Towards the Phenomenology of Musical Performance
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26485/AI/2025/27/18Keywords:
aesthetic experience, musical performance, phenomenology, philosophy of musicAbstract
For several decades, aesthetic debates concerning music have largely taken place within analytic philosophy. Since a surge of interest in authenticity, these debates have increasingly focused on issues of musical performance. This is unsurprising because actual performances individualize the ways specific musical works appear, thus providing the primary source of aesthetic experiences. Moreover, the study of broadly understood experience has been an important focus of phenomenology, making it natural to expand analytic reflection by including the phenomenological tradition. In this article, I discuss methodological considerations that open the way for research on musical performance within phenomenological aesthetics while simultaneously supplementing analytic philosophy of music. By examining a passage from Fryderyk Chopin’s Piano Sonata in B Minor, No. 3, Op. 58, as performed by Maurizio Pollini and Rafał Blechacz, I demonstrate both the practical application and the effectiveness of this proposed research methodology.
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