cuts off the ego from life. He endorses the alternative view that ”man is in the world first; the separa-
tion of oneself from others is not prior to being in the world” (p. 80). This is the understanding of the
life-world which Heidegger has proposed.
Ferrara underlines the fact that Heidegger is greatly indebted to Husserl’s phenomenology. But he
emphasizes that Heidegger adds a new dimension to phenomenology, contending that phenomeno-
logical description is never pure, it is always an interpretation.^24 A description is marked by a pre-
understanding based on the individual’s cultural and historical context. Ferrara quotes a central
statement in Heidegger’s Being and Time (1962:61-62):
”The meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation ... The
phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word.”
(Ferrara p. 105, italics in Heidegger’s original text).”Dasein” is Heidegger’s term for human being or existence, which is not merely ”being”, but ”be-
ing-there”, as the German term indicates. A human being finds itself ”thrown” into the world which is
already a world with others, with culture and language, and phenomenology is a tool for understand-
ing the potential meanings of being-in-the-world (Ferrara pp. 105,111).
Ferrara concludes that Husserl was wrong in presupposing that ”pure description” is possible, and
that Heidegger was right in stating that all description is interpretation grounded in pre-understanding
or ”fore-sight” (Heidegger 1962:191). However, in his quest for the best possible methods for analyz-
ing and understanding music, he acknowledges the value of Husserl as well as Heidegger. Husserl
has contributed the method of rigorous and systematic descriptive phenomenology. Heidegger has
contributed the hermeneutical phenomenology, which continuously explores and interprets the world
(Ferrara pp. 112-116).
Ferrara’s modification of the five-step progression
In the 1984 article, Ferrara proposed his five-step progression: Step 1, open listenings. Step 2 a,
phenomenological description in listening for the sound as such. Step 2 b, conventional methods for
describing sound in form. Step 3, hermeneutical interpretation in listening for referential meanings.
Step 4, hermeneutical interpretation in listening for ontological meanings. Step 5, open listenings.
Ferrara presented the same progression in a subsequent article about music in general studies
(1986), where he sketched a description of a rock album by Moody Blues, Days of Future Passed.
Here, he maintained that step 2 a, listening for the texture, timbre, and quality of sounds, ought to
precede step 2 b, the analysis of musical form. He argued that ”the sound as such” is more funda-
mental than ”the sound in form” (1986:125).
In the 1991 book, Ferrara has changed his mind. He divides step 2 into two separate steps, in which
”conventional analysis” now precedes listening for ”the sound as such”. This implies a downgrading
of the phenomenological approach. Without further discussion, he now presents his earlier form as a
six-step progression (pp. 170-171):
- Open listenings, permitting the analyst to respond freely to the music.
- Conventional analysis of the piece, according to a system chosen by the analyst.
- Phenomenological description of the sound as such, marked by an attempt to suspend (to what-
ever degree possible) musical syntax and reference.
24 Cf. Ihde’s characterization of hermeneutic as a ”second phenomenology”, this chapter page 9.