Musical Composition as Lingering Reflection. Exploring the Critical Potential of Music

This research explores the possibilities of music functioning as a critical voice in today’s world. The specific focus of this research lies in musical composition as an activity, discipline and institution, rather than finished, musical works. The aspect of composition that possesses this critical potential I call lingering reflection. This term refers to a way of engaging in dialogue with the discipline, its handcraft, historicity, and surrounding social world. Slow and heteronomous in its nature, lingering reflection presents a counterpoint to ideas that seem solid, are easily accessible and not questioned. I argue that this aspect of musical composition reveals something philosophically significant.
The research consists of five subsections, referred to as articles, each of which contributes to the understanding of a ‘reversed thinking’ in epistemological terms: art revealing something ‘true’ about this world instead of merely being a product of it. This does not refer to the romantic discussion of art ‘exceeding’ given truth. Rather, it advances the idea that art, by identifying with the society, carries the potential of revealing some of its false premises.

Critical theory forms the frameworks of this research: discussing issues in social, historical, and material terms, and from a philosophical basis. The subject at hand does not attempt to postulate any of the issues in a timeless way. As I argue, the need for such a critical position of music results from a specific historical development that concerns art’s autonomous position in the Western world.

This research is qualitative. I discuss issues that are central for music as an artform in today’s world, such as the socially isolated position of contemporary music, and the possibilities of breaking with Western hegemonic thinking in a diverse, multicultural and multimedial world. All subjects are discussed from the perspective of musical composition.

Ultimately, lingering reflection oftentimes remains without a clear voice, as it represents the opposite of what is immediately given in music or language. The existing ideas that appear as stable and universal are exactly those that are fractured through this critical activity.

Key notions:
Musical composition, lingering reflection, critical theory, epistemology, cultural critique, estrangement