a proposal by the philosopher Alfred Schutz

We are based on the analyzes of Max Weber and supported by Henri Bergson and Edmund Husserl, the Austrian philosopher Alfred Schutz (1899-1959) is one of the referees the first sociology of knowledge in the German language. His ambition was to flesh out a philosophy of mundane reality, and he was convinced that phenomenology was an appropriate way to study society and culture.

He dedicated his diploma thesis to the Schutzian project as the final part of the doctoral program in philosophy, Jacobo López Villalbacellist and professor of cello and chamber music at the Conservatory of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, a work that shines on you in the form of a book, For the phenomenology of music. Design by Alfred Schutzpublished by the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED).

It is the first large-scale academic work above the phenomenology of Schutz’s musicThe aim, according to the author, was “to maintain the legitimacy of the philosophical vision in the face of the social sciences”.

After repeating some basic concepts and historiographical elements as a starting point and analyzing the beginnings of the phenomenology of music, López Villalba enters Austrian musical thought, beginning with the “Bergsonian period” (1924-1928).

Schutz deals with the question of the “philosophical basis of the social sciences in the experience of the individual”. Music has been one of her main interests since the beginning. Popular pianist and “avid sheet music reader”I am constantly in contact with the musical phenomenon.

These early manuscripts can be found above a study of opera and his reflections on Mozart and Wagner starting with three aspects: the argument of the operas, the question of continuity, and the solution of your problem.

Asking the question “where music occupies the capacities of our lives”, finding himself in Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, he reflects on melody and rhythm (which is “related to juxtaposition and simultaneity”), analyzes other forms of art, looks for parallels with music (which is an “ideal object”) and studies its temporal and spatial elements. Sienta las para-articular base view this musical from a phenomenological perspective.

The fifth chapter of the thesis focuses on the experience we have with it musical object. As the author states, Schutz makes it very clear that “a person who enters into the experience of listening to music lives in a time dimension that cannot be measured by a watch.”

On the temporal analysis applicable to musical experience, follow Husserl’s studies on the consciousness of time, but do not abandon Bergson’s concept. His ambition is to “adapt the phenomenological basis to the complex sociology of Max Weber”. It is an encounter with elements that are essential to the experience of music (which always arises “in the stream of inner time, in the stream of consciousness”).

Three basic categories emerge: continuity and repetition, consistency and movement. Another central theme of phenomenology is passion, which occurs at different levels in musical experience. Also central to Schutz’s thinking is the notion of relevance, “the basic explicative category of the structure of the world,” which can be of three types: thematic or topical, interpretive, and motivational.

The last part of the book is devoted to the social interactions associated with the musical process. Phenomenon communication between composer and audiencein which the presence of an intermediary, interpreter or executor is normally required.

Schutz, who studied the paper of art through music to understand others, observed that they created “social relations of a very complicated structure” between these participants.

Some criticism of the ideas of the French sociologist Maurice Halbwachs, examines the theory of multiple realities (starting with William James), studies the origin of the so-called social interaction and development in musical experiencethe “mutual harmony” that enables communication, the social relationship between the composer and the spectator (who “are connected by a common temporal dimension”) and between the coejecutantes (one of his most famous musical ideas, according to López Villalba), as well as the signs and symbols between the composer and the performer.

Y analyzes Mozart’s works as a representation of the basic structure of the world, exploring “purely musical media” through the ways in which the Salzburgs “solved the philosophers’ problems in their own way, demonstrating that they were the greatest of all”: he noted “the unity of melody and realistic drama by means of conjunto, recitatives and orchestra”.

Schutz wrote five texts on a strictly musical theme, of which only two were published. His echoes in the philosophical-musical literature of the time were lost. López Villalba realizes a deep immersion in his thoughts in a work that See its value and unusual character. And so it is, as Javier San Martín states in the prologue, “if there is an exceptional musical philosophy in Spanish, the phenomenology of music is practically nothing”.

A book that opens the way and you are called to stimulate new research in this area.