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Ahonen, Hanne - Wittgenstein and The Conditions of Musical Communication
Ahonen, Hanne - Wittgenstein and The Conditions of Musical Communication
Ahonen, Hanne - Wittgenstein and The Conditions of Musical Communication
http://journals.cambridge.org/PHI
Hanne Ahonen
3
Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (BB) (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1958/1964).
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Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
8
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Zettel (Z), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von
Wright (eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).
9
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures & Conversations on Aesthetics,
Psychology and Religious Belief (LA), C. Barrett (ed.) (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1966).
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Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
10
See PI § 642, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on the Philosophy of
Psychology Volume 1 (RPP1), G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. von Wright
(eds.), G. E. M. Anscombe (tr.) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), §§ 466, 1088.
519
Hanne Ahonen
18
Op. cit. note 13, 2.
523
Hanne Ahonen
19
See LA I: 12, 17, and LA II: 9. See also CV 51–52, 69–70.
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Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
also that for him the terms ‘grammar’ and ‘rules’ refer to nothing
over and above the actual practices of the linguistic community.
Scruton is correct in claiming that musical understanding is not a
form of theoretical understanding (p. 4). This does not mean, how-
ever, that the understanding of music could not be similar to the
understanding of natural language, given Wittgenstein’s view of the
latter phenomenon. One does not have to be able to cash out his
knowledge of the musical rules in theoretical vocabulary, as a child
does not have to be able to explain why the predicate follows the
subject in a well-formed sentence. In most cases the ability to fol-
low the rules of music takes the form of what is sometimes called
implicit or tacit knowledge, and it is acquired without formal train-
ing in music theory. People who have been brought up in the
Western culture, surrounded by Western tonal music, have—to a
greater or lesser extent—become familiar with the rules that consti-
tute the meaning of musical expressions.20 This is what I take
Wittgenstein to mean when he says: ‘If you haven’t learnt Harmony
and haven’t a good ear, you may nevertheless detect any disharmo-
ny in a sequence of chords’ (LA I: 15). It might be tempting to
think that the source of this ability is innate. However, as
Wittgenstein repeatedly points out in the Lectures on Aesthetics,
being able to make aesthetic judgments presupposes that the person
is brought up in the relevant culture. The knowledge of the rules is
specific in such a way that it is questionable whether one can
properly appreciate the artistic products of different historical time
periods, or foreign cultures (LA I: 25–31).
Well-formed musical thoughts, like well-formed sentences, can,
of course, be analyzed theoretically, and these analyses do capture
an aspect of the meaning of music. But since the rules of music, as
well as those of natural language, reside in their actual applications,
a theoretical description is at best an abstract skeleton of the mean-
ing of a musical performance. This is because, when a person is
integrated into the musical practice he does not only learn the struc-
tural properties of music that theory talks about, but he is also
trained to recognize, and perhaps produce, the fine nuances of
performance practices. Often these nuances, such as those related to
phrasing, timbre, and the treatment of rhythm, are described
20
For empirical results to this effect see, for example, Edwin Gordon,
Learning Sequences in Music (Chicago: GIA Publications, 1984). David J.
Hargreaves, The Developmental Psychology of Music (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986). Robert Francès, The Perception of
Music, W. Jay Dowling (tr.) (Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1958/1988).
John A. Sloboda, The Musical Mind, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985).
525
Hanne Ahonen
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Stravinsky, in his The Poetics of Music, expresses this idea beautifully: ‘The
more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free. As for myself, I
experience a sort of terror when, at the moment of setting to work and finding
myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the
feeling that everything is permissible to me. If everything is permissible to me,
the best and the worst; if nothing offers me any resistance, then any effort is
inconceivable, and I cannot use anything as a basis, and consequently every
undertaking becomes futile. Will I then have to lose myself in this abyss of
freedom? To what shall I cling in order to escape the dizziness that seizes me
before the virtuality of this infinitude? However, I shall not succumb. I shall
overcome my terror and shall be reassured by the thought that I have the seven
notes of the scale and its chromatic intervals at my disposal, that strong and
weak accents are within my reach, and that in all of these I possess solid and
526
Wittgenstein and the Conditions of Musical Communication
Columbia University
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