How Musical Communication Is Possible: An Analysis with Thinking of Phenomenology and Collective Memory

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how people communicate with others and build an intersubjectivity in musical communication, referring to thinking of Alfred Schutz, Edmund Husserl and Maurice Halbwachs. In this paper, musical communication is an interaction among composers, players and listeners through music.

First, this paper refers Schutz’s and Husserl’s works to highlight a principal of musical communication. Schutz shows a sequence of tones in a phenomenological analysis, Fragments Toward a Phenomenology of Music, and says people may expect next tone by way of protention. Protention　is a term from Husserl’s analysis of passive synthesis and means one of a perceptive ability to predict things before they occur. In spite of the suggestion, Schutz didn’t mention details of mechanism of passive syntheses including protention in his analysis. This paper makes use of their analyses to explain what happens in a musical experience.

Second, this paper focuses on a sheet music. Halbwachs says a sheet music consisted of hundreds of notes is a system of signs and preserves musicians’ collective memory. Halbwachs considers a sheet music as a social framework of musicians’ collective memory. Halbwachs distinguishes professional musicians from amateur musicians, because former can find a system of signs in a sheet music. This paper investigates their musical experiences in view of their unique methods to understand music.

Lastly, this paper investigates how people do musical communication and build an intersubjectivity in a concert hall in spite of having different backgrounds. The key is a rhythm. Rhythm is helpful for both professional and amateur musicians to understand music and to recall memories. That makes them possible to communicate with others and to build intersubjectivity across cultures.

This paper concludes musical communication is based on passive syntheses and rhythm is essential to people to build an intersubjectivity in communication.