Historical Models of Music Listening and Theories of Audition. Towards an Understanding of Music Listening Outside the Aesthetic Framework

Abstract

[cat] Aquesta tesi situa els discursos sobre la història de l’escolta musical en el context del camp, relativament recent, dels estudis de so (sound studies). Els tres primers capítols es proposen il·luminar la contigüitat entre els estudis de so i l’anomenat “gir sensorial” (sensory turn), que es va introduir en les ciències humanes i socials a partir dels anys 80. La investigació parteix de la historicitat de les nocions que fem servir habitualment per descriure l’estructura de la psique humana; nocions utilitzades per estudiosos i no estudiosos, com ara “sensació” i “percepció”, que sovint s’invoquen per explicar la diferència entre “sentir” i “escoltar”. Els capítols 1 i 2 s’ocupen del desenvolupament històric de la noció de “construcció cultural dels sentits”, que ha estat tan important dins del “gir sensorial”, i en aquest context expliquen l’emergència de l’antropologia dels sentits i les emocions, fent referència també a les crítiques formulades des de l’antropologia del cos i la fenomenologia. La narrativa d’aquests capítols subratlla el paper dins d’aquest procés històric d’autors, nocions i elaboracions teòriques relacionades amb l’audició i formulades des d’una comprensió d’aquesta. El capítol 3 repassa l’aparició en la història europea d’una consciència de la historicitat dels sentits i les emocions, a partir sobretot de les aportacions de l’escola francesa dels Annales. Tracta també alguns problemes teòrics i metodològics que planteja la historiografia dels sentits i les emocions, en especial les dificultats per establir-ne una periodització, també en el cas de l’audició. Els capítols 4, 5 i 6 formen el nucli històric de la tesi, que se centra sobretot en la modernitat, des del segle XV fins a la segona meitat del XIX, és a dir, fins a la publicació de l’obra de Helmholtz Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1863), un text clau en la història de l’acústica i la fisiologia, que va posar també en qüestió la relació entre l’aproximació científica i estètica a la música i l’audició. Aquests tres capítols volen connectar la història de l’estètica i la història de la ciència combinant diferents línies temàtiques: la història de la investigació anatòmica i fisiològica sobre l’oïda i l’audició, la història de l’acústica i l’arqueologia de les tecnologies auditives, i els discursos històrics, en clau estètica, sobre l’escolta musical.

[eng] This thesis locates historical discourses about music listening within the field of sound studies. Thus, the first three chapters illuminate the contiguities between sound studies and the so-called “sensory turn” introduced in the humanities and social sciences in the 1980s. An important theoretical premise of the research is the historicity of folk and expert notions that are normally employed in describing the structuring of the human psyche, like “sensation” and “perception”, which are related to the distinction between “to hear” and “to listen”. Chapters 1 and 2 addresses the historical development of the notion of “cultural construction of the senses”, which has been predominant among sensory scholars; they trace the emergence of the anthropology of the senses and the anthropology of the emotions, discussing also some critical approaches influenced by phenomenology and the anthropology of the body. The narration stresses the importance of authors, notions and theoretical elaborations associated with audition. Chapter 3 reviews the historical emergence of an awareness of the historicity of the senses and emotions in Europe, starting from the contributions of the French Annales School. It also deals with theoretical and methodological problems related to the historiography of the senses and emotions, in particular with the difficulties in establishing a periodization. Chapters 4, 5 and 6 form the historical core of the thesis, which zooms in on modern times, from the 15th century to the second half of the 19th century, that is until the publication of Helmholtz’s Die Lehre von den Tonempfindungen als physiologische Grundlage für die Theorie der Musik (1863). These chapters try to build a bridge between the history of aesthetics and the history of science by combining different thematic threads: the history of anatomical and physiological research into the ear and audition, the history of acoustics and the archaeology of audio technologies, and historical discourses on music listening. Chapter 4 presents the main disciplines that have historically dealt with hearing: physics music, rhetoric, medicine and physiology, psychology, and the convergence of electroacoustics, electrophysiology and psychoacoustics in 20th-century hearing science. It provides a short introduction to their history and the specificity of their approaches to hearing, stressing their connections to music and pointing at problems in the historicization of audition. While the chapter initially considers ancient and medieval notions of hearing and the senses in relation to music, it focuses mainly on early modern discourses on music and audition, including advances in anatomical and physiological knowledge, the relationship between rhetoric and music in Renaissance humanism, and the key role of music and the study of the senses in the establishment of the experimental programme of the so-called “Scientific Revolution”. The chapter offers a glimpse of aesthetic and scientific discourses on the senses, passions, sound, hearing and music until the end of the 17th century, when Sauveur proposed the foundation of acoustics. Chapter 5 deals with the 18th-century emergence of the concept of sensibility, with had roots both in Locke’s empiricism and in physiological research on muscle and nerve irritability, but ultimately stressed the connection between the senses and aesthetic and moral sentiments. It reviews important works of the French philosophes (Condillac, Diderot, Rousseau) on the differentiation and education of the senses, the sense of hearing and music aesthetics, as well as Rameau’s theory of harmony within the context of the mathematical development of acoustics in the 18th century. It also reviews some influential works on music aesthetics, and traces the transformation of musical taste and listening attitudes that took place in France and Germany towards the end of the 18th century, when hearing was increasingly defined as an “inner sense” and the notion of musical connoisseurs (Kenner) was formed. Chapter 6 briefly tackles on the acoustic research of Chladni and reports on the 19th-century development of new scientific instruments, including new musical instruments, which contributed to the refinement of scientific practices related to the measuring and evaluation of audition. This happened in parallel with the institutionalization of otology as a medical speciality, in the second half of the century, which is also narrated. The chapter then turns to sensory physiology and the pioneering work of Helmholtz, who developed physiological acoustics. His concern with delimiting the fields of aesthetics and science is presented here side by side with Hanslick’s efforts to define The Beautiful in Music, which would shape the notion of “absolute music”. The thesis closes with a narration of the reshaping of sensation by the new experimental psychology, pointing thus towards the beginnings of the psychology of music.