#5 - "Should the Method Define the Tasks?" (2 of 4)

In this chapter Dr. Ferrara set about answering that very question. In order to do so in a way that would make sense to his reader, however, he first needed to provide us with some necessary background information, which is why this chapter was almost twenty pages long rather than a single page with a neatly printed "Yes." or "No."

The first order of business was defining the tasks we would be working with. Ferrara gave an admirably brief yet comprehensive overview and explanation of the theory and history of Husserl (the phenomenological analysis) and Heidegger (the hermeneutic analysis), and while there were others these two took up the bulk of the discussion along with their counterpart, the ever-present classical methods such as Shenkerian and Roman Numeral analysis.

There was also some interesting discussion about the nature of a work of art itself, and how whether something is an "art object" or a mere "object," or even if something is an "art object" if it is allowed to become an "asthetic object" based on the situations it which it is placed and the mindset of the viewer engaging with it (or, for that matter, the question of whether or not the viewer is engaging with the object at all!). That also brought up the point that just because a person may engage with a piece making it an "aesthetic object," without a deliberate creator, said object can be an "aesthetic object" without necessarily being an "art object."

Though I must take this moment to point out, I disagree with Ferrara on his example with the clouds. All of nature, in fact, is one beautiful "art object;" the masterful and very deliberate scheme of the ultimate Creator.

This reading was incredibly dense and I'm not entirely sure I understood it all due to the new vocabularies that seemed to be thrown at me every other sentence! I'm looking forward to the lecture tomorrow to clarify, or at least solidify in my own mind, these concepts. I think Ferrara summed things up beautifully in one of the very last sentences of the chapter when he stated that "being open and responsive to questions posed by the musical work provides the beginnings of true objectivity." Yes! It is strange, though...without having studied this kind of thing - and definately without the kind of background knowledge that someone like Ferrara or these other musicologists and analyists claim - this approach to music and "art objects" seems only natural! Could it be that moving into this new age, our consciousnesses are expanding, evolving? That as the barriers between us break down, everything truly is revealed, to the point that the knowledge for which scholars studied, sweated and toiled has seeped out into the ether where it is merely absorbed by the young minds coming into the world after them?


I wonder...