Exploratory expertise and the dual intentionality of music-making.

Summary

Music-making is best understood as an exploratory activity, not just aesthetic expression. Through enactive and phenomenological analysis of infants in early musical activities, an expert jazz improviser, and a string quartet, the authors find that music-making involves a dual intentionality: one directed outward toward the sonic, material, and social environment, and one directed inward toward bodily awareness and reflective mental states. This exploratory perspective highlights the developmental, sensorimotor, and cognitive resources involved in making music.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this paper, we advance the thesis that music-making can be advantageously understood as an exploratory phenomenon. While music-making is certainly about aesthetic expression, from a phenomenological, cognitive, and even evolutionary perspective, it more importantly concerns structured explorations of the world around us, our minds, and our bodies. Our thesis is based on an enactive and phenomenological analysis of three cases: the first concerns the study of infants involved in early musical activities, and the two latter are phenomenologically inspired interviews with an expert jazz improviser, and members of a prominent string quartet. Across these examples, we find that music-making involves a dual intentionality - one oriented towards the exploration of the sonic, material, and social environment, and one oriented toward the self, including the exploration of bodily awareness and reflective mental states. In enactivist terms, exploration is a fundamental way of making sense of oneself as coupled with the world. Understanding music-making as a pre-eminent case of exploration helps us explicate and appreciate the developmental, sensorimotor, and more advanced cognitive resources that exist in music-making activities.

Tags