Chapter 8. Discussion
8.1. Summary and discussion of findings.
Chapter 2. Music Phenomenology
The main result of chapter two is the proposal of a novel approach in phenomenology, the experi-
mental listening procedure. This procedure is an application of Don Ihde’s experimental phenome-
nology, which he has carried out in the domain of visual perception, combined with his philosophy
of listening. The basis for experimental listening is the presupposition that it is possible to perform
phenomenological variations by means of two different strategies, the focusing strategy and the her-
meneutical strategy. It is suggested that experimental listening may be a tool for investigation of any
kind of music. In particular, experimental listening may be useful for the investigation of musical ex-
pression, and the description and analysis of music that is not notated.
Further results in chapter two are the descriptions and discussions of Don Ihde’s, Thomas Clifton’s and
Lawrence Ferrara’s contributions to music phenomenology and their roots in phenomenological philos-
ophy. Finally, a discussion of the applications of Ferrara’s methods in music therapy research contrib-
utes to the clarification of strategies for phenomenological description and analysis in music therapy.
Chapter 3. The Neurosciences and Music
The main results of chapter three are the estimations of ecological validity and cultural orientation in
the papers presented in the Neurosciences and Music Conferences 2002, 2005 and 2008. Based on
systematic descriptions of approximately 200 research papers, it is concluded that a considerable
number of studies do not imply high ecological validity due to the lack of acoustic sounds and real
music as stimuli.
Furthermore, an overview of the presented research indicates that a number of musical
genres and cultures are sparsely represented or not at all considered in the conference papers.
Omitted genres are improvised music, art music of the 20th and 21st Centuries and percussion
music. Sparsely represented are popular genres, music from non-western cultures and vocal music.
Altogether, the orientation of research is biased towards Western major-minor tonal music.
These conclusions are topics for discussion. More than half of the papers date back to the
2002 and 2005 conferences, and their research approaches may to a certain degree be outdated
and replaced by more ecologically valid and culturally unbiased protocols. Recent studies from 2011
and 2012 combine the use of real music with strict experimental control.
A further result in chapter three is the description of aims, methods and results of approximately 200
neuroscientific papers, and the highlighting of noteworthy studies. Finally, a comparison of the con-
ference papers 2002-2008 with Danish doctoral dissertations in music therapy from the same period
shows that the two fields of research only to a limited extent share concepts of music and musical
practice. However, this is a preliminary estimation, as the material for the comparison is not comprehensive.
Chapter 4. The Musical Timespace
The important result of chapter four is the extract of a concise version from the original text of The
Musical Timespace. All main steps of the original investigation are maintained, but weakly under-
pinned sections of text are omitted. This implies that the concise version represents a clearer and
more tenable investigation of the musical space and the listening dimensions in music.
An important change is the omission of space from the model of listening dimensions. This
omission is motivated by findings in hearing science, which indicate that the processing of spatial
properties of sound in the auditory system is separated from the processing of spectrotemporal prop-
erties of sound.