben. Das Principium individuationis schmilzt im Feuer solcher mystisch-musikalischen Vereinigung, und nichts kann realer sein, nichts können wir mit so tiefer Sicherheit empfinden als diesen geheimnisvollen Akt der Einswerdung zwischen uns, dem Werk und seinem Schöpfer".
„So vorbereitet, wird sich jenes Etwas einstellen, das unlehrbar ist, jene Gunst der stillen Stunde, da der Geist des Komponisten zu uns spricht, jener Moment des Unbewußten, des Sichselbst-Entrücktseins, nennen Sie es Intuition, Gnade — da lösen sich alle Bindungen, alle Hemmungen schwinden. Sie fühlen sich schwebend. Man fühlt nicht mehr: ich spiele, sondern es spielt, und siehe, alles ist richtig; wie von göttlicher Hand gelenkt entfließen die Melodien Ihren Fingern, es durchströmt Sie, und Sie lassen sich von diesem Strömen tragen, und Sie erleben in Demut das höchste Glück des nachschaffenden Künstlers: nur noch Medium, nur Mittler zu sein zwischen dem Göttlichen, dem Ewigen und den Menschen".
„Merk's, Virtuose und Showman: Self-consciousness [sic!] macht musikunfähig. Musikfähig ist der, der ,nicht ich', ,im Zustand der Gnade', ,inspiriert', ,in Zungen redend' ist. ,Außersichsein' nennt das die feinfühlige Sprache".
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I believe that every composer of talent (not to speak of genius) in his moments of creative fever has given birth to thoughts, ideas, designs that lay altogether beyond the reach of his conscious will and control. In speaking of the products of such periods we have hit upon exactly the right word when we say that the composer "has surpassed himself." For, in saying this we recognise that the act of surpassing one's self precludes the control of the self. (Hofmann, 1920, ix)
All these musicians seem to be describing the same phenomenon, each from a different perspective and in his own way. How do we account for these testimonies? The quoted statements are a reflection of particular life-experiences from the performative and interpretative practice of these musicians. Are these life-experiences subject to phenomenological investigation and how? In phenomenological terms, this question can only be answered by demonstrating how these experiences are given to phenomenological inquiry. The question of how a phenomenon gives itself, "purely and strictly" (Marion, 2002, 39)5, has been the cornerstone of phenomenology and a point of difference between phenomenologists. The way phenomena give themselves is a fundamental aspect of what characterizes them as such and as objects of phenomenological inquiry6.
Thus, as part of the phenomenological investigation into the life-experience of musical identification, one is immediately confronted with two fundamental questions. One, how is it possible for a subject to find itself in such a union with something else (i. e. music) to the extent that there is no longer any perceivable difference between subject and object? And two, how is this phenomenon given, both "in itself" and as an "object" of phenomenological investigation? Herein lies the issue of whether the I (as subject) or
« purement et strictement » (Marion, 2005, 61).
Embracing what musicians have to say about their experience as a starting point of a phenomenological investigation may seem to invest too much confidence in their capacity for reflective self-examination. As early as Plato's Ion we find the idea that musical, and, in fact, all artistic practice, isn't a matter of "art" (techne), but rather of divine inspiration: "the god takes the mind out of [poets] and uses them as his servants [...] so that we their hearers may know it is not they, in whom mind is not present, who tell things of such great value, but the god himself who speaks" (Plato, 1996, 534c-d). Similarly, Kant underscores the fact that "[g]enius itself cannot describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about its products" (Kant, 1987, 308) and "himself does not know, and hence also cannot teach it to anyone else" (Kant, 1987, 309). Thus, a common conception seems to be that artists, precisely when they are actually good at their "art," do not really know what they are doing, or, rather, how, i. e. by what means, they are doing it. To a certain extent, this seems to be true. However, if we think along the lines of phenomenological inquiry — and, more precisely, through the lens of the early Heidegger — one should take heed not to dogmatize the lack of knowledge and immediacy in artistic practice, but, rather, to try and follow the artist also in his reflections on his own art. These may provide valuable insights as well, when approached with the rigorousness of phenomenological inquiry.
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music (as object) are the primary constitutive agents of musical experience, or whether it is their relation, which "precedes" and constitutes them. The life-experience of musical identification suggests that it is, in fact, the relation between I and music, which precedes and defines what we call musical subjectivity and the musical object.
Musical identification cannot be explained within the subject-object dichotomy, which dominates classical phenomenological discourse in the field of aesthetics. The identification between the I and music is not a by-product of the I perceiving or thinking music as an "aesthetic" or any other type of "object," but is rather a primal relation, which itself constitutes, for the first time, musical subjectivity and objectivity. From this point of view, there is no musical "subject," or musical "object," prior to musical identification. Such experience reveals that a proper phenomenology of music — a music phenomenology — would have to develop methodological tools, which conceive of the relation between I and music as the originary given of phenomenology. In the following text, Heidegger's early phenomenological theory will be used as a backbone to understanding how such a methodological framework is possible. In this respect, Heidegger's early views differ Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, which defines the subject-object paradigm as essential to phenomenological investigation. I will argue that, unlike Heidegger's, Husserl's take on phenomenal givenness — and its implications for phenomenological aesthetics — does not allow for the proper investigation of musical identification.
Further, musical identification will be articulated and interpreted in light of the musicological work of Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht and the phenomenological work of Günther Anders and Ilya Yonchev. These thinkers have all considered musical identification as a fundamental phenomenon of musical experience, while interpreting it in various ways. While Eggebrecht remains within the subject-object-dichotomy, Anders and Yonchev both develop the idea of musical Mitsein, a Being-with-music, which dispenses with the subject-object premise altogether and interprets musical life-experience as a mode of Being within which the sense of Being and musical sense coincide.
2. HEIDEGGER'S RELATIONAL PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE GIVENNESS OF MUSICAL IDENTIFICATION
In order to be investigated as a phenomenon, the life-experience of musical identification must first be articulated in terms of its mode of givenness7. In his early phenomenology, Heidegger develops an idea of phenomenal givenness, which is
All quotes by Husserl and Heidegger are given using the pagination of the original German texts.
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suitable for the investigation of musical identification, because it is based on the idea that phenomenology should explore life-experiences in their fundamentally relational character, i. e. in the "resonance" or "consonance" between I and world8. With this view, Heidegger departs from the methodological framework of his mentor, Edmund Husserl, who defines phenomenal givenness as always constituted by consciousness. This difference is particularly important because it reflects on alternative ways of understanding musical life-experience. The identification between the I and music cannot properly be understood on the basis of the subject-object paradigm stemming from Husserl's transcendental phenomenology, and emerging in later phenomenological theories of aesthetic experience. Rather, it is only the idea of primary relationality between the I and the world developed by the early Heidegger, which allows for proper phenomenological inquiry into musical identification9.
A statement of Husserl's position on the problem of givenness, and one that Heidegger refers to explicitly, is the so-called "principle of all principles":
No conceivable theory can make us err with respect to the principle of all principles: that every originary giving intuition is a legitimizing source of cognition, that everything origi-narily (so to speak, in its "personal" actuality) offered to us in "intuition" is to be accepted simply as what it is given as being, but also only within the limits in which it is given there. (Husserl, 1982, 43-44, translation modified)10
Husserl, at least in his transcendental-idealistic period, clearly considers givenness in relation to intuition (Intuition or Anschauung). "Intuition" refers here to the reflective act of consciousness on its own content11. According to Husserl, all originary
Heidegger's work from this period has been a topic of considerable analysis in recent years. For an
overview, see Westerlund (2014, 30-138), particularly (Westerlund, 2014, 75-79).
In the following, I will not deal with Heidegger's "philosophy of art," i. e. the philosophy expounded in The Origin of the Work of Art (cf. Heidegger, 2012), because I am interested in Heidegger's purely phenomenological writings, before the Seinsfrage. Thus, Heidegger's ontological period-and the period after the so-called Kehre — will not be discussed in this investigation.
„Am Prinzip aller Prinzipien: dass jede originär gebende Anschauung eine Rechtsquelle der Erkenntnis sei, dass alles, was sich uns in der ,Intuition originär, (sozusagen in seiner leibhaften Wirklichkeit) darbietet, einfach hinzunehmen sei, als was es sich gibt, aber auch nur in den Schranken, in denen es sich da gibt, kann uns keine erdenkliche Theorie irre machen" (Husserl, 1976, 43-44). "It then becomes evident that every mental process belonging to the stream which can be reached by our reflective regard has an essence of its own which can be seized upon intuitively, a 'content' which allows of being considered by itself in its ownness" (Husserl, 1982, 61). „Es wird dann evident, daß jedes Erlebnis des Stromes, das der reflektive Blick zu treffen vermag, ein eigenes, intuitiv zu erfassendes Wesen hat, einen ,Inhalt', der sich in seiner Eigenheit für sich betrachten läßt" (Husserl, 1976, 61).
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givenness is constituted by transcendental consciousness: "in givenness we see that the object constitutes itself in knowing, that one can distinguish as many basic forms of acts of knowing, groups, and interconnections of acts of knowing, as there are basic forms of objectivity" (Husserl, 1999, 75)12. Every constitutional act is a bestowing of sense (Sinngebung) onto an object:
all real unities are "unities of sense." Unities of sense presuppose (as I again emphasize: not because we can deduce it from some metaphysical postulates or other, but because we can show it by an intuitive, completely indubitable procedure) a sense-bestowing consciousness which, for its part, exists absolutely and not by virtue of another sense-bestowal. (Husserl, 1982, 106)13
Consciousness bestows sense on every object that is given to it — it is, in fact, given to consciousness only insofar as it has been given sense by consciousness. Conversely, consciousness itself exists "absolutely," in that it doesn't need to be given sense, in order to be14.
12 „in der Gegebenheit sehen wir, daß der Gegenstand sich in der Erkenntnis konstituiert, daß so viele Grundgestaltungen der Gegenständlichkeit zu scheiden sind, so viele Grundgestaltungen auch der gebenden Erkenntnisakte und Gruppen, Zusammenhänge von Erkenntnisakten" (Husserl, 1999, 75).
13 „Alle realen Einheiten sind Einheiten des Sinnes'. Sinneseinheiten setzen (ich betone wiederholt: nicht weil wir aus irgendwelchen metaphysischen Postulaten deduzieren, sondern weil wir es in intuitivem, völlig zweifellosem Verfahren aufweisen können) sinngebendes Bewußtsein voraus, das seinerseits absolut und nicht selbst wieder durch Sinngebung ist" (Husserl, 1976, 120).
14 The problem of the constitution of consciousness itself is, of course, much more complex. Husserl struggled throughout his life to solve this "most difficult of all phenomenological problems" (Husserl, 1991, 276), „das schwierigste aller phänomenologischen Probleme" (Husserl, 1969, 276), namely the problem of the constitution of time-consciousness, as John Brough (2010, 21-22) points out. Husserl thought that consciousness would have to constitute time itself, in order for acts and objects to appear as time-objects. The pre-temporal consciousness that is "yet" to constitute time has been called by Husserl "absolute flow" (absoluter Fluss) (Husserl, 1969), "primal stream" (Urstrom) (Husserl, 2001), "primal presence" (Urpräsenz) (Husserl, 2006, 110) and so forth. These are, however, only "metaphors" for what is truly meant: "This flow is something we speak of in conformity with what is constituted, but it is not 'something in objective time.' It is absolute subjectivity and has the absolute properties of something to be designated metaphorically as 'flow'; of something that originates in a point of actuality, in a primal source-point, 'the now,' and so on. In the actuality-experience we have the primal source-point and a continuity of moments of reverberation. For all of this, we lack names" (Husserl, 1991, 75). „Dieser Fluss ist etwas, das wir nach dem Konstituierten so nennen, aber es ist nichts zeitlich ,Objektives'. Es ist die absolute Subjektivität und hat die absoluten Eigenschaften eines im Bilde als ,Fluss' zu Bezeichnenden, in einem Aktualitätspunkt, Urquellpunkt, Jetzt' Entspringenden usw. Im Aktualitätserlebnis haben wir den Urquellpunkt und eine Kontinuität von Nachhallmomenten. Für all das fehlen uns die Namen" (Husserl, 1969, 75). In the issue of the pre-temporal flow of consciousness, Husserl's main problem is that of infinite regress. According to Husserl, every phenomenological given is given to consciousness. If the absolute
Now, Heidegger's own conception of "originary givenness" is somewhat different. The way he re-interprets the "principle of all principles" is very telling:
If by a principle one were to understand a theoretical proposition, this designation would not be fitting. However, that Husserl speaks of a principle of principles, of something that precedes all principles, in regard to which no theory can lead us astray, already shows (although Husserl does not explicitly say so) that it does not have a theoretical character. It is the primordial intention of genuine life, the primordial bearing of life-experience [des Erlebens] and life as such, the absolute sympathy with life that is identical with life-experience. To begin with, i. e. coming along this path from the theoretical while freeing ourselves more and more from it, we always see this basic bearing, we have an orientation to it. The same basic bearing first becomes absolute when we live in it — and that is not achieved by any constructed system of concepts, regardless of how extensive it may be, but only through phenomenological life in its ever-growing self-intensification. (Heidegger, 2008, 109-110)15
While Husserl, in defining the "principle," is focused primarily on the givenness of pure phenomena of and to transcendental consciousness, Heidegger is pointing to something different, namely the "life-experience" in itself, as it gives itself in the phe-nomenologist's "sympathy with life." While not necessarily co-incidental with what Husserl conceived of as the pre-phenomenological natural attitude16, this "sympathy"
flow of time-consciousness is to be a "given," it has to be given to a certain consciousness; but such a consciousness also has to be a given for a consciousness and so ad infinitum. Ultimately, the question is if there could be phenomenological givenness that is not given to phenomenological reflection. Dan Zahavi suggests that Husserl would subscribe to the idea of "pre-reflective self-manifestation of consciousness" (Zahavi, 2003, 171)-a position, which would solve the problem of infinite regress. It seems, however, that Husserl himself never reached a clear and unambiguous answer to these questions. Regarding the phenomenon of musical identification, it would seem that it has a similarly enigmatic nature, as it decidedly lays beyond the constitutive powers of subjectivity. One could say that the "absolute flow" and musical identification are similarly challenging phenomena to grasp.
„Verstünde man unter Prinzip einen theoretischen Satz, dann wäre die Bezeichnung nicht kongruent. Aber schon, daß Husserl von einem Prinzip der Prinzipien spricht, also von etwas, das allen Prinzipien vorausliegt, woran keine Theorie irre machen kann, zeigt, daß es nicht theoretischer Natur ist, wenn auch Husserl darüber sich nicht ausspricht. Es ist die Urintention des wahrhaften Lebens überhaupt, die Urhaltung des Erlebens und Lebens als solchen, die absolute, mit dem Erleben selbst identische Lebenssympathie. Vorläufig, d. h. auf diesem Weg vom Theoretischen herkommend, in der Weise des immermehr Sichfreimachens von ihm, sehen wir diese Grundhaltung immer, wir haben zu ihr eine Orientierung. Dieselbe Grundhaltung ist erst absolut, wenn wir in ihr selbst leben — und das erreicht kein noch so weit gebautes Begriffssystem, sondern das phänomenologische Leben in seiner wachsenden Steigerung seiner selbst" (Heidegger, 1999, 109-110). In Husserl's phenomenology, phenomenological givenness to consciousness implies the fulfilment of the phenomenological reduction or епо^Ц (for the different "ways" to the reduction see Kern
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is clearly directed at the "lifeworld," the world of immediate givenness of the "environmental something" (Umweltliches). A classic example is the example of the lectern in the lecture-room:
You come as usual into this lecture-room at the usual hour and go to your usual place. Focus on this experience of "seeing your place," or you can in turn put yourselves in my own position: coming into the lecture-room, I see the lectern. We dispense with a verbal formulation of this. What do "I" see? Brown surfaces, at right angles to one another? No, I see something else. A largish box with another smaller one set upon it? Not at all. I see the lectern at which I am to speak. You see the lectern, from which you are to be addressed, and from where I have spoken to you previously. In pure experience there is no "founding" interconnection, as if I first of all see intersecting brown surfaces, which then reveal themselves to me as a box, then as a desk, then as an academic lecturing desk, a lectern, so that I attach lectern-hood to the box like a label. All that is simply bad and misguided interpretation, diversion from a pure seeing into the experience. I see the lectern in one fell swoop, so to speak, and not in isolation, but as adjusted a bit too high for me. I see — and immediately so — a book lying upon it as annoying to me (a book, not a collection of layered pages with black marks strewn upon them), I see the lectern in an orientation, an illumination, a background. (Heidegger, 2008, 70-71)17
(1962). The reduction involves the bracketing of the so-called "natural attitude," which is how every subject (or I) relates to the world in everyday and pre-phenomenological scientific "life." The natural attitude embraces the belief, among others, of "objective reality" or "transcendence" (being, which is independent of and "outside" of consciousness) of the world and the groundedness of the I as a being among beings in this world (Husserl, 1982, 52). The world, as it is given to the natural attitude, is a world of practical values, meanings and interactions (Husserl, 1982, 50). The natural attitude is the attitude in which "theoretical consciousness" operates and includes all "states of emotion and of willing" of the I (Husserl, 1982, 50). In the phenomenological reduction this "worldly" I, along with all it considers "self-evident," must be "bracketed," beginning with everything "transcendent" as such (Husserl, 1999, 39). The phenomenological reduction institutes the phenomenological attitude, which "intuits" the essences (Wesen) of consciousness.
17 „Sie kommen wie gewöhnlich in diesen Hörsaal um die gewohnte Stunde und gehen auf Ihren gewohnten Platz zu. Dieses Erlebnis des ,Sehens Ihres Platzes' halten Sie fest, oder Sie können meine eigene Einstellung ebenfalls vollziehen: In den Hörsaal tretend, sehe ich das Katheder. Wir nehmen ganz davon Abstand, das Erlebnis sprachlich zu formulieren. Was sehe ,ich'? Braune Flächen, die sich rechtwinklig schneiden? Nein, ich sehe etwas anderes. Eine Kiste, und zwar eine größere, mit einer kleineren daraufgebaut? Keineswegs, ich sehe das Katheder, an dem ich sprechen soll, Sie sehen das Katheder, von dem aus zu Ihnen gesprochen wird, an dem ich schon gesprochen habe. Es liegt im reinen Erlebnis auch kein — wie man sagt — Fundierungszusammenhang, als sähe ich zuerst braune, sich schneidende Flächen, die sich mir dann als Kiste, dann als Pult, weiterhin als akademisches Sprechpult, als Katheder gäben, so daß ich das Kathederhafte gleichsam der Kiste aufklebte wie ein Etikett. All das ist schlechte, mißdeutete Interpretation, Abbiegung vom reinen Hineinschauen in das Erlebnis. Ich sehe das Katheder gleichsam in einem Schlag; ich sehe es nicht nur isoliert, ich sehe das Pult als für mich zu hoch gestellt. Ich sehe ein Buch darauf liegend, unmittelbar als mich störend (ein Buch, nicht etwa eine Anzahl geschichteter Blätter mit schwarzen
In this case, the immediately given is the lectern as an object with a particular "orientation" and sense for me. There is no "founding interconnection" (Fundie-rungszusammenhang) in its givenness to me as such-it is given primarily and firstly as a meaningful object to me and not as a "physical object" in itself to be subsequently imbued with meaning: "the meaningful is primary and immediately given to me without any mental detours across thing-oriented apprehension" (Heidegger, 2008, 73)18. This relationship between I and world is a sort of resonance (Mitschwingen) or con-sonance (Mitanklingen):
In this experiencing, in this living-towards, there is something of me: my "I" goes out beyond itself and resonates with this seeing [.] More precisely: only through the accord of this particular "I" does it experience something environmental [ein Umweltliches], where we can say that "it worlds." Wherever and whenever "it worlds" for me, I am somehow there. (Heidegger, 2008, 73)19
The world is thus not a simple "object" for a subject, but rather resonates with the I in a "chord" of meaning. There is also a rhythm in the way life-experience is given: "the environing world does not stand there with a fixed index of existence, but floats away in the experiencing, bearing within it the rhythm of experience, and can be experienced only in this rhythmic way" (Heidegger, 2008, 98)20.
According to Heidegger, this immediate, resonating and rhythmic, experience should be the primary focus of phenomenology. Unlike Husserl's, Heidegger's grasp of phenomenal givenness is beyond the subject-object divide to begin with; rather than a subject-object phenomenological attitude, Heidegger is trying to develop what I would call a relational phenomenological attitude. It is the vibrant relation between I and world, which constitutes primary phenomenal givenness, not consciousness in and of itself. This, in turn, is the only viable foundation for the phenomenological inquiry into musical identification. In identifying with music, the I finds itself first and fore-
Flecken bestreut), ich sehe das Katheder in einer Orientierung, Beleuchtung, einem Hintergrund" (Heidegger, 1999, 70-71).
„das Bedeutsame ist das Primäre, gibt sich mir unmittelbar, ohne jeden gedanklichen Umweg über ein Sacherfassen" (Heidegger, 2008, 73).
„In diesem Erleben, in diesem Hinleben zu, liegt etwas von mir: Es geht mein Ich voll aus sich heraus und schwingt mit in diesem ,Sehen' [...] Genauer: Nur in dem Mitanklingen des jeweiligen eigenen Ich erlebt es ein Umweltliches, weitet es, und wo und wenn es für mich weitet, bin ich irgendwie ganz dabei" (Heidegger, 1999, 73).
„[Wir fanden ferner], daß die Umwelt nicht dasteht mit einem festen Index der Existenz, sondern daß sie im Erleben entschwebt, in sich selbst den Rhythmus des Erlebnisses trägt und nur als dieses Rhythmische sich erleben läßt" (Heidegger, 1999, 98).
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most in a relation — it is in this relation that it is, qua I, first imbued with sense; which is also the case with regard to the musical "object." In fact, music is, at first glance, no object at all, but rather simply an "aspect" of musical identification.
Musical identification is not simply an isolated phenomenon, but has a foundational role for the phenomenology of music as a "primal science" (Urwissenschaft), in Heidegger's terms. It defines the field of music phenomenology as fundamentally relational, i. e. as based on the primal, and constitutive, relation between the I and music. It is on the basis of this relation that musical phenomenology can develop its own thematic field. Conversely, when treated simply as an "object," music (and musical experience) becomes a matter of theoretical science. Theoretical science objectifies (vergegenstandigt) and "things" (verdinglicht) the world:
Science is knowledge and knowledge has objects. Science determines and fixes objects in an objective manner. A science of experiences [von Erlebnissen] would have to objectify experiences and thus strip away their non-objective character as lived experience and event of appropriation. (Heidegger, 2008, 76)21
Theoretization is "the process of ever intensifying objectification as a process of de-vivification" (Heidegger, 2008, 91)22. From the point of view of musical life-experience, phenomenology may also discuss music as "object," but only as an aspect of the primal identification between the I and music. To the contrary, when theoretical science objectifies music, without taking into account the constitutive role of musical identification, the original sense of music is obscured.
Even traditional phenomenological aesthetics often deal with music in an objectifying manner, while disregarding the fundamentally relational character of musical life-experience. One classic example is Roman Ingarden's (1986) phenomenology of musical works. While suggesting that his starting point is "the unsystematized convictions that we encounter in daily life in our communion with musical works before we succumb to one particular theory or another" and "the given of the immediate musical experience" (Ingarden, 1986, 1), Ingarden nevertheless defines the musical work as "an object persisting in time" (Ingarden, 1986, 15). Contrary to Ingarden, I would argue that it is precisely in immediate musical experience that the musical work is not primarily an object, but rather the I as musical. I am the musical work, and it is, vice versa, me, though the musical work is not simply a musical "reflection" of myself, and
„Wissenschaft ist Erkenntnis; Erkenntnis hat Objekte, Gegenstände. Sie stellt fest, objektiv fest. Eine Wissenschaft von Erlebnissen müßte diese also doch vergegenständlichen, objektivieren, d. h. gera-
de ihres nicht objektartigen Er-lebnis- und Ereignischarakters entkleide" (Heidegger, 1999, 76). „der Prozeß sich steigernder Objektivierung als Prozeß der Ent-lebung" (Heidegger, 1999, 91).
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22
neither am I a reflection of the work-rather, what constitutes us both, is the relation in which we find ourselves. Of course, it must be stressed that Ingarden distinguishes between the musical work and an individual performance of that work. Thus, it may be argued that what I am referring to here is not the work, but rather, a particular performance of that work and one's experience of it. I would claim, however, that the very differentiation between "work" and "performance," at least in Ingarden's terms, does not proceed from immediate musical experience, but rather, from a theoretical construct. For, as as I would suggest on the basis of my own musical experience — and has been made clear by the testimonies of various prominent musicians of the 20th century — the fundamental given of musical life-experience is musical identification, i. e. the identification between subject and object, I and music. It is only after this relation has been "bracketed" that the musical work (or its individual performance) can become an "object" in Ingarden's sense, i. e. an entity, separate from the I. Such an entity is surely thinkable, but it is not the primary given of musical life-experience and, by extension, of the phenomenology of music. Within musical identification, the musical work, just as the I, is constituted by this relation; to the contrary, the musical work qua object is constituted either by the subject, as in Husserlian phenomenology, or "in itself," as, for example, in gestalt theory23.
Another example of a phenomenological aesthetics of music, based on the subject-object dichotomy, is Mikel Dufrenne's (1973) theory of aesthetic experience. Contrary to Ingarden, Dufrenne acknowledges that "the musical work is itself only when performed: thus is it present" (Dufrenne, 1973, 4). However, in Dufrenne's theory, music is once again objectified: "The performance adds nothing. And yet it adds everything: the possibility of being heard, that is, of being present in its own way to a consciousness and becoming an aesthetic object for that consciousness" (Dufrenne, 1973, 4). According to Dufrenne, the musical work is known as aesthetic object, wherein its sense lies:
Let us then cease to wonder where the musical work proper resides, so that we may
23 Such is Max Wertheimer's view who understands objective wholes as governed by laws, immanent to objectivity: such a whole is, for example, "a Beethoven symphony where from a part of the whole we could grasp something of the inner structure of the whole itself. The fundamental laws, then, would not be piecemeal laws but structural characteristics of the whole." (Wertheimer, 1984, 327) According to Wertheimer, "[t]he given is in itself, to varying degrees, 'made whole': given are more or less structured, more or less determined wholes and whole processes, with often very concrete whole-characteristics, with inner laws, characteristic whole-tendencies, whole-conditions for their parts" (Wertheimer, 1922, 52). „Das Gegebene ist an sich, in verschiedenem Grade ,gestaltet': gegeben sind mehr oder weniger durchstrukturierte, mehr oder weniger bestimmte Ganze und Ganzprozesse, mit vielfach sehr konkreten Ganzeigenschaften, mit inneren Gesetzlichkeiten, charakteristischen Ganztendenzen, mit Ganzbedingtheiten für ihre Teile".
witness the emergence of the aesthetic object; for if I am to know the work, it must be present before me as an aesthetic object. (Dufrenne, 1973, 5)
It should be noted that Dufrenne comes closer to a relational phenomenological view in his theory of perception, which is based on Merleau-Ponty (1962):
The face of perception calls on us to conceive of a relation between subject and object such that the one exists only by means of the other such that the subject is relative to the object in the same way that the object is relative to the subject. In other words, the subject can encounter the object only if it is first on a level with it, if it prepares for the object from within its own depths, and if the object is offered to it with all its exteriority. This reconciliation of subject and object takes place within the subject himself, in whom the body as lived and the body as object are identified. (Dufrenne, 1973, 219)
One may find here an analogy of musical identification in the identification of my body as lived with my body as object. However, just as with my body, in my immediate musical experience I do not necessarily have to grasp music as an object of experience. Rather, music is me, just as my body is me. Its objectification is a subsequent act — an act of consciousness. Primal musical life-experience is the experience of identification with music, prior to all its objectifications (e. g. as an aesthetic object).
3. MUSICAL IDENTIFICATION AS A RELATIONAL PHENOMENON
The effort to grasp musical identification as a relational phenomenon opens up a vast field of questions with regard to the way we look at musical experience not only in philosophy, but also in musicology and perhaps in all discourse about music. A more radical viewpoint may suggest that what we can observe in music and what we can say of it, is not dependent on our purely subjective efforts-music, as object of inquiry, does not really belong to us. One could then be tempted to suppose that music suspends our subjectivity entirely. Such a view has been expounded by musicologist Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht. Eggebrecht defines "aesthetic identification" as being beyond the subject-object dichotomy:
in the working-upon and hearing of music the subject-object relation is suspended in a concept of identity of such a kind that here the subject is at the same time object and the object is at the same time subject. (Eggebrecht, 1977, 105)24
„[Daraus folgt,] daß beim Wirken und Vernehmen von Musik der Subjekt-Objekt-Bezug aufgehoben ist in einen Begriff der Identität derart, daß hier das Subjekt zugleich Objekt und das Objekt zugleich Subjekt ist".
24
By aesthetic identification, in particular, Eggebrecht understands "the becoming-same of intended sense and sensual understanding" (Eggebrecht, 1977, 105)25. In musical identification, what is intended by the I becomes the same as the very understanding, which intends it. The musical I understands itself and its own sense as music. According to Eggebrecht, music is in the role of "aesthetically occupying" the I: "In the process of aesthetic occupation — regardless of any differentiation between working-upon and hearing-music is always the trigger, the doer, the 'subject'" (Eggebrecht, 1999, 102)26. Thus, musical sense structure is "totalitarian" in that it "inscribes its sense and content in the soul of the listener as if on a tabula rasa" (Eggebrecht, 1977, 110)27.
It seems to me that Eggebrecht's concept of the listener as "tabula rasa" has a certain one-sidedness to it that could lead one in the wrong direction. Certainly, most practitioners would agree that there is always something "new" and "unheard of" in every instance of true musical identification. For example, Bruno Walter writes:
I believe that I am allowed to speak of my own life in that the more often I had to perform a musical work, the more careful I was to enliven in myself anew the feeling of the first inspiration I had for it, to check over and over again if that first spontaneity hasn't subsided into routine expression. [...] It may sound paradoxical but for me the greatness and beauty of masterworks of all art is not statically definitive: they live, they become greater and more beautiful with each encounter, just like works of little significance exhaust themselves and grow pale. To the question, if I know Mozart's Symphony in G-Moll, I would actually have to say: today I believe I know it-tomorrow it will probably be new to me, because often have I thought that I was familiar with it; and often has it become new to me again. (Walter, 1957, 137-138)28
25 „Gleichwerdung von intendiertem Sinn und sinnlichem Verstehen".
26 „Im Prozeß der ästhetischen Okkupation ist — trotz aller Unterscheidung von Wirken und Vernehmen — immer die Musik der Auslöser, der Macher, das Subjekt".
27 ,,inscribiert seinen Sinn und Gehalt in die Seele des Zuhörers wie auf eine tabula rasa".
28 „Ich glaube hier aus meinem eigenen Leben berichten zu dürfen, das ich, je öfter ich ein Werk aufzuführen hatte, desto sorgsamer darauf bedacht war, das Gefühl der ersten Begeisterung dafür in mir neu zu beleben, immer wieder zu überprüfen, ob jene erste Spontaneitat auch nicht einem routinierten Ausdruck gewichen sei. [...] Ja, so paradox es klingen mag, für mich ist Größe und Schönheit der Meisterwerke aller Künste nichts statisch Definitives: sie leben, sie werden bei jeder Begegnung größer und schöner, so wie Werke geringerer Bedeutung ermatten und verblassen. Auf die Frage, ob ich Mozarts g-Moll-Symphonie kenne, müßte ich eigentlich antworten: heut' glaube ich sie zu kennen — morgen wird sie mir vielleicht neu sein, denn oft schon dachte ich mit ihr vertraut zu sein; und oft ist sie mir dann wieder neu geworden".
A similar thought is reckoned by Sergiu Celibidache: "Everything in music is once and for all [einmalig], in its arising [Entstehung]. There is no Beethoven's Fifth, rather it arises [entsteht] in the moment" (Celibidache, 2008, 51-52)29. Thus, in a certain sense, the musician (and, of course, the listener) is always taken anew by music — an instance of musical identification has to be, at least in a certain sense, original. But at the same time Eggebrecht's "tabula rasa" theory doesn't account for the feeling of actual presence of the I, which, admittedly, is not the I of everyday experience, but which still has an intensified feeling of self, or rather, of experienced musical sense as having filled up the self. As Walter maintains,
The ideal musical interpreter will therefore be the one who, completely filled with the work, is completely focused on the work, but at the same time uses the full force of his own personality, and thus also the pleasure of exercising his own talent, for the reproduction of the work, who has thus preserved the joy of music-making of his younger years and is allowed to pour his own essence into the interpretation, because it has entered into an intimate union with that of the composer. (Walter, 1957, 26)30
Although we find the I musically transformed, it is not, in Walter's account, occupied by music in a totalitarian manner. The I is not simply a tabula rasa. To the contrary, it participates in its relation with music with the "full force" of its "personality." This is also my intuition as to the nature of musical identification. We are engaged in musical experience not because it relieves us of our selves, but because it changes our selves — we experience our selves in a wholly different manner. It is, however, we who participate in this relation31.
29 „Alles in der Musik ist einmalig, in ihrer Entstehung. Es gibt auch keine Wiederholung. Es gibt doch nicht die Fünfte Beethoven, sondern sie entsteht im Augenblick".
30 „Der ideale musikalische Interpret wird also der sein, der, ganz vom Werk erfüllt, ganz auf das Werk gerichtet ist, zugleich aber die volle Kraft der eigenen Persönlichkeit, damit auch die Lust an der Betätigung des eigenen Talentes für die Wiedergabe des Werkes einsetzt, der also die Musizierlust seiner jungen Jahre bewahrt hat und sein eigenstes Wesen in die Interpretation ergießen darf, weil es mit dem des Komponisten eine innige Verbindung eingegangen ist".
31 Such a view of musical experience as intensifying the feeling of agency has been explored by Simon H0ffding (2018) in his topography of musical absorption. According to H0ffding, "musical action is not primarily generated by egoic consciousness. What is passive is the ego and what is active is what I have called the enlarged sense of subjectivity" (H0ffding, 2018, 188). The enlarged sense of subjectivity is a "mind-world continuum" (H0ffding, 2018, 183). The subject's active participation in musical experience is particularly evident in what H0ffding calls ex-static absorption: "From the perspective of ex-static absorption [...] we see a strengthened sense of agency insofar as I find myself in an agential position so superior that I can neutrally look over the music as a beautiful landscape that unfolds by itself, and choose not to interfere. The passive dimension is clearly seen in this abstention from interference" (H0ffding, 2018, 193).
It is this strange tension between the musical and non-musical I, which is yet to be explored in depth in a phenomenological perspective. It is clear that I am not the same "within" and "outside of" the experience of musical identification. On the one hand, my self is fundamentally different, as it is constituted in a different way. On the other, in both cases, it is always I who am experiencing. As for the idea of music as quasi-object, the point, although trivial, must once again be made that music has sense only to the I, which hears itself in music. This point is, however, less trivial, when one emphasises that the I does not constitute what it hears as itself-it is the relation between I and music, which constitutes musical identification. Music is not a mirror of the I, nor does the I communicate with "itself" (in a trivial sense) in musical experience. Rather, the I finds itself musically transformed, imbued with musical sense. This I is no longer an autonomous, self-constituting consciousness, but an aspect of a "heteronomous" relation with music.
One way of interpreting the difference between musical and non-musical I (and between musical and non-musical experience), is to grasp them as alternative modes of being, as in Günther Anders' music philosophy. Influenced strongly by Heidegger's Sein und Zeit, Anders differentiates between being-in-the-world and being-in-music. The reconciliation of these modes of being depends on the realization
.. .that, on the one hand, one lives in the world, in the medium of one's own historical life, understands the world and life comparatively [...] that, on the other hand, one is not in the world but "in music," whereby the word music does not indicate a piece of the world that [one] can run into in the world, in short: that one lives in determinations that shake, even abolish, the average fundamental ontological characters of human existence, and in turn indicate an own mode of existence. (Anders, 2017, 16)32
These average ontological characters include not only being-in-the-world, but also the subject-object dichotomy. Musical life-experience changes the ontological structure of subjectivity. According to Anders, the relation between I and music is a "structure" beyond the subject-object alternative (Anders, 2017, 60), it is a mode of "Being-with" (Mitsein):
In this situation of being-with of subjectivity with the object what is usually separate is
„. dass man einerseits in der Welt, im Medium eigenen geschichtlichen Lebens lebt, Welt und Leben vergleichsweise versteht (oder sich geradezu thematisch in diesem Verstehen bewegt — das heißt philosophiert); dass man andererseits nicht in Welt, sondern ,in Musik' ist, wobei das Wort Musik kein in der Welt treffbares Weltstück anzeigt, kurz: dass man in Bestimmungen lebt, die die durchschnittlichen ontologischen Fundamentalcharaktere menschlichen Daseins erschüttern, ja aufheben, und ihrerseits eine eigene Existenzart anzeigen".
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now identical. Both, subjectivity and object, are now at the same time [i. e. the same — Ch. V.]. And this at-the-same-time guarantees that it is the same existence, which lives for itself in its immediacy and which steps out of itself to make objects of the world. (Anders, 2017, 126)33
As a possibility of Being (Seinsmoglichkeit), "Being-with" is also considered a carrying-out-with or actualization-with (Mitvollzug34): one performs (or listens to) music, while being performed (or listened to) as music. One is "actualized" with the "actualization" of music — there is, in effect, no difference between the I and music. Musical experience consists in the I being actualized with the "forms of movement" of music:
man, in that he opens up in the musical situation, actualizes-with exactly this [purely musical — Ch.V.] form of movement in that he lives in it. This "living" means something completely non-metaphorical: it means that man is now in this situation really a being of this form of movement. [...] In the actualization-with of such movements man is not only changed in his formal time structure, but is completely re-attuned and transformed. (Anders, 2017, 67-68)35
Beyond the subject-object divide, music "re-attunes" and "transforms" the I. The I is transformed in that it no longer constitutes itself as subject but is rather constituted by the musical life-experience.
Anders uses two established phenomenological concepts to define musical ac-tualization-with — attunement (Stimmung) and act. The concept of Stimmung is an interpretive reference to Heidegger's (1967, 2010) idea of "attunement" or Befindlichkeit in Sein und Zeit36. As is well known, in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger develops the
„In dieser Situation des Mitseins der Subjektivität mit dem Gegenstände ist nun identisch, was gewöhnlich getrennt ist. Beides, Subjektivität und Objekt, ist nun zugleich. Und dieses Zugleich garantiert dafür, dass es die gleiche Existenz ist, die für sich in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit lebt, und die
aus sich heraustritt, um Weltgegenstände zu machen".
Translating the term Mitvollzug in English is difficult. Vollzug means "carrying out" or "realization," and so Mitvollzug would be "carrying-out-with," "realizing-with." I have chosen the translation "ac-tualization-with," because it implies the "becoming-actual" of the thing being carried out. „[Die Bewegungscharakterisierungen werden philosophisch folgenreich erst durch die Überlegung, dass] der Mensch, sofern er in der musikalischen Situation aufgeht, eben diese Bewegungsformen mitvollzieht, dass er in ihnen lebt. Dieses ,Leben' bedeutet etwas ganz Unmetaphorisches: bedeutet nämlich, dass der Mensch nun in dieser Situation wirklich ein Seiendes von dieser Bewegtheitsform ist [...]. Im Mitvoll zug derartiger Bewegungen ist der Mensch nicht nur seiner formalen Zeitstruktur nach verändert, er ist völlig umgestimmt und verwandelt".
Anders doesn't seem to make a difference between the ontic name „Stimmung" and its ontological correlate „Befindlichkeit".
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so-called ,Daseinsanalytik', which develops the problem of Being (Sein) in relation to one particular being (Seiendes), namely Dasein. Dasein is we ourselves: "The being whose analysis our task is, is always we ourselves. The [B]eing of this being is always mine" (Heidegger, 2010, 41)37. The "Da" of Dasein is its primal attunement, or its mood: "Mood [Stimmung] makes manifest 'how one is and is coming along'" (Heidegger, 2010, 134)38. Stimmung is a defining aspect of the existence of Dasein because Dasein is always already somehow "attuned" or "mooded." Although it is self-evident to Dasein itself, its mood is not objectifiable: "In attunement, Dasein is always already brought before itself, it has always already found itself, not as perceiving oneself to be there, but as one finds one's self in attunement" (Heidegger, 2010, 135)39. Anders is referring to the same phenomenon when he is describing Stimmung as "object-less." Stimmung cannot be cognitively (i. e. theoretically) "explained away" because "the possibilities of disclosure belonging to cognition fall far short of the primordial disclosure of moods in which Dasein is brought before its Sein as Da" (Heidegger, 2010, 134, translation modified)40.
The concept of "act" in Anders' opposition corresponds to the intentional act in Husserl's phenomenology:
If an intentional Erlebnis is actional, that is, actualized in the manner of the cogito, then in that process the subject is "directing" himself to the intentional Object. [...] This Ego-regard to something varies with the act: in perception, it is a perceptual regard-to; in phantasying, an inventive regard-to; in liking, a liking regard-to; in willing, a willing regard-to; etc. (Husserl, 1982, 65, translation modified)41
„Das Seiende, dessen Analyse zur Aufgabe steht, sind wir je selbst. Das Sein dieses Seienden ist je meines" (Heidegger, 1967, 41).
„Die Stimmung macht offenbar, ,wie einem ist und wird'" (Heidegger, 1967, 134). „In der Befindlichkeit ist das Dasein immer schon vor es selbst gebracht, es hat sich immer schon gefunden, nicht als wahrnehmendes Sich-vor-finden, sondern als gestimmtes Sichbefinden" (Heidegger, 1967, 135).
„weil die Erschließungs-möglichkeiten des Erkennens viel zu kurz tragen gegenüber dem ursprünglichen Erschließen der Stimmungen, in denen das Dasein vor sein Sein als Da gebracht ist"
(Heidegger, 1967, 134).
„Ist ein intentionales Erlebnis aktuell, also in der Weise des cogito vollzogen, so ,richtet' sich in ihm das Subjekt auf das intentionale Objekt. Zum cogito selbst gehört ein ihm immanenter ,Blick-auf' das Objekt, der andererseits aus dem ,Ich' hervorquillt, das also nie fehlen kann. Dieser Ichblick auf etwas ist, je nach dem Akte, in der Wahrnehmung wahrnehmender, in der Fiktion fingierender, im Gefallen gefallender, im Wollen wollender Blick-auf usw" (Husserl, 1976, 65).
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According to Anders, musical experience suspends the difference between the object-less (and non-objective) Stimmung and object-directed Akt:
Between the two possibilities: the attunement, highly influenced by the object but non-objective, and the pure intentional mean-ing of the object, lies the actualization-with, as it is realized in listening to music. It is neither only attunement, nor only act; neither only object-less, nor only object-directed; it fills, as it were, the "immediate" existence of man, as if it was an object-less, unstructured attunement; but it is a process, which plays out in the same structures, in which the musical object itself proceeds. (Anders, 2017, 60)42
In musical experience one is "actualized" as music, as being identical to music in its becoming. One is at the same time musically attuned and sounding within music.
A similar view of musical Being was established by Ilya Yonchev (2007) in his own idea of musical Mitsein (which was developed without reference to Anders' work due to the fact that it was not accessible to Yonchev at the time of writing his book). Yonchev notes that within musical Mitsein (or съ-битие) music becomes the Being of the I, which is itself actualized in its capacity to be the "with-" of being — according to Yonchev (2007, 112-113), the I is the mit- of musical Mitsein. Yonchev decidedly differentiates between musical and non-musical Being. According to Yonchev, the I outside of musical Mitsein "in its own self-sameness simultaneously plays the role of Being, of sense-horizon of all eventiveness and also participates in the structure of every event, thus being in this way the lawgiver of every possible sense" (Yonchev, 2007, 109)43. This "non-musical" I is characterized as being constitutive of every experience with its "every possible sense." Conversely, musical Mitsein is constitutive of experience in the stead of the I: "musical Being in me understands, encompasses in itself and makes-whole musical events, insofar as this is [...] me, but in my musical otherness, in my ontological musical wholeness" (Yonchev, 2007, 112)44. Unlike the
42 „Zwischen beiden Möglichkeiten: der vom Gegenstand höchstens beeinflussten, aber ungegenständlichen Stimmung und dem puren intentionalen Meinen des Gegenstandes liegt der Mitvollzug, wie er im Hören von Musik verwirklicht ist. Er ist weder nur Stimmung, noch nur Akt; weder nur gegenstandslos, noch nur gegenstandsgerichtet; er füllt gleichsam die ,unmittelbare' Existenz des Menschen aus, als wäre er gegenstandslose unstrukturierte Stimmung; aber er ist ein Prozess, der in den gleichen Strukturen sich abspielt, in denen der musikalische Gegenstand selbst abläuft".
43 "Лзът, който в своята самотъждественост едновременно играе ролята на битие, на смислов хоризонт на събитийността и наред с това участва в структурата на всяко събитие, като по този начин е законодател на всеки възможен смисъл".
44 ^узикалното битие у мен разбира, обема в себе си и оцелостява музикалните събития, доколкото това съм все самият аз, но в моята музикална другост, в онтологичната ми му-зикална оцелостеност". A more extensive reading of Yonchev would require pointing out that, according to him, musical Mitsein is constituted by the so-called musical nomos: "In the self-
"sense-bestowing consciousness which, for its part, exists absolutely and not by virtue of another sense-bestowal" (Husserl, 1982, 106), musical "consciousness" exists only in relation to music and is constituted in this relation.
It would be inappropriate, and perhaps irrelevant, to discuss at length the existential implications of Anders' and Yonchev's music philosophies. In terms of their phenomenological foundations, they both reflect on the fact that the relation between I and music suspends the subject-object dichotomy, including the constitutive function of the I. It seems that both Anders and Yonchev are articulating and interpreting the very same phenomenon that Furtwangler, Walter, Fischer, Gulda and Hofmann describe in terms of their own life-experience with music45. In this article, this
evidence of musical sense there is an absolutely certain involuntariness. The nomos is an attempt to conceptualize the ontological condition of harmonic, musical situatedness of man in Being as a source of sense" (Yonchev, 2007, 47). „В самоочевидността на музикалния смисъл има напълно определена непроизволност. Номосът е опит да се понятизира онтологичното условие за хармоничната, музикална поместеност на човека в битието като извор на музикален смисъл". The musical nomos "gives sense" to every event within musical experience: "the only acoustical musical event, which carries musical sense within itself, is constituted plainly by the musical nomos and this allows musical sense to be self-evident within it [the acoustical musical event]" (Yonchev, 2007, 82-83). "Единственото акустическо музикално събитие, което носи в себе си музикален смисъл, е конституирано еднозначно от музикалния номос и това позволява музикал-ният смисъл да бъде самоочевиден в него". Yonchev's assessment of the relation between I and music underpins the constitutive function of the musical nomos. I would suggest, however, that within musical identification it isn't quite clear which side of the relation — the I or music — is "constitutive," as they both exist as such only as related to each other. It is, thus, the relation, which seems to constitute — i. e. bestow sense upon — both I and music.
45 Based on the interpretations that have been put forward, certain aspects of the testimonies, quoted above, must be bracketed. Since musicians' attitudes towards musical life-experience are "life-worldly", certain aspects of their descriptions do not accurately depict the given life-experience, but are rather distortions based on "natural" prejudices of the musicians themselves. Thus, Walter, for example, would speak of "mystical-musical unification" (Walter, 1957, 31), Fischer about being "a mediator between the divine, the eternal, and man" (Fischer, 1959, 36) and Gulda about musical "talking in tongues" (Gulda, 1971, 9) — how are all these accounts to be taken "seriously" from a rigorous phenomenological standpoint? Needless to say, all presuppositions that we find in such statements, and, in fact, everything which we cannot find as given within the phenomenon, should be bracketed as being irrelevant to the phenomenological investigation. The quoted musicians seem to interpret as "divine" or "mystical" that, which is beyond their capacity as subjects to control and which, moreover, transforms them in suspending the ordinary structure of consciousness and experience. In all of the above statements, "divinity" is thematisized in direct connection with the "enruptedness-from-oneself" and the "being-outside-of-oneself" of the I. "Divine" is that, which transforms me from beyond myself. Thus, what is actually given in the phenomenon, is not the divine per se, but rather the transformation of subjectivity. Another assumption that should be bracketed has been put forward by musicians such as Walter and Fischer who describe musical identification as involving not only the I of the performer and the musical work, but also the "I" or
phenomenon has been called musical identification. There are several moments that can be articulated within the phenomenon of musical identification. Firstly, musical identification is a relation between I and music, in which there is no difference between them. I hear myself in music, although not as identical with my non-musical self, but rather exactly and only as myself with music. I am musically "transformed" and exist as such only within my identification with music. Additionally, music is not simply an object for me — in fact, it is not an object at all — but rather, it is myself-as-music, whereas I am the mit- of musical Mitsein. Musical "objects" such as melodies, chords, first movements of sonatas, or musical works, are given to me only as my musical "co-respondents" or "counterparts," i. e. as aspects of the whole of musical identification. Musical "objects" are nothing but "echoes" of my identification with music.
Based on the discussions so far, one can interpret the phenomenon of musical identification as being fundamentally relational. In fact, there is neither "proof," nor a possible actualization of this phenomenon outside of the constitutive relation between I and music itself. The I seems to be the only witness to music, as music is only when the I is with it. Consequently, music is not constituted by the I, nor does the I constitute itself, but both are constituted by the relation between them, namely musical identification. The relation is before the I. Since the musical I is only given as "part" of the identification, it has no "existence" outside of it; neither does music exist, i. e. have sense, "before" being identified with the I-my own sense and musical sense coincide.
4. CONCLUSION
The phenomenological inquiry into the phenomenon of musical identification faces various challenges from the viewpoint of traditional ways of understanding phenomenal givenness, such as the subject-object dichotomy. The identification between I
the "spirit" of the composer. The assumption that the composer is somehow present within musical identification should, however, also be reassessed in phenomenological terms. In Walter's and Fischer's interpretations, the composer seems to be a sort of Ur-Ich of the musical work, i. e. the I of the originary relation with music. From a phenomenological standpoint, it seems that what is subsequently recognized as the presence of the composer, is the sense of authentic unity of the performer with music, authentic in that it fully involves both the I (of the performer) and the work. In my view, the fullness of the relation between I and music — and the fullness of the work's disclosure within this relation — is attributed to the (metaphorical) presence of the "originator" of the work, namely the composer. The self-evident authenticity of musical life-experience is perceived as grounded in its authorship. However, the composer isn't given in musical identification — what is given is the "authentic" musical position of the I, i. e. its musical fulfillment. In conclusion, both the appeal to divinity or mysticism, as well as the integration of the composer into the phenomenon of musical identification, should be bracketed as irrelevant to the phenomenological inquiry.
and music is primarily and originarily given as relation, which then constitutes all further givenness in musical experience, such as the experiences of the I and the various objectities we recognize as "music." The early Heideggerian understanding of the resonance between I and world provides a framework for articulating musical identification phenomenologically. It would be a matter of further research to develop a phenomenological viewpoint to investigate in detail the different aspects of musical life-experience and their broader implications for subjectivity in general, where, in my view, musical identification would play an essential role. In this perspective, the question would arise of a "minimal" musical self46, which would necessarily involve an idea of how music participates in the very essence of subjectivity within the relation between I and music. Such an outlook could give rise to wider research into the ways we think about music in academic and non-academic discourse.
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank my friends and colleagues at the Fundamenta musicae for the moral and academic support, which made this paper possible.
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