tory space surrounds me and may, in the striking sound of a symphony, fill my being”, says Ihde (p.
214). This observation is recurrent in Ihde’s book (p. 71, 76, 102, 132, 156). Merleau-Ponty reports a
similar strong experience of an auditory musical space (2002:257-258, quoted this chapter p. 15).
Sound and music
Even if Don Ihde appreciates the overwhelming presence of music, he does not engage in descrip-
tions of music. His primary purpose is to provide a systematic phenomenological method for the de-
scription of sound in general. It is his opinion that all kinds of sounds can adopt a musical character,
if the listener puts himself in the ”musical attitude” (pp. 77-78, 159, 191).
Judy Lochhead’s application of phenomenology
Ihde’s colleague and collaborator Judy Lochhead has applied his approach in musical analyses.
In an article which summarizes her doctoral dissertation, she presents a detailed guideline for the
phenomenological description of sound in time, and demonstrates her method in analyses of the
temporal structure of music by Elliott Carter and other 20th Century composers (1986:49-93). She
highlights Husserl’s investigation of internal time-consciousness (Husserl 1964:50-59), and discuss-
es Heidegger’s concept of time. Heidegger distinguishes between a primordial temporal experience,
which is a spread of past-present-future, and an objectified time which is measured, and can be
counted (Heidegger 1962:456-480). Lochhead points out that in music of the 20th Century, we often
do not hear measured time, but durational ”spans” of past-present-future.
Lochhead has developed her ideas and methods for description and analysis of 20th and 21st Century
music in elaborate studies. In “Hearing Chaos” (2001) she clarifies concepts of contemporary music
in relation to chaos theories proposed in natural science, including Pierre Boulez’ integral serialism,
process music by Steve Reich, György Ligeti’s complex polyphony, John Cage’s indeterminacy,
the expressiveness of free jazz, and Jimi Hendrix’ use of noise. In “Visualizing the Musical objects”
(2006a) she discusses approaches to creating descriptive maps of music on the basis of attentive
and reflective listening, comparable to methods for graphic notation proposed by Bergstrøm-Nielsen
(1993:40-58). The article “How does it work?” (2006b) addresses challenges to analytic explanation
of a piece by Charles Dodge for acoustic piano and computer-generated sound. A book chapter
(2010) presents an analysis and graphic description of music by Wolfgang Rihm in the context of
Gilles Deleuze’s philosophy.
2.2.3. Thomas Clifton (1976): ”Music as constituted object”
Thomas Clifton’s article (1976a) presents, like Ihde’s 1970 article, a policy statement for a phenome-
nology of music. Clifton’s themes are constitution, feeling, time, synaesthesia, and play. He chooses
as his object of investigation a very short piece, Anton Webern’s Bagatelle No. 1 for String Quartet
Op. 9, comprising 10 measures of music.
Constitution
Clifton’s point of departure is radical and polemic. He does not accept a definition of music as an
empirical object, such as ”organized sound”, but contends that the reality of music can only be con-
stituted by a human act of experience. He specifies the acts of experience by which a piece of music
becomes constituted as,
”those actions of the body by which feeling, understanding, time, motion, and play are all
directed toward something. That something is the object of the act: a possession, a con-
cern, a project, a relation, a form, or a problem” (pp. 74-75).