2.2.4. Thomas Clifton (1983): Music as Heard. A Study in Applied Phenomenology
In Music as Heard, Clifton elaborates on the ideas he proposed in his 1976 article. The book was
published five years after Clifton’s death, but affords no information about the author or the editing of
his manuscript. The book includes a preface and an elaborate introductory chapter, and further chap-
ters provide a multiplicity of musical examples, descriptions and analyses, reflections on the applica-
tion of phenomenology in music listening, and references to phenomenological philosophy.
Definitions of music
On the first page of his introduction, Clifton presents two definitions of music. As the more precise
definition, he states that,
”music is the actualization of the possibility of any sound whatever to present to some
human being a meaning which he experiences with his body – that is to say, with his
mind, his feelings, his senses, his will, and his metabolism” (p. 1).This is an unconventional definition of music, but it makes sense. The listener intends to hear certain
sounds as music, which implies that the sounds assume musical significance. The significance is
experienced with the senses, feelings and mind, which are aspects of bodily experience, as is me-
tabolism. It may seem unusual to connect musical experience with the metabolism in the body, but
research in the physiology of music listening has provided evidence that music has an immediate
impact on the autonomous nervous system, which regulates heart rate, digestion, respiration and
perspiration (see chapter seven).
Ahead of the precise definition, Clifton presents the preliminary definition that ”music is an ordered
arrangement of sounds and silences whose meaning is presentative rather than denotative” (p. 1).
This description is more conventional, and in accordance with widely accepted definitions, such as
the one proposed in How Musical is Man? by John Blacking: ”Music is a product of the behavior of
human groups, whether formal or informal: it is humanly organized sound” (1974:10).^14
However, Clifton is more radical. The order in the arrangement of sounds is not necessarily
a composer’s intention. ”Order is constituted by the experiencing person, who is just as likely to
experience it in a collection of natural sounds, as in improvised music or a finely wrought fugue by
J.S. Bach” (p. 4). This comprehensive concept of musical order implies that the listener may hear all
kinds of sounds as music, if he decides to do so (pp. 2, 141).^15 Both of Clifton’s definitions encom-
pass the successions of sounds created in music therapy improvisations.^16
Clifton suggests that music theorists ought to attach more importance to the sensory qualities
that characterize all sounds, in particular timbre, gesture, dynamics, texture, and duration, and less
importance to pitch and intervals (p. 6).
Embodied meaning
Clifton defines musical meaning as presentative. Musical meaning does not necessarily include rep-
resentation or reference to something else (pp. 2-3). The musical sounds themselves present signif-
icance, because the motion experienced in the music is related to activities which are known by the
body, such as gesture, ascending and descending, movement toward, movement away, beginning
14 Blacking adds that his idea of sonic order is liberal, including types of sound organization that may only be appreciated
by a composer and his friends (1974:11-12).
15 This is in agreement with Ihde’s standpoint that any type of sound can adopt a musical character (2007:77,159).
16 Musical improvisation can be defined as ”any combination of sound and silence spontaneously created within a
framework of beginning and ending” (The British Association of Professional Music Therapists 1985:4, quoted by Darn-
ley-Smith & Patey 2003:40)