The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A Phenomenology of Music

by Bruce Ellis Benson

Whereas most books on the philosophy of music focus on the creation and reproduction of music, Bruce Benson's concern is the phenomenology of music making as an activity. He offers a radical thesis that improvization is of primary importance at the moment of music making. The book brings together a wide range of musical examples from classical music, jazz, early music and other genres. Incorporating analytic and continental philosophy, musicology and performance-practice issues, it is a provocative study for philosophers of art and musicologists. It also appeals to general readers; especially those who perform.

Genres: Music, Philosophy

214 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 26, 1999

About the author

Dr. Benson has been a visiting scholar at the New School and a guest lecturer in philosophy of religion at Union Theological Seminary. He is currently the chair of the philosophy department at Wheaton College (IL).

Reviews

[Neil R. Coulter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bruce Benson was my professor at Wheaton for Philosophy of the Arts. I took that course my senior year, and it’s one of two courses that year that changed my whole perspective on life and faith and art. (Though Dr. Benson wouldn’t know me from Adam, because at the time, I was not an interesting or memorable student at all! I think he would be amused to learn that a former student who made no impression on him and never stayed in contact after the semester is now teaching his book to his own doctoral students.) It was in that class that I learned to look at the arts not as lofty, unreachable works of genius, but as something that can be talked about in normal tones, even laughed at. Benson brought to my attention the true strangeness of how we behave in art museums—usually no one tells us we can’t talk loudly, yet who talks or laughs loudly in an art museum? (Actually, I can imagine docents in the Dallas Museum of Art telling people not to be loud. I’ve seen employees there enforcing some odd “rules.”)

So as I prepared an intro-to-phenomenology session for my doctoral World Arts students, I was happy to have them read a couple chapters from Benson’s book on phenomenology and music. I’d read the book several years ago and remembered it being okay, but this time as I read the first two chapters that were assigned, I couldn’t stop! I read the whole book straight through again, and found much to enjoy in it.

The phenomenological approach really gets going in chapter 2, where Benson explores what the “musical work” really is. When does it start? Where is it located? Who creates/controls/owns it, and who has permission (and which permissions?) to change it? I found it a fascinating application of phenomenological methods, but here looking not for the ultimate ideal of everything, but just the more focused pursuit of what we might call the ideal that we regard as the musical work. Benson takes a question that seems relatively straightforward and then expands it further and further until you see how much is implied with each opinion or judgment.

Chapter 3 is obviously influenced by the early music movement and the “historically accurate reconstructions” of Harnoncourt and others, which were such big things in the 1990s. Clearly, Benson is not terribly impressed by the need some performers feel to be accurate to the original time of a piece’s composition. One of his conclusions is that we really have no right to pick and choose from this or that historical era. Each generation does with music the things it wants to, and rather than overlooking or disdaining something that happened between the original performance and today, we ought to be grateful for all those who kept the piece alive through all the years by, in fact, doing whatever they wanted to with it.

Chapter 4 is, honestly, beyond me. It was the one point in the book where I became frustrated at Benson’s making generalized pronouncements from looking at only a very, very narrow slice of all human musicking: Western European and American classical music, and jazz. Why not rock, rap, merengue, folk ballads, and so on and so on? This chapter seemed to just keep going around and around and not getting anywhere that interested me, and that’s largely due to the limited focus. In other chapters, I had an easier time expanding the discussion in Benson’s book outward to other artistic traditions.

But then the final chapter is beautiful. Benson concludes that the musical work is really an ongoing dialogue among all of the participants: composer, performer, listener. The work is unimaginable potential, and it only holds together as it should when each participant takes on the proper, humble attitude, willingly accountable and vulnerable to all others, and appreciative of all others. Here’s a paragraph that I especially liked:

Clearly, though, some sense of reciprocity is necessary for a musical dialogue. So what form might that reciprocity take in order to keep the dialogue from degenerating into a monologue? I think the answer—to whatever extent there can be anything like an “answer” to such a question—is that reciprocity, to put it one way, “always begins at home.” Gadamer insists that “good will” is absolutely necessary for understanding between one another. For Gadamer, “good will” is demonstrated not when one attempts “to prove that one is always right” but when “one seeks instead as far as possible to strengthen the other’s viewpoint so that what the other person has to say becomes illuminating.” If there is to be anything resembling reciprocity, then it must begin with me. True reciprocity is only possible if I make the first move—without knowing that the other will reciprocate. Of course, whether I am a composer, performer, or listener, making the first move makes me vulnerable. For there is no guarantee that you (or anyone else taking part in the dialogue) will reciprocate. but there is also no way around this danger. (168)

To me, this shows how a phenomenological approach, with all its complexity and all its frustrating moments of seemingly endless questioning, can lead us to truths about human life that go far beyond just the ideal under consideration. What Benson concludes about musicking is what I have thought so often in the past few years, wishing that somebody would have the courage to be the one who is vulnerable and doesn’t give back the same venom and sarcasm that they receive.

Two authors I wish Benson had engaged with as part of his consideration: first is Christopher Small. Obviously from my use of the verb musicking, you can see that I’m a fan of that book and the ideas Small was playing with. The other author is Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, whose books on creativity and flow might have been very useful in a couple of Benson’s chapters. Bringing in these authors would have been intriguing, and I’m sorry that we don’t know how they all might have interacted together on this topic. However, the book as it is, though perhaps not quite as grand as its subtitle (I would call it “A Phenomenological Consideration of the Musical Work” or something like that, but that’s not very catchy), is worth reading and discussing.

[Oscar Rodrigues · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very refreshing view of the music making activity as a process, an ecosystem where all its participants are creatively involved in the (re)creation of musical pieces - composers, performers, listeners and all the traditions, contexts and practices since the beginning of music history. It serves to show the limits and prejudices of the (contemporary?) classical music activity as being rooted on romantic and ideal views of composers and performers which have no standing in actual practice, or in most of its history, for that matter.

Still, I get a feeling that some of the arguments (such as the interactions between composers and the audience) needed further detailing, while others (such as the view that performers are always improvisers) are over-explored throughout the book. B. E. Benson clearly has a very strong background in philosophy and aesthetics, which allows him to make very important and smart connections but, at the same time, its style is sometimes a bit demanding for the listener, due to the rapid sequence of questions and answers of different topics.

[Iyad · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, though not profound, book on composition and performance as a dialogue. the claim that it is "A Phenomenology of Music" is a big overstatement, but the book is interesting in its posing of important questions regarding the "work". Is is probably of special interest for performers.