sound or expression: dilemmas in the phenomenological aesthetics of 20th century music (sound or expression: dilemmas in the phenomenological aesthetics of 20th century music)

Phenomenology, as a philosophy of the twentieth century, is often confronted with music of the same period, which in contrast with the classical-romantic repertoire recedes from previously codified means for the organisation of musical structure (namely tonality) and holds up the actual matter of the music – sound – for admiration. So musical experience dwells more at the sound and its direct appearance rather than rushing to the musical meanings intended through sensuous moments. From this aspect music in the first decades of the twentieth century complemented the other arts undergoing a similar development. Romantic art was replaced by artistic creativity relying on the objectivity of the musical material and not on the emotional quality. The paper considers circumstances under which some of the phenomenological approaches adopt a positive approach to the music of the twentieth century (those which stress the immediacy of the perceptive presence) and some of which tend to reject it (those which apply the requirement of expressive intentionality).