17 maart 2011

Embodied Musical Encounters: Toward a Possible Ethics of Musical Experience

The perception, experience, and creation of music is always also a bodily activity. Music does something with listeners, both to their bodies and to their minds, and does this in such a way that it bypasses their conscious awareness. It affects listeners without them having full control over this affection. Listeners are always vulnerable to the affections generated by the perception of music. In this presentation I will suggest that musical encounters can be productively considered from an ethical perspective, in the sense that these experiences consist of affecting and affected bodies, and that this affection can only be realised through the violation of the bodily autonomy of listeners and performers alike. Through a discussion of the embodied and ethical aspects of both improvised and composed musical pieces I will contend that, by considering music and musical performance from an ethical perspective, new possibilities to think through the physical aspects of listening to and making music are opened up, possibilities that are vital for a proper understanding of what a musical experience is, or can be.

Vincent Meelberg (1970) is Assistant Professor at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, Department of Cultural Studies, and researcher and lecturer at the Academy for Creative and Performing Arts in Leiden and The Hague. He studied double bass at the Conservatoire of Rotterdam, and received his MA both in musicology and in philosophy at Utrecht University. He wrote his dissertation on the relation between narrativity and contemporary music at Leiden University, Department of Literary Studies. His current research focuses on the relation between music, listening, playing, embodiment, and affect. Beside his academic activities he is active as a double bassist in several jazz groups, as well as a composer.