Music as Phenomenology
Music, and musicking as Christopher Small coined for engaging in various musical activities such as performing, composing, listening etc, can help us make sense of the world around us. This is not a groundbreaking concept I accept; however, I believe that it is true beyond the more commonly-believed level of being something that is sprinkled around ‘normal life’, or added on top like the proverbial iced cake. This view is counterintuitive when considering our self-imposed position as the species which has mastered music, or even, as some might say, is the only one to create it. Birds and whales and many other living things sing and vocalise and make sounds beyond our capability or understanding as an essential part of attracting mates, warding off predators and communicating the presence of food, arguably the three most essential things in life. But supposedly, us homo sapiens are the only ones to be truly creative. This arrogance stands in apparent paradox with the aforementioned view of music as just a triviality. And it hasn’t always been the case. The word music comes from the ancient Greek goddesses of art, the Muses (a word seen in band and notation software names to this day). It was believed that all human creativity came from these figures, a method by which the divine could allow the earthly to understand their creation. J. R. R. Tolkien wrote of his diegetic universe being created by the collective singing of angelic beings, making it only natural to see music by those living in it being a way to explore ideas and experiences. Religions across the world since time immemorial have used music to worship, glorify and extoll. What these things tell us is that music has long been seen as not just a result of existence and reality but in fact the very basis for it. As a composer, I find writing music to be the way I can most effectively articulate my thoughts and feelings (as might be clear to the reader), and the only way I have personally found to truly make manifest things that are in my mind. For example, if two people are reading a book, they will each be imagining the settings and characters described, making mental images of the views and faces thereof. If you were to ask them to draw a picture of the same scene from the story, most people would either struggle to do so and, even if not, you would likely get two very different results. Through composition, I am able to imagine something (a sound, a figuration, even more abstract things like a feeling or mood) and make that exist in the world such that other people can experience the very thing that was created and previously existed only in someone else’s mind. This is why I believe music not to be solely a superficial addition to our lives, nor necessarily as our literal genesis, but certainly among the best ways to explore life and our perception of it.