Music Listening, Music Therapy, Phenomenology and Neuroscience

2 – States, Events and Transformations

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Common for the three composers discussed in this chapter is their inten-

tion of creating virtual spaces of sound; Ligeti by the merging of pitches in

vibrating masses, streams and sheets of colored sound, Xenakis by the

stochastic distributions of sonic events, and Lutoslawski by the illusions of

spatial movement created by gliding bundles of quarter-tones.

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3

Space, Time, Flow and Memory

Music listening evokes a virtual space

Musical sounds compete with the sounds of the surrounding world. When

auditory attention and awareness are activated by musical sounds, a

competition arises between the perceptual cues of the music and the

perceptual cues conveying auditory information about objects and events

in the world. The tendency of hearing to draw the world into the mind

implies the obtrusive side effect that music may be drawn into the mind,

engaging the potentials of auditory perception to such a degree that ordi-

nary auditory spatial consciousness is disturbed and suppressed.

An everyday example of the attention-attracting power of music is the

experience of unwanted music heard through a wall or an open window. If

the music is intense and coherent, it is hard to avoid its mind-focusing

attraction, as the ears cannot be closed by voluntary decision. The in-

voluntary listener may then choose to surrender to the music, make a

conscious effort to ignore it, try to stop it, play another kind of music, or

leave the place.

When music wins the competition against rivaling perceptual cues and

drowns out other kinds of sound, the auditory images of the real world are

eliminated, and a virtual musical space is evoked in the listening mind.

This is a fundamental reason for the fascinating and enchanting effects of

music. Music has the power to conjure up a virtual world in the listening

mind. That is the essence of the words set to music in Schubert's Lied "An

die Musik";

Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,

Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,

Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb' entzunden,

Hast mich in eine bess're Welt entrückt! (Franz von Schober)