From the Necessary to the Useless
Reflections on Music between Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience
Abstract
Starting from the impossible question “what is music?”, the paper attempts to circumscribe its meaning through different epistemological strategies: historical, empirical, objective. An attempt is made to reflect on the character of intangibility and sensoriality of musical experience that reveals its antinomic essence. Musical experience appears stretched between ineffable and exact, useless and necessary. The second part of the work is dedicated to the observation of the music phenomenon through the neuroscientific perspective.
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References
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Tervaniemi, M. (2009). Musicians-Same or Different?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1): 151–156.
Tramo, M. J. et al. (2005). Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of pitch perception: auditory cortex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060: 148-74.
Trehub, S.E. (2003). The developmental origins of musicality. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7): 669–673.
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Wittgenstein L. (1967). Zettel. Torino: Einaudi, 1986.
Xenakis, I. (1976). Musica. Architettura, Milano: Spirali, 2003.
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Zatorre, R.J., Perry, D.W., Beckett, C.A., Westbury, C.F., & Evans, A. C. (1998). Functional anatomy of musical processing in listeners with absolute pitch and relative pitch. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(6): 3172–3177.
Zatorre, R. & McGill, J. (2005). Music, the food of neuroscience?. Nature, 434(7031): 312–315.
Adorno, T.W. (1982). Il fido maestro sostituto. Torino: Einaudi.
Bene, C. (ed. 1995). Opere con l’Autografia d’un ritratto. Milano: Bompiani.
Berio, L. (1990). La musica è un’architettura di suoni. Conversazione tra Luciano Berio e Renzo Piano. V.C. Ottomano (a cura di), Interviste e colloqui. Torino: Einaudi, 2017.
Bianco, V., Merchicci, M., Gigante, E. et al. (2022). Brain Plasticity Induced by Musical Expertise on Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Functions. Neuroscience, 483: 1–12.
Bion, W. (1970). Attenzione e interpretazione. Roma: Armando, 1973.
Braxton, A. (2023). Tri-centric thought unit construct. International Summer Course, Darmstadt: 5-19 August 2023.
Clarke, A.C. (1953). Le guide del tramonto. Milano: Mondadori, 2016.
Darwin, C. (1871). L’origine dell’uomo e la selezione sessuale. Roma: Newton Compton, 1972.
Dubé, L., Le Bel, J.L. (2002). The content and structure of lay people’s concept of pleasure. Cognition and Emotion, 17: 263–295.
Farah, M.J. (2014). Brain images, babies, and bathwater: critiquing critiques of functional neuroimaging. Hastings Center Report, 44(s2): S19–S30.
Fitch, W.T. (2006). The biology and evolution of music: A comparative perspective. Cognition, 100(1): 173–215.
Freud, S. (1913). Il Mosé di Michelangelo. OSF, vol. 7. Torino: Boringhieri, 1970.
Freud, S. (1929). Il disagio della civiltà. OSF, vol. 10. Torino: Boringhieri, 1978.
Gigante, E. (2018). Il suono dell’assenza. Variazioni sul dolore. Bergamo: Moretti e Vitali.
Goethe, J.W. (1850). Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret. London: Smith, Elder.
Janet, P. (1889). L’automatismo psicologico. Saggio di psicologia sperimentale sulle forme inferiori dell’attività umana. Milano: Cortina, 2013.
Jankélévitch, V. (1957-1980). Il non-so-che e il quasi niente. Genova: Marietti, 1987.
Jankélévitch, V. (1961). La musica e l’ineffabile. Milano: Bompiani, 1998.
Jaspers, K. (1922). Genio e follia: Strindberg e Van Gogh. Milano: Cortina, 2001.
Jung, C.G. (1913). “Il concetto di libido”. Saggio di esposizione della teoria psicoanalitica. Opere, vol. 4. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1998.
Jung, C.G. (1921). Tipi psicologici. Opere, vol. 6. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1996.
Jung, C.G. (1928/1931). Psicologia analitica e concezione del mondo. Opere, vol. 8, Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 1994.
Kafka, F. (1924). Josefine la cantante. Racconti. Milano: Mondadori, 1970, p. 578 sgg.
Kimura, B. (2000), Tra. Per una fenomenologia dell’incontro. Trapani: Il Pozzo di Giacobbe, 2013.
Luria, A. R., Tsvetkova, L. S., & Futer, D. S. (1965). Aphasia in a composer. Journal of the Neurological Sciences, 2(3): 288–292.
McCarthy, C. (2022). Stella Maris. Torino: Einaudi, 2023.
Meulders, M. (2005). Helmholtz, dal secolo dei Lumi alle neuroscienze. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Moore, E., Schaefer, R., Bastin, M., Roberts, N., & Overy, K. (2014). Can Musical Training Influence Brain Connectivity? Evidence from Diffusion Tensor MRI. Brain Sciences, 4(2): 405–427.
Mula, M., & Trimble, M.R. (2009). Music and madness: Neuropsychiatric aspects of music. Clinical Medicine, Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 9(1): 83–86.
Nattiez, J.-J. (1987). Il discorso musicale. Per una semiologia della musica. Torino: Einaudi.
Nietzsche, F. (1881). Aurora. Opere, vol. 5/1. Milano: Adelphi, 1964.
Noë, A. (2015). Strani strumenti. L’arte e la natura umana. Torino: Einaudi, 2022.
Ono, K., Nakamura, A., Yoshiyama, K., Kinkori, T., Bundo, M., Kato, T., & Ito, K. (2011). The effect of musical experience on hemispheric lateralization in musical feature processing. Neuroscience Letters, 496(2): 141–145.
Patel, A.D. (2007). Music, Language and the Brain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pinker S. (1997). How the Mind Works. New York: Norton.
Posner, M. et al., (1976). Visual dominance: an information processing account of its origins and significance. Psychological Review, 83: 157–171.
Rademacher, J., Morosan, P., Schormann, T., Schleicher, a., Werner, C., Freund, H.-J., & Zilles, K. (2001). Probabilistic Mapping and Volume Measurement of Human Primary Auditory Cortex. NeuroImage, 13(4): 669–683.
Robinson, J. (1997). Music and Meaning. New York. Cornell University Press.
Romano, A. (2021). Musica e psiche. Milano: Cortina.
Sacks, O. (2007). Musicofilia. Milano: Adelphi.
Saffran, J.R. (2003). The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Santayana, G. (1905). Reason in Art. The Life of Reason, or The Phase of Human Progress, vol. 4. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London: MIT Press.
Schafer, R.M. (1977). Il paesaggio sonoro. Il nostro ambiente acustico e l’accordatura del mondo. Milano: Ricordi-LIM, 2022.
Schellenberg, E.G. (2012). Cognitive performance after music listening: A review of the Mozart effect. In R.A.R. MacDonald, G. Kreutz, & L. Mitchell (Eds.), Music, health, and wellbeing, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 324–338.
Schlaug, G., Jancke, L., Huang, Y., & Steinmetz, H. (1995). In vivo evidence of structural brain asymmetry in musicians. Science, 267(5198): 699–701.
Schlaug, G. (2015). Musicians and music making as a model for the study of brain plasticity. Progress in Brain Research, 217: 37–55.
Sciarrino, S. (2001). Origine delle idee sottili. Carte da suono. Roma: CIDIM, 2001.
Scruton, R. (1997). The Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Shapiro, K. et al. (1984). Effects of arousal on human visual dominance. Perception & Psychophysics, 35(6): 547-52.
Shaw, G., Ky, K., Rauscher F, (1993). Mozart Spatial Reasoning. Nature, 365, 611.
Solbiati, A. (2017). Le tecniche del comporre. Uno strumento espressivo indispensabile. Sesta conferenza del ciclo Tecnica. Forme di conoscenza e costruzione del mondo (II). Modena: Fondazione Collegio San Carlo.
Szegedy-Maszak, M. (2003). The sound of unsound minds. Great music is linked to troubled composers, a psychiatrist-pianist says. U.S. News & World Report, 134(1): 45–46.
Tervaniemi, M. (2009). Musicians-Same or Different?. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1169(1): 151–156.
Tramo, M. J. et al. (2005). Neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of pitch perception: auditory cortex. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1060: 148-74.
Trehub, S.E. (2003). The developmental origins of musicality. Nature Neuroscience, 6(7): 669–673.
Wittgenstein, L. (1921). Tractatus logico-philosophicus. Torino: Einaudi, 1989.
Wittgenstein L. (1967). Zettel. Torino: Einaudi, 1986.
Xenakis, I. (1976). Musica. Architettura, Milano: Spirali, 2003.
Zatorre, R. (2023). From Perception to Pleasure. The Neuroscience of Music and Why We Love It. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Zatorre, R.J., Perry, D.W., Beckett, C.A., Westbury, C.F., & Evans, A. C. (1998). Functional anatomy of musical processing in listeners with absolute pitch and relative pitch. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 95(6): 3172–3177.
Zatorre, R. & McGill, J. (2005). Music, the food of neuroscience?. Nature, 434(7031): 312–315.
Published
2024-04-06
How to Cite
Gigante, E. (2024). From the Necessary to the Useless. Critical Hermeneutics, 7(2), 377-405. https://doi.org/10.13125/CH/6104
Section
Varia
Copyright (c) 2024 Elena Gigante
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