It is Clifton’s fundamental view that music listening is not passive reception. It is an active process.
The act of constitution is never definitive, it is an ongoing process, which aims at a revelation of pos-
sibilities (p. 97).
Cliton’s statement indicates his basis in the phenomenological philosophy of Husserl, Heidegger,
and Merleau-Ponty (this chapter, section 2.1). The constitution of music is an action of the body
(Merleau-Ponty). This action is directed toward an object and its manifestations (Husserl). And the
action is a concern and a project (Heidegger). The idea of concern is a central concept in Heideg-
ger’s philosophy, encompassing attention, undertaking, care, and discussion (Heidegger 1962:83).^10
Feeling, concern and mutual possession
According to Clifton, feeling is an irreducible stratum of the musical experience. In particular, the feel-
ing of concern is fundamental for Clifton. When the listener is totally concerned about his listening,
he feels that his consciousness is filled with and absorbed by the music. Clifton explains this as a
condition of mutual possession:
”I intend, or tend-toward the object of feeling, but at the same time submit to it by allow-
ing it to touch me. Possession itself is thus two-directional: I possess the music, and it
possesses me” (p. 76).This kind of absorbing experience is familiar to some music listeners, and similar to the body-filling
experience of music reported by Ihde (above, p. 11).
On the basis of the feeling of mutual possession, Clifton proceeds to describe feelings and
bodily gestures related to his experience of Webern’s Bagatelle. This is a condensed piece of music
which invites continued questioning and scrutiny. Its ten measures are reproduced as score nota-
tion in the text. Clifton describes the music in some detail as a move from a smooth, graceful man-
ner to spiky, spastic and violent gestures, and back to a renewed condition of serenity (pp. 78-81).
He points out that this is merely a rough outline of the experience, which can be elaborated by the
contributions of other listeners.^11 Clifton concludes that the meaning of music is a cumulative and
open-ended achievement of the listener, always connected with feeling. The process of constitution
is an infinite task (pp. 74-76, 81).
Time
Clifton adopts Husserl’s description of time-consciousness as a field of presence, which comprises
the just-past, the perceived ”now”, and the immediately upcoming future. Similar to other kinds of
lived experience, music listening is a continuous process, which is constantly modified by the reten-
tion of the just-past and the anticipation of the upcoming future. Listening to a tone, we anticipate
a number of possible continuations which may or may not be realized or fulfilled. Merleau-Ponty
characterizes this process. He spells out precisely that ”consciousness deploys or constitutes time”,
states that ”my world is carried forward by lines of intentionality which trace out in advance at least
the style of what is to come”, and concludes that ”time is not a line, but a network of intentionalities”
(2002:481-484). Clifton sums up Merleau-Ponty’s ideas: ”In short, time is not a thing which flows at
all, but, rather, it is a measure of our implications with the events of the world as lived-in” (p. 84).^12
10 Heidegger provides the following examples of concern, in German ”Besorgen”: ”having to do with something, produ-
cing something, attending to something and looking after it, making use of something, giving something up and letting it
go, undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing, determining.... All these ways of Being-
in have concern as their kind of Being” (Heidegger 1962:83, ellipsis and italics in original text)
11 Cf. Experimental listening of the Webern piece, this chapter pp. 52-53 and appendix 2.03, p. 184.
12 J.J. Gibson, the founder of ecological psychology, has proposed a related understanding of time: ”Events are percei-
vable but time is not” (Gibson 1975).