Musical Thinking Revisited: An Interdisciplinary Approach

Authors

  • Anna Chęćka University of Gdańsk, Institute of Philosophy

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.26485/AI/2023/25/6

Keywords:

music, performance, thought, neuroaesthetics, brain

Abstract

Following the trail set by Jerrold Levinson in his paper Musical Thinking, the author focuses on purely instrumental music as perfectly realizing the ideal of wordless thought of the composer, performer, and listener − considering not only intellectual processes but also bodi­ly and prereflective responses to musical stimuli. Philosophical speculations on the modes of musical thinking are presented in the article from an interdisciplinary perspective. Thanks to this, some intuitions rooted in the humanities are subjected to criticism. Apart from musicology and philosophy, the author reaches into neuroaesthetics and neurobiology.

Author Biography

Anna Chęćka, University of Gdańsk, Institute of Philosophy

Anna Chęćka holds a post-doctoral degree in the humanities (philosophy). She is an asso­ciate professor at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Gdańsk, and head of the Chair of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture. She completed piano studies at the Academy of Music in Gdańsk and studied with Bernard Ringeissen in Paris on a French government scholarship. In 2005 she completed her PhD studies in philosophy (dissertation On criticizing music. Metacritical aspects of musical performance's evaluations). In 2014, she got her habilitation in philosophy. She has published four books: Dysonanse krytyki. O ocenie wykonania utworu muzycznego, [Critical Dissonances. Evaluating Performances of Musical Work] Gdańsk 2008, Ucho i umysł. Szkice o do­świadczaniu muzyki [Ear and Mind. Sketches of Musical Experience] Gdańsk 2012, A jak Apollo. Biografia Alfreda Cortota [A for Apollo: A Biography of Alfred Cortot] Warszawa 2019, and Słuch metafizyczny [Ear for metaphysics] Warszawa 2020, translated into English and published by the Chopin Institute in 2021 as Metaphysical Hearing (Warsaw, 2021). In 2021 she translated Julian Johnson's Out of Time. Music and the Making of Modernity for the PWM publishing house. Anna combines humanistic study with a view inspired by neuroaesthetics and neurobiology. In 2021 she co-edited a special neuroaesthetic issue of the Polish Journal of Art and Philosophy (Sztuka i Filozofia, 56/2020) and published several papers on music and the brain in collaboration with her Neurobiology Study Group.

References

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Levinson Jerrold, Musical Concerns. Essays in Philosophy of Music, Oxford University Press 2015.

Levinson Jerrold, Musical Thinking, "Midwest Studies in Philosophy", 27 (2003), pp. 59-68.

Levitin Daniel J., This is your Brain on Music: Understanding a Human Obsession, Penguin- -London, 2019.

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Robinson Jenefer, Deeper than Reason. Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art, Clarendon Press, Oxford 2005.

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Published

2023-12-13

Issue

Vol. 25 (2023): How do artists think?

Section

Articles

License

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.