theoretical foundations of music phenomenology, with reference to Husserl and Heidegger (Schutz
1944/1976, Smith 1976, 1979).
In the United States, a tendency to bring phenomenology into musicology arose as a notewor-
thy current in the 1960’s and 70’s, stimulated by the publication of the English translations of Heide-
gger’s Being and Time (1962) and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1962). University
professors Don Ihde, Thomas Clifton, and Lawrence Ferrara encouraged their students to integrate
phenomenological thought in their analytical studies, and inspired a considerable number of PhD
dissertations, as documented by Ferrara (1991:154-168) and Mazzoni & Miraglia (1995:315-319).
Composer James Tenney and musicologist Judy Lochhead applied phenomenological approaches in
elaborate studies of 20th century music (Tenney 1964,1977, Lochhead 1982,1986).
Notwithstanding the merit of these studies, a discussion of their themes is beyond the limits of
the present investigation. The following pages will centre on the ideas of Don Ihde, Thomas Clifton,
and Lawrence Ferrara, whose publications constitute a basis for the phenomenological description of
music and sound.
2.2.1. Don Ihde (1970): ”Listening” and ”Auditory Imagination”^7
In his article ”Listening”, Don Ihde presents a policy statement for establishing a phenomenology of
music. The aim of the phenomenological investigation is to reveal unnoticed aspects of the musical
experience. For this purpose, Ihde prescribes to suspend the ”natural attitude” of listening to music,
replacing it with a ”phenomenological attitude”. This implies that focused attention on the music must
replace personal and traditional routines for listening. A means for achieving this is to ask directive
questions to the musical experience. Here, Ihde follows Husserl’s claim that the phenomenologist
must reconsider his habitual or learned presuppositions. Further, Ihde recommends that the Hus-
serl-inspired focusing should be followed by a Heidegger-inspired process, letting the phenome-
non ”show itself in itself” by gradually excluding irrelevant factors (Ihde 2007:217-218, Heidegger
1962:51).
Visual imagery
Ihde is aware that the traditional description of music is dominated by visual metaphors and spatial
terms such as ”movements”, ”up” or ”high” and ”down” or ”low”, and he discusses the possibility of
abandoning visual metaphors. However, in his initial investigations he found that ”a rearrangement of
spatial considerations helped to point out unnoticed characteristics” (p. 220), and concludes that the
visual-spatial imagery cannot be completely rejected in the phenomenological description of music.
Movement and silence
According to Ihde, music’s ”movement” is not equal to movement in the surrounding space. Music’s
mode of presence is different. Searching for the characteristics of music’s presence, Ihde notes the
fragility of the musical phenomenon. He notices that focusing on the music produces an increasing
openness to distracting sounds in the environment as well. This is evident in the concert hall, where
coughing and scratching disturbs the music, and the attentive listener wishes for quietness. Ihde
describes the auditory focusing as a ”gesturing toward the sound”, and the wish for quietness as an
enhanced attentive focusing which is ”a gesture toward silence” (p. 222). This implies that attentive
listeners become aware that the possibility of silence is the background for music. Sounds appear
out of silence and disappear into silence.
Ihde notes another prominent feature in music listening, the ability to be aware of just-past sounds
and to anticipate expected sounds. In the listening process, the listener is aware of the ”coming into
7 ”Listening” was first published in 1970 as a journal article. ”Auditory Imagination” was first published in 1970 as a book
chapter. Both were reprinted as book chapters in Ihde: Sense and Significance (1973), and subsequently in the second
edition of Ihde: Listening and Voice (2007:217-223 and 203-215).