294 music, philosophy, and modernitycrisis in concert and other musical life brought about by the war and
by the economic crises of the Weimar Republic were not external to
composers’ and performers’ reflections on what they were doing, or,
indeed, to what they did. It is therefore no coincidence that many of the
developments which change the nature of modern music take place in
Germany at this time. The most immediate way to show how Besseler
relates to Heidegger can be suggested by the link of Heidegger’s remark
above, concerning the fact that ‘My being in the worldisnothing but
this already understanding moving myself in these ways (‘Weisen’) of
being’, to Besseler’s remarks on the kinds of relationship people have
to music in differing contexts.
Besseler’s central idea is that ‘The musical originally becomes acces-
sible to us as amanner/melody[‘Weise’, which combines the older sense
of ‘melody’ with the idea of ‘way’ or ‘manner’]of human existence
(‘des menschlichen Daseins’)’ (Besseler 1978 : 45 ). Music is not, there-
fore, primarily an object. That conception, he thinks, applies to only
one specific form of musical practice, namely concert music from the
nineteenth century onwards, although even in that case the history
of how such music was listened to prevents it merely being appre-
hended as an object.^16 Besseler is initially concerned with what he terms
‘Gebrauchsmusik’, ‘music for use/using’, and he gives serious considera-
tion to dance music and to other popular forms, such as jazz and those
involving participation on the part of non-specialist musicians. Here
he reflects the attempts on the part of Hanns Eisler, Paul Hindemith,
and others to involve all kinds of people in music as part of broader
attempts at social and political transformation.
The relationship to the music being danced to of a dancer or of an
active spectator at a dance in a community exemplifies what Besseler is
aiming at: ‘the music is in no way central for him. He only half listens to
it. His real activity consists in making his body swing to the rhythm he
hears and in inwardly following the melody, which he generally knows.
He does not listen but behaves in an active-outpouring manner, without
taking the music expressly as objectively present (‘objektiv vorhanden’).
It is not there in an objective form (‘gegenstandlich ̈ ’) for him’ (ibid.:
33 ). The best responses of the dancer do not rely on anything he could
know, but rather on how hebehavesin response to the music. Besseler16 The fact that the analytical philosophy of music until recently largely only considered
music in terms of works, performers, and listeners suggests what is at stake in Besseler’s
approach. See Goehr 1994 , Ridley 2004 for criticisms of the exclusive orientation to the
work on the part of much of the ‘philosophy of music’.