1. A parallel way
We are seeking a parallel way to music. The way is to be parallel to the
way to language. From mathematics we know that parallel lines never meet,
or that they intersect only at infinity, but this mathematical understanding
of parallelism should not be allowed to throw us off the track. Instead,
it should first be recalled where the word 'parallel' comes from. It is
Greek in origin, and comes from para\ a)llh/lw,
meaning "next to one another", or "near one another". Thus, the way to
music is supposed to lie next to and to run alongside the way to language,
in itself a mysterious circumstance that requires elucidation.
Why should such a path be sought and embarked upon? Would it not be more
appropriate to ask the question: What is the essence of music? or What
are the essential foundations of music? This type of questioning is familiar
to us through the long tradition of metaphysics. To seek a way to music
is here supposed to indicate that a type of thinking that is no longer
metaphysical is attempting to make its way, to make headway, or simply,
to make way (Be-wëgen). In seeking to make its way, thinking
is to travel on a path that runs alongside the way to language in order
to experience something essential and intrinsic about music, in particular,
its parallelism to language. Travelling on a path and having regard for
the parallel way to language is supposed to provide orientation for the
journey which should allow us to experience music in a way that is profoundly
different from how music has been thought about within the metaphysical
tradition.
'The Way to Language' is the title of a late lecture that Heidegger held
in a series of lectures sponsored by the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts
and the Academy of the Arts in Berlin in January 1959 under the title "Language".
The lecture is the final text in a series of texts and lectures which Heidegger
wrote in the fifties and published under the title On the Way to Language(1).
As the chronologically last text and the text which gives the volume its
title, 'The Way to Language' could well be regarded as the final, mature
fruit of a decade of intensive thinking and writing about language.
How are we to seek a way to music in parallel to a way to language? We
can only do so by looking over towards the way to language to see how that
way makes way. The formula announced at the beginning of 'The Way to Language'
which is to serve as a thread for the way to language is: "Bring language
as language to language." This literal translation of "Die Sprache als
die Sprache zur Sprache bringen" (242) is as such inadequate, since in
German, "zur Sprache bringen" means simply "to thematize, to address (an
issue), to express in words, to put into words". The formula would thus
have to be reformulated in English something like: "Put language as language
into words." Heidegger points out that what seems at first to be a formula
will be transformed while under way. In its final reformulation, the formula
will become: "Die Be-wëgung bringt die Sprache (das Sprachwesen) als
die Sprache (die Sage) zur Sprache (zum verlautenden Wort)." (261), which
can be rendered as "Making way puts language (the essencing of language)
as language (the saying) into language (into spoken words)". Without having
followed the path that leads to this ultimate reformulation of the apparent
formula, this final rendering is initially incomprehensible. Furthermore,
as we shall see, it no longer means a path of thinking which we travel
along.
Here, for the moment, we only have to ask: What does this formula imply
for the parallel way to music? On this path we are trying to make way to
music by way of thinking in language. The essence of music, or music as
music will not be put to music but, at best, it will be put into thoughtful
words. This shows that the way to music in thinking must be a way that
runs alongside any way that leads to music as tuneful and attuning tones.
Thinking can only seek a parallel way to music, and it can only make way
in words that show it the way. The way to music in words is necessarily
a way that runs alongside and next to the way on which music as music makes
way to music. The formula that can serve as a thread for an attempt to
follow a path in thinking to music as music is the following: To put music
as music into music. This formula has to be transformed into the parallel
formula: To put into words the making way of music as music into music.
Since in thinking we are moving and making way in the medium of language,
the "putting into words" in the formula is redundant. Later on, this formula
will be elaborated and transformed into the as yet incomprehensible formulation:
"Making way allows music (the essencing of music) as music (the quivering)
to come to music (attuned sounds)".
The way to music that is attempted here (this must be openly admitted(2))
is plagiarism (from L. plagiare: to kidnap) in an essential sense
for the sake of thinking which abducts another's progeny and thoughtfully
compels it to walk along another, parallel way.
The "as" in the formula should be noted. As we shall see, one signification
of this as is that we humans hear music as music, music qua
music. This should not be taken for granted as something self-evident.
We can be sure that many animals hear music, but do they hear music as
music? No, they don't. The metaphysical delineation of human being as the
living being that has the lo/goj provided by
Aristotle e.g. in his Politics is usually understood as the ability
of human beings to speak, which includes of course that we can also listen;
or it is taken to mean, more fundamentally, that we are 'rational creatures'.
It would be too superficial now to claim instead that we human beings are
essentially beings who can hear music as music, but this being-able-to-hear
is presumably related to lo/goj and le/gein
if this is taken in the sense of a gathering. In listening to music, we
are able to gather that it is music and can thus hear it as
music. That something is, i.e. its existentia or Daßsein,
depends on le/gein as a gathering-that... Of
what nature is this gathering that grants the as of music? In the further
course of our way to music it will become apparent that the gathering is
related to an attunement. Such relatedness (pro/j ti)
derives from the parallel ways. Needless to say, such attunement as an
issue for thought lies outside the ambit of metaphysical thinking.
2. Music, metaphysically speaking
Music: We mean making music and listening to music as human activities.
Some people are musical and others are not. By this we usually mean that
someone has an ear for music, whereas another is tone deaf. Music is an
acoustic phenomenon; its material is sounds or tones produced by various
instruments or devices, or the human voice. These sounds are ordered in
some way, whether it be in a tonal form, an atonal form or some other form
depending, say, on contingency. A musical work structures a time-space
for us acoustically in some way or other and requires both performers and
listeners. This acoustic time-space is formed tunefully, where "tuneful"
is taken in the broadest possible sense to mean that music attunes us in
some way or other, whether harmoniously or dissonantly or whatever, and
that by our very nature we are attuned to the resounding of musical sounds.
Music, however, is not just musical sounds formed in some way or other,
but is said to have some sort of meaning. Often this is described by saying
that music is the language of the emotions. The view that music signifies
something goes back to the ancients, i.e. to Plato and Aristotle. At the
beginning of the Aristotelian text entitled Peri\
Poihtikh=j we read:
w(/sper ga\r kai\ xrw/masi kai\ sxh/masi polla\
mimou=ntai/ tinej a)peika/zontej, oi( me\n dia\ te/xnhj oi( de\ dia\ sunhqei/aj,
e(/teroi de\ dia\ th=j fwnh=j, ou(/tw ka/n tai=j ei)rhme/naij te/xnaij
a/(pasai me\n poiou=ntai th\n mi/mhsin e)n r(uqm%= kai\ lo/g% kai\ a/rmoni/#,
tou/toij d" h\) xwri\j h)\ memigme/noij??: oi(=on a(rmoni/# me\n kai\ r(uqm%
xrw/menai mo/non h( te au)lhtikh\ kai\ h( kiqaristikh\ ka)/n tinej e(/terai
tugxa/nwsin ou(=sai <toiau=tai> th\n du/namin, oi(=on h( tw=n suri/ggwn:
au)t%= de\ t%= r(uqm%= mimei=tai xwri\j a(rmoni/aj h( tw=n o)rxhstw=n,
kai\ ga\r ou(=toi dia\ tw=n sxhmatizome/nwn r(uqmw=n mimou=ntai kai\ h)/qh
kai\ pa/qh kai\ pra/ceij. (1447a19 29)
Some make representations using colours and forms, making images of
many things (some by art, and some by practice), and others do so with
sound; so too all the arts we mentioned make a representation through rhythm,
speech and harmony, but use these either separately or mixedly. E.g., the
art of playing the oboe and lyre, and any other arts that have such a potential
(e.g. that of playing the pan pipes), use harmony and rhythm alone, but
the art of dancers [uses] rhythm by itself without harmony; for they too
can represent stances/characters, moods/emotions/experiences and actions,
by means of rhythms given form. (Trans. Richard Janko, mod. ME)
The pa/qh mentioned at the end of this quotation
can mean mood, emotion, experience and in general, that which happens to
us and affects us and thus that which we suffer in the broadest possible
sense. The pa/qh come to pass over us and arouse
our passions in putting us in a mood, i.e. an attuned mode of being.
The Aristotelian conception of music as a representation parallels his
conception of language as a representation in signs of the 'sufferings'
of the psyche in being affected by what matters to it. What matters to
the psyche is represented in the pa/qh, and
the latter are represented in spoken sounds, and these, in turn, in writing,
which are signs for the spoken sounds (cf. the beginning of Peri\
E(rmhnei/aj). This Aristotelian conception of music, through all
its modifications, is with us to the present day in theories of musical
meaning. Thus e.g. we find in Encyclopaedia Brittanica the following
note on Schopenhauer:
Schopenhauer looked upon Platonic Ideas as objectifying will, but music
is "by no means like the other arts, the copy of the Ideas, but the copy
of the will itself. This is why the effect of music is so much more powerful
and penetrating than that of the other arts, for they speak only of shadows,
but it speaks of the thing itself."
Schopenhauer acknowledged a connection between human feeling and music,
which "restores to us all the emotions of our inmost nature, but entirely
without reality and far removed from their pain." Music, which he is presenting
an as analogue of the emotional life, is a copy or symbol of the will.
In Schopenhauer's metaphysics, "will" is the title for the essential being
of beings which is represented ("vorgestellt", placed before us) in music.
Whether theories of musical meaning are "referentialist" (referring to
meanings outside the music itself) or "formalist" (being autonomous and
thus only 'meaning' itself), the problem of emotion in music remains to
be dealt with, as Encyclopaedia Brittanica notes: "The Austrian
critic Eduard Hanslick, in his The Beautiful in Music (German edition
published 1854), was a strong proponent of music as an art of intrinsic
principles and ideas; yet even Hanslick, ardent formalist though he was,
struggled with the problem of emotion in music." Thus the idea prevails
that the sounds of music are signs and signify something to do with emotions
and moods. In slightly modifying a passage in Heidegger's 'The Way to Language'
it can be said: "Music is represented from the viewpoint of musicking with
regard to articulated, structured sounds which are the / bearers of meanings.
Musicking is a human activity." (cf. UzS:245f)
According to the well known Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet in his opus
magnum, Les fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine,
which appeared in 1961 towards the end of the conductor's life, the physiologically
perceived vibrations that are received by the body's sense organs are mirrored
or reflected, i.e. represented, in consciousness, "since bodily affectedness
is ... already the 'mirroring reflection' of physiological phenomena".(3)
From this starting point of musical tones as a mirroring reflection in
consciousness of physical and physiological processes, whereby the latter
come to be represented in consciousness, Ansermet intends to show "how,
in a resonant space, a spatio-temporal world is constructed from tonal
structures and gains in form" (652) whose "emergence" is "in the cochlear
area" (ibid.)
We see that it is highly probable that electrical waves form for a
duration on the basilar membrane which correlate to the perception of a
tone. When tones that sound simultaneously are heard, other waves are formed
here. Consequently, in the reflection of the phenomenon and in the gaze
of perceptive consciousness, the tonal positions make a movement in space
and time, whereas in simultaneity they form harmonious chords as if, in
the cochlear area, a double train of waves had been formed, one of whose
waves runs longitudinally in time, while the other is transversal and momentary.
(Ansermet op. cit. 653)
Such physiological processes, according to Ansermet, are synthesized into
a musical experience:
Let us now imagine the above tonal schema [an example of three bars
of music ME] as a spatial structure. In the cochlear emergence of this
structure, the momentary wave which arises when the simultaneously vibrating
tones are heard and which links the various cochlear positions with each
other in a single act of perception, has made a synthesis of tonal positions
out of the harmony of tones, just as a molecule is a synthesis of atoms.
(ibid. 654)
What underlies all these considerations of the formation of tonal structures
is Ansermet's (anthropological) conviction that "the feeling for music
arose at the same moment when humans discovered music in tones. Humans,
however, only discovered their musicality and music because they possessed
an activity of the soul within themselves for which they felt the need
to express in itself." (ibid. 646)
This basic metaphysical position agrees with the fundamental Aristotelian
inscription of the essence of music already cited above from the Poetics.
3. Making way
To the present day, what is essential to music has been regarded as inhering
in musicking as sounds or tones brought into a form. To recur to the formula
of the first section, it can be asked: Does this conception of music appropriately
describe the putting of music as music into music? The traditional metaphysical
way to music sets out in the direction of humankind; it leads through music
to something else: to the representation of human emotions in tonal signs,
in a language of emotions. The essence of music conceived of with regard
to something else, however, does not already point toward or point out
the essencing of music, the mode in which music holds sway and whiles as
music, i.e. rests, gathered into what allows music to come into its own
as music.
If we carefully follow the trace or tracks of music as music, then we have
already renounced the procedures for regarding music that have hitherto
prevailed. We can no longer treat music as the representation of human
experiences, nor as a mirroring of physiological sense data in tonal consciousness,
nor as a formal structure of harmonious sounds, no matter how conventionally
or unconventionally 'harmony' is understood, nor as a representation of
anything at all. Instead of explaining music as this or that, and thus
fleeing from music, the way to music wants to arrive at an experience (eine
Er-fahrung) of music as music. In defining the essence of music as
a representation or expression, music is indeed comprehended, but it is
grasped by something other than itself. If, on the contrary, we pay attention
to music as music, then it demands of us that everything that belongs to
music as music be brought out into the open.
It is one thing to collect and order various elements that reveal themselves
within the essence of music, and another to gather one's gaze into that
which of itself unifies what belongs together insofar as this unifying
dimension grants the essencing of music its own unity.
The way to music now attempts to follow more strictly the thread which
the formula names: To put into words the making-way of music as music to
music. The aim is to come closer to what is intrinsically characteristic
of music. Here too, music shows itself at first as our musicking. We pay
attention now only to what is always already resonating alongside when
musicking, and that in the same measure, whether it is noticed or not.
People making and listening to music (i.e. musicking in the broad sense)
belong to music as an activity, but not in the sense of cause and effect.
Rather, those musicking have their presence, i.e. presence themselves and
thus present themselves, in musicking. And where are they present? They
are present with what they use for musicking; they are present where they
while with what already affects them in individual and multifarious ways.
What affects them, each in its own way, are other people and things and
everything that attunes these people and affects these things as a whole.
In musicking for each other, whether it be directly in bodily presence,
i.e. live, or indirectly through the media, the whole range of moods is
made to resound in one way or the other; it is modulated and perhaps developed,
attuned in such a way that those musicking by making and listening to music
attune each other and themselves. The songs sung with voice and/or instruments,
alone or together, are manifold. What is musicked may disappear without
leaving a trace or it may be preserved or linger on in some way or other.
What is made to resonate in music may be long past, or it may have been
long since allotted as a music destined to be brought to resonance.
What is sung in the broadest sense of musicking, whether vocal or not,
originates in manifold ways from what is unsung, what is unmusicked, whether
this be what has not yet been musicked or what must be left unmusicked
in the sense of what is withheld from music. Thus what is musicked, i.e.
brought to resonance in music in manifold ways, has the appearance of being
removed from music-making and music-makers and does not belong to them,
whereas in truth it holds up to music-making and music-makers that towards
which they comport themselves, no matter how they dwell in what is musicked
from the unmusicked origin.
A multitude of elements and relations becomes apparent in the essence of
music. They have been counted, but not put into a sequence. In going through
them in an originary accounting which is prior to any calculating with
numbers, their belonging-together has been announced. Counting is a recounting
which looks ahead to what unifies this belonging-together without, however,
being able to bring it out into the open.
The impotence of thinking's gaze that becomes apparent here, to experience
the unifying unity of the essencing of music, is an age-old heritage. This
unity, therefore, has remained unnamed. The traditional names for what
is meant by the name "music" always name it in one respect or another which
is doled out by the essencing of music.
Let the sought-for unity of the essencing of music be called the fugue.
This name calls on us to look more carefully at what properly characterizes
the essencing of music. A fugue is a musical composition in which several
themes, which in their difference flee (L. fugere) from each other,
are nonetheless held together by means of the laws of contrapuntal harmony.
Here, by contrast, the fugue is taken to be the entire manifold of originary
tunes held together and adjoined in the articulated unity of that fugue
which resonates through and originarily opens up the free dimension of
attunement which comes to resonate in manifold attunements. The fugue is
here the originary articulated reverberation of the essencing of music,
the total structured quavering of attunement in which those musicking and
what is musicked and its unmusicked origin are joined in what has been
allotted and conceded by the fugue.
"Essence" is a word laden with meaning from the tradition of metaphysics,
and is derived from the Latin stem "esse", "to be". The essence of something
is what it is in its deepest, most intrinsic, unchanging sense, it is its
'whatness' or, in Latin, 'quidditas'. In German, "essence" is rendered
as "Wesen", which is itself one of the forms of the verb "Sein". "Wesen"
comes from the stem 'wes-', which is also preserved in English in the past
tense of the verb "to be": "was" and "were". In Old English, the infinitive
and present participles of the verb "to be" were still able to be formed
using the 'wes-' stem; the present infinitive was "wesan", the present
participle "wesende" (cf. the OED). The essence of music means what music
is most intrinsically, in its innermost being; the wesan of music is its
most characteristic, ownmost being. Forthwith we will rename the essence
of music its wesan and, to put its ongoing, temporal character into
words, we will call and name it by using the archaic present participle,
the wesende of music.
The fugue as the unified wesende of music remains hidden and muffled even
in its approximate reverberation as long as we do not take care to note
in what sense already musicking and what is musicked have been spoken of.
Musicking is a making of sounds. It can also be conceived of as a human
activity. Both are correct conceptions of music as musicking. Both are
now put to one side, without us wanting to forget for how long the sounding
of music has already been waiting for an appropriately attuned definition;
for, the acoustico-physiological and harmonic explanations of sound-making
and musicking do not experience their provenance in the ringing of stillness.
Still less do they experience the attuned definition of sound-making which
stems from and resonates with this origin.
In what way, however, have singing and what is sung, i.e. musicking and
music, been thought in the brief recounting of the wesende of music given
above? They already show themselves to be phenomena through which and in
which something makes way to music, i.e. comes to resonance, insofar
as music is made. Making mere sounds and making music (musicking) are
not the same thing. Somebody may produce a lot of sound, even on the stage
of a concert hall to a large audience, but it is only noise. By contrast,
someone else may scarcely make an audible sound, or make no sound at all,
and with this silence make music.
But what does it mean to musick? To experience what this phrase
says we are bound to what our language itself calls on us to think in this
word. "To musick" is a nonce-verb to the word "music", from Greek mou=sa,
the mountain nymph who inspires the singer to sing. The singer can only
sing when attuned with the musical source, and thus inspired, his or her
singing temporarily and temporally permeates and colours existence as a
whole with a particular mood or moods. Mood is the way the world is open
to us momentarily as a whole in any particular situation at any particular
time. Musicking must therefore be understood as an opening of world in
a particular way in bringing a mood to resonance.
We are saying something self-evident and yet something that has scarcely
been pondered on in its significance and ramifications when we point out
the following. To sing to each other in musicking means to bring each other
to resonance, to reciprocally let oneself go with the mood of the music.
To music with each other (albeit only by humming a tune or by saying something
or moving in a certain way) means: to make something resonate together,
to bring to resonance the tune that inheres in the music played and thus
to allow a certain attunement to vibrate. What is unheard is not only that
which lacks acoustic sound in not having been made audible, but is also
the unmusicked, i.e. what has not yet gained resonance in an attunement.
That which has to remain unheard is withheld in the unmusicked; it whiles
as a hidden secret in muteness as that which cannot be made to resonate
in an attunement. What is granted to resonance resounds as an attunement
in the sense of what has been allotted, whose resounding does not even
need any sound.
Musicking, as the resounding of an attunement, belongs to the fugue of
the wesende of music which is permeated by the modes and melodies of resonance
in which moods are announced, conceded and denied, come to resonance and
amplitude in attunement or withdraw, ebb and fade. What runs through the
entire fugue of the wesende of music is the manifold resounding of attunements
from various provenances. With regard to the relations or rapport of attuned
resounding, we call the entirety of the wesende of music the quivering
and
admit that, even now, what unifies these relations of attuned resounding
in the fugue of music has not yet come into sight.
The word "quivering", like many other words in our language, is now usually
used in a pejorative sense. "Quivering" is regarded as a description for
that which is not firm, which shakes and trembles (perhaps with fear) and
thus is not steadfast, robust and sturdy. The earth may shake and quiver
in an earthquake that brings destruction. A person or an animal may quiver
with fright or agitation (the OED quotes: "His hand trembled and his flesh
quivered." 1869), but perhaps also with sheer, overbrimming vitality. The
quivering or rapid agitation of the prongs of a tuning fork allows a pure
tone to resound. People quiver with emotions resonant with a situation.
Every situation is resonant with the quivering of a mood which attunes
those who are currently, i.e. temporally, in that situation. Quivering
is the hearth in whose radiance the attunement of moods can come to resonance.
We can understand quivering from the attunement which resonates with it.
The wesende of music is quivering as the attuning of a mood. A mood
is the mode or colour of any given situation. We are open to this originary
quivering and can therefore resonate with it in an attunement or a mood.
Quivering's attuning is not based on any feelings or sensibilities, but
rather, all feelings and sensibilities stem from an attuning quivering
within whose resonance feelings as such can be felt.
With a view to the fugue-like character of quivering, we must not ascribe
attuning exclusively or primarily to human activity. Attunement as resonance
characterizes the presence and absence, the resounding and fading of moods
of all kinds and degree. Even when attunement is brought about by our musicking,
this attuning as the striking of a chord is preceded by a propensity and
proclivity to resonate in a mood.
Only when we think about our attunement in this regard can an adequate
characterization of the wesende in all musicking be achieved. We know about
musicking as a structured production of sounds by means of musical instruments
and voices. But making music is also listening. Usually, making music and
listening to music are counterposed to each other. Some make music and
others listen. But listening accompanies and encloses musicking not only
in the sense that music requires listeners. The simultaneity of making
music and listening means more than this. Making music is in itself a listening.
It is a listening to the music which we music. Thus musicking is not a
listening at the same time, but is rather a listening beforehand.
This listening to music precedes all other kinds of listening in the most
imperceptible way. We do not just make music, but we musick out of music.
We can only do this by virtue of having already listened to music. What
do we hear? We hear the musicking of music.
But does music itself musick? How could music do this, since it does not
have any musical instruments nor a voice with vocal cords, mouth, tongue,
etc. Nevertheless, music musicks. In the first place and properly
speaking, music follows the wesende of music: the quivering. Music musicks
by quivering, i.e. by attuning a mood. Its quivering emanates from the
once musicked and still unmusicked quivering which vibrates throughout
the fugue of the wesende of music. Music musicks as attunement by reaching
into all ranges of attunement from which moods are brought to resonance
or fade. Accordingly, we listen to music in the mode of allowing it to
attune us with its quivering. No matter in what other modes we also listen,
whenever we listen to something, listening means allowing oneself to
resonate with the quivering thus enabling all apprehension of mood
and feeling. In musicking as this fundamental listening to music, we are
attuned to the quivering that we have already heard and make it resonate.
We let music's silent voice come and we reach toward the sound that has
been reserved for us and call for it. Within the fugue of the wesende of
music, at least one trait has now announced itself more clearly in which
we see how music as musicking is brought back into its own and thus musicks
as music.
When musicking, as listening to music, lets itself be attuned by the quivering,
this letting-be can only be granted insofar and insonear as our own wesan
(being) is immersed in quivering. We only hear it because we belong to
it. Quivering only grants listening to music, and thus musicking, to those
who belong to it. Such granting whiles in quivering. It lets us reach the
ability to music. The wesende of music rests in quivering that grants the
reach to musicking.
And quivering itself? Is it something completely separated from our musicking
to which a bridge has to be built? Or is quivering the stream of stillness
which itself bridges its banks, attunement and our musicking, by forming
them? Our usual ideas about music can scarcely reach this point. Quivering
when we try to think the wesende of music starting from it, do we not run
the risk of inflating music into a fantastic, autonomous being which cannot
be found anywhere as long as we think soberly and circumspectly about music?
Music remains, after all, inextricably bound to human singing and musicking.
To be sure. But what kind of bond is this? Whence and how does its binding
hold sway and bind? Music needs human musicking and is nevertheless not
merely something made by our activity in musicking. Wherein lies the essence
of music? On what is it grounded? Perhaps we are asking in a direction
that misses the wesende essence of music when we ask for grounds.
Is quivering itself the resting which grants rest to what belongs together
in the fugue of the wesende of music?
Before we think about this further, let us once more pay attention to the
way to music. Initially it was said: the more clearly music comes into
sight as itself, the more decisively will the way to it change. Up until
now, the way had the character of a path which leads our thinking in the
direction of music within the strange interweaving of relations named by
the formula for the way to music. We started from ideas about the essence
of music as a formal structure of sounds or as a language of emotions or
as a transformative mirroring of acoustic vibrations in consciousness to
form tonal structures. After that, there came a recounting of what belongs
to the fugue of music. By following this path in thought we reached music
as quivering.
4. The quivering of propriation
With the explanatory recounting of the wesende of music as quivering, the
way to music alongside music as music has reached its destination. Thinking
has arrived after travelling along the way to music. It seems to be so
and it is so as long as the way to music is taken to be a path of thinking
which thoughtfully follows the track that leads to music. In truth, however,
thinking now sees that it has only just been brought to the way to music
and has scarcely been set upon its track. For, in the meantime, something
has become apparent in the wesende of music which shows that in music as
quivering, something resembling a way holds sway.
What is a way? A way allows somewhere to be reached. It is quivering which,
insofar as we listen to it, allows us to reach the musicking of music.
The way to musicking whiles in music itself. The way to music in the sense
of musicking is music as quivering. What is characteristic and proper to
music thus hides itself in the way in which quivering lets those who listen
to it to come to music. We can only be these listeners insofar as we belong
to quivering. The way that lets us reach music comes already from being
allowed to belong to quivering. This belonging shelters what is properly
wesende in the way to music. But how does quivering hold sway that it is
able to allow and grant such belonging? If at all, then the wesende of
quivering in its own right must announce itself as soon as we pay attention
insistently enough to what recounting has yielded.
Quivering is attuning. In everything which affects us, which touches us
as a mood that has been brought to resonance, which attunes us, which waits
for us as the unmusicked, but also in the musicking which we ourselves
perform, attuning holds sway which lets moods reverberate and fade. Quivering
is in no way a supplementary expression of mood; rather, all moods and
their fading reside and rest in attuning quivering. Quivering liberates
moods into their proper reverberation and retracts other, fading moods
into their dying resonance. Quivering permeates and composes the free fugue
in the resonant temporal clearing which all moods have to seek out and
from which all spent moods fade, in which all resonance and fading away
have to reverberate.
Quivering is the composing gathering of the intrinsically many-fold modes
of attunement which conducts the fugue of all attunement and in each case
allows each mood to remain itself.
Where does attuning come from? This question asks for too much and too
impetuously. It suffices to pay attention to what stirs in attuning and
brings its stirring to differentiated fruition. Here we do not need to
search tediously. The simple, sudden, unforgettable and therefore perpetually
fresh gaze into what is familiar to us suffices. Although it is familiar,
we do not even try to get to know it, let alone to gain knowledge of it
in an appropriate way. This unknown, familiar element which stirs all attuning
of quivering into reverberation is, for each and every mood, whether reverberating
or fading, the early morn of that morning on which the change of day and
night first raises itself as a possibility: what is earliest and primordially
ancient at one and the same time. We can only name it, because it does
not tolerate being discussed at length, for it is the locality (birthplace)
of all places and spaces for the play of time. We use an old word to name
it and say:
What stirs in quivering's attuning is propriety.(4)
Propriety brings each reverberating and fading mood into its own from which
its characteristic attunement resonates and whiles according to its nature.
Let the propriety which brings by stirring quivering as attunement into
its attuning be called propriation. Propriation grants the free
openness of the reverberant, temporal clearing into which an attunement
can reverberate and from which a fading mood can fade and in its withdrawal
preserve its whiling. What propriation grants through quivering is never
the effect of a cause, never the consequence of a determining reason. Propriety
which brings anything into its own, i.e. propriation, is more granting
than any effectiveness, making, producing or grounding. What is propriating
is propriation itself, and nothing else besides. Propriation, viewed here
in quivering's attuning, cannot be conceived as an event nor as a happening
nor as an act; in the neighbourhood of music it can only be experienced
in quivering's attuning as that which grants moods. There is nothing else
to which propriation leads further back or from which, in terms of which
it could be explained. Propriation is not a result given by something else,
but is itself the granting whose reaching giving first grants something
resembling a "let there be..." which even beyng itself needs in order to
come into its own as presencing. Whereas beyng as presencing allows each
being its presence in and absence from the clearing, quivering is the resonant
accompaniment to beyng that grants the temporal coming and going of moods
which colour the clearing.
Propriation gathers the fugue of quivering and unfolds it to the fugue
of many-fold attunement. Propriation is what is most imperceptible among
what is imperceptible, the simplest among what is simple, it is what is
nearest among what is near, what is farthest among the far, and that within
which we mortals dwell in our life-time.
We can only name the propriation that holds sway in quivering by saying:
Propriation propriates. If we say this, we speak in our own, already spoken
language.
Propriation grants mortals their dwelling in their wesan so that they can
be the ones who speak and music. (Even the mode of speaking, the way or
how of speaking is in this sense music.) If law is understood as the gathering
of that which allows everything to presence appropriately, i.e. to come
to its own in the proper way, then propriation is the plainest and gentlest
of all laws. Propriation is of course not a law in the sense of a norm
which somehow hovers over us; it is not an ordinance which orders and regulates
a process.
Propriation is the law of all laws insofar as it gathers mortals into propriation
to their wesan and holds them there.
Because the attuning of quivering is part of propriety, being able to listen,
to sense and feel also rests on quivering, on belonging to quivering in
propriation. In order to see this in the entirety of its ramifications,
it would be necessary to think through the wesan of mortals sufficiently
in its interrelations, and of course propriation as such. Here, a hint
will have to suffice.
In having its eye on human being, propriation appropriates mortals by giving
them over to that which grants itself to humankind in quivering from everywhere
towards what is encrypted. The appropriation of humankind as the ones who
are attuned to quivering is characterized by it releasing human being into
its own, but only so that humans, as the ones who music, respond to quivering
in their very own way. This is the making of music. The responding music
of mortals is already an answer: a retort, a listening, attuned, accommodating
musicking. The appropriation of mortals to quivering releases human being
into usage from where it is used to put soundless quivering into resounding
music.
To make a way, e.g. through a field covered with snow, is called "wëgen"
even today in Alemannic-Swabian dialect. This verb, which is used transitively,
means: to form a path, to keep it ready for use through forming it. Thought
in this way, be-wëgen (Be-wëgung, not Bewegung,
movement) no longer means to move something along a way which already exists,
but to make the way, like ski-tracks across a field. Making way (Be-wëgung)
is the originary movement that first makes the way and thus is the way.
Propriation appropriates humankind into usage for itself. In propriating
attunement as its own property, propriation is the making way of quivering
to music. The formula for the way to music thus becomes:
Making way brings music (the fugue as the wesende of music) as music (quivering)
to music (resounding song). In talking of a way to music, it now no longer
means merely and primarily the path of our thinking which thinks about
music. The way to music has changed on the way. It has been displaced from
our activity into the propriated wesende of music. But the changed of the
way to music only seems to us, from our own standpoint, to be a displacement
that only now takes place. In truth, the way to music has always had its
sole locality (birthplace) within the wesende of music itself. This, however,
also means that the way to music in the first sense does not become superfluous,
but only becomes possible and necessary through the way proper, the making
way that propriates and uses. For, because the wesende of music rests in
propriation as attuning quivering, which hands us humans over to the serenity
of free, attuned listening, only the making way of quivering to music opens
up to us the paths on which we think about the proper way to music.
The formula of the way: bring music as music to music, contains
not only an instruction for us as the ones who are thinking about music;
it also says the form of the fugue in which the wesende of music, which
rests on propriation, makes way. Making way releases quivering into musicking.
It clears the way on which musicking as sensitive listening captures what
is to be musicked from quivering and elevates what it captures to music.
The making way of quivering to music is the releasing bond that binds by
ap-propriating.
Released into its own free element in this way, music can concern itself
solely with itself. This sounds like talk of an egoistic solipsism. But
music does not insist on itself in the sense of a merely egocentric self-mirroring
which forgets everything else. As music, the wesende of music is propriating
quivering which withdraws precisely in order to liberate what is enquivered
into the propriety of its own attuning mood.
Music which musicks in quivering is concerned that our musicking, in listening
to what is unmusicked, responds to music's quivering. Thus, silence too,
which is often slipped under music as its origin is already a responding.
Silence responds to the soundless ringing of the stillness of propriating-attuning
quivering. Quivering that rests within propriation is, in attuning, an
ownmost mode of propriating that is parallel to the way language comes
to speech. Propriation is attuning. Music thus musicks according to the
mode in which propriation decrypts itself or withdraws.
Propriation is attuning. This sounds like a statement. If we only hear
a statement, then it is not what has to be thought. Quivering is the mode
in which propriation musicks; it is mode thus not so much as a type or
kind but mode as mood and me/loj, the melody
that attunes in singing, since propriating quivering brings moods to reverberate
in their own right; it allows them to resonate in their own wesan (beyng)
as the temporal colouring of the clearing.
Language has been called "the house of being". Language's sister, music,
is the reverberation of quivering. It is the shelter for quivering insofar
as its reverberating remains entrusted to the propriating attunement of
quivering. The shelter for quivering is music because, as the response
to quivering, it is propriation's mode as melody.
In order to think about the essence (wesende) of music, to say what properly
belongs to music, a change in music is necessary which we can effect neither
by force nor through invention. The change cannot result from acquiring
a new kind of music. The change touches on our relationship to music, our
rapport with music. This relationship or rapport is determined by the destiny
of whether and how we are kept in rapport by the wesende of music as the
originary reverberation of propriation, since propriation, in propriating,
holding and holding-itself-back is the epitome of all binding holds. For
this reason, our musicking as a response always remains held in
the binding hold of a rapport. Rapport is thought here throughout against
the foil of propriation and no longer merely in the form of a relation
between terms. Our rapport with music, our binding bond with music is determined
by the attuned mood and mode in which we belong to propriation's quivering
as those who, in belonging and therefore listening sensitively, are used
by propriation for its resonance.
5. A remainder that cannot be gathered
The way to music has come to an end, or rather come into its end in culminating
in the formula: Making way brings music (the fugue as the wesende of music)
as music (the quivering of propriation) to music (resounding song). In
this formula, the final occurrence of music is musicking as the human activity
of making certain 'musical' sounds. But is making sound the only way in
which humans respond to and reverberate with quivering? Let us listen to
what language says about music. The OED includes under the entry for 'music'
a colloquial expression: "to make music" or "to make (beautiful) music
(together)" as meaning "to have sexual intercourse". This linguistic usage
can be taken as a hint that the understanding of music should not be restricted
exclusively to an art-form involving playing on instruments and singing
with voices, but should be extended to cover the mode or how of bodying.
"Bodying" here is the present participle of a verb, "to body" meaning,
"to exist bodily". Dasein as finite existence in the world is always a
bodily existing; its existing is always a bodying. Speaking, singing, sitting,
walking, sleeping are ways of bodying, and each way is a mode which is
attuned in some way or other to the point of being completely
out of tune with quivering, i.e. with the vibration of a situation
as a whole in Dasein's timespace. Insofar as bodying is attuned with quivering,
i.e. has a sense for and is sensitive to the mood emanating from quivering,
it is beautiful. Such beauty is the way music (the quivering) makes way
to music. Since attunement is the how of being-in-the-world, all existence
is tuneful in the broad sense of a temporary and temporal colouring of
being-in-the-world. Such attunement of existence is only possible because
Dasein irrevocably belongs to propriation; indeed, propriation eventuates
as Dasein in its attuned belonging to it. Dasein's tunefulness is nothing
other than its attunement with the quivering of propriation.
If music as human musicking is a way of bodying that is attuned to a mood,
then even the art-form music cannot be confined to singing and playing
instruments, but must include at least dance as well. The way the body
moves in dance, an artful way of Dasein's bodying, is music too. The closeness
of music and dance is apparent not only phenomenally, but also in language;
the word we employ for a group of musicians, "orchestra", comes from the
Greek "o(rxh/stra" which means originally the
part of the theatre between the stage and the audience where the choir
sang and danced. Music and dancing as art-forms colour the open timespace
of existence with a certain mood and are themselves responses to moods.
The truth of music lies not in it bringing a truth into the open where
it can be seen and understood and said, but in it being attuned with a
mood granted by quivering which it brings to reverberation in a mode of
bodying, which may even be simply attentive listening. Both those making
music and those listening belong originarily to the quivering, and only
by virtue of this propriation can they musick and listen. All musicking
is originarily a listening to the quivering.
Speaking too is a mode of bodying. If language as pointing comes to spoken
speech in which beings are presenced and absenced, the way of language,
its lilt, its mode is also attuned with quivering in some way or other.
In its bodily modality, the way of speaking is attuned with a mood. A way
of speaking always accompanies what is spoken, which makes all speaking
musical in the broadest sense of a mode of bodying attuned with quivering
in one way or the other. In particular, the art-form, poetry, is lyrical.
There is always music in poetry, and poetry is song. Reading and writing
too are not without their music. What is said in writing is always
accompanied by how it is said. The unsaid underpins and embraces
what is said; there is always an excess beyond the said, since all saying
is a response to the "ringing of stillness" which cannot be entirely defined
and confined in articulated language. This ringing rings in the silence
between the words. Thus Beckett can write in his first, posthumously published
novel:
The blown roses of a phrase shall catapult the reader into the tulips
of the phrase that follows. The experience of my reader shall be between
the phrases, in the silence, communicated by the intervals, not the terms,
of the statement, between the flowers that cannot coexist, the antithetical
(nothing so simple as antithetical) seasons of words, his experience shall
be the menace, the miracle, the memory, of an unspeakable trajectory. (5)
Beckett wants his readers to experience the silence "between the phrases",
the unsaid, as if the words in themselves were superfluous or merely the
handmaidens of the silence which is to be assisted to come to resonance.
It is as if Beckett knew that, for all the power of language to bring beings
before us, it is helpless in the face of the openness from whence beings
arrive. There is a longing for this silence at work in Beckett:
So shall their voices pass away, begin and end, the syllables sound,
sound and pass away, the second after the first, the third after the second,
and so forth and so on in order, until the last after the rest, and silence,
with a bit of luck, after the last... (ibid. p.105)
Human musicking in the broadest sense of a mode of bodying, mellifluous
or not, is not a point of origin from which something else is brought forth
to stand in the clearing, but rather, the bringing-to-stand of music is
already its fading, for it takes no defined and persisting stand in time.
Music and dance are performing arts because they are nothing else but the
performing, i.e. a mode of bodying that shapes Dasein's timespace in colouring
it with a mood. Timespace's plasticity consists in its openness to being
coloured by mood, or conversely, mood is the mode of time, i.e. the way
time reverberates through its own space and is received by those who are
open to, i.e. ineluctably attuned with, the quivering. Tones and gestures
have no extension in space, like the paint on a canvas does; rather, their
extension is purely temporal. Just as the paint in a painting colours the
subjectile, the sound of music, or even the visual reverberation of a gesture,
colours temporal space temporarily by extending into time and eventually
fading.(6)
We are musical beings insofar as the world opens up to us by way of reverberating
with a unified but manifold quivering. If, as Heidegger says, the "ringing
of stillness" is the essencing of language which comes to spoken language,
then it is also the essencing of music which takes a parallel way to language
in coming to audible music. This parallelism means that there is always
an excess of ringing which does not come to spoken language but which comes
to reverberate in music. The truth of beyng is a vibrant clearing not only
for beings to show themselves as beings but also for the vibrations of
a situation, a 'state of affairs', to reverberate in a definite attunement,
no matter how in-definable it may be. Because of the twofold in the clearing
underlying the parallelism of language and music, there is always a remainder
that does not come to language, and thus is not grasped by understanding.
This remainder that cannot be gathered reverberates nevertheless and music
is attuned with these reverberations. Our sensitivity to the quivering
makes us musical beings.
A determination of human being as musical is not intended to replace the
traditional metaphysical definition of human being as to\
z%=on lo/gon e)/xon. Rather, it points in the direction of the twofold
dimensions within the openness of being. In 'having the logos', we humans
are able to speak and disclose beings in their being. The moods which affect
Dasein are not a mode of disclosure which can come simply to speech; they
cannot be decrypted in the defining work of language. This inability of
mood to come to language, its non-amenability to being said, should not,
however, be regarded as a defect or drawback compared with the disclosing
power of language. Rather, the disclosing of mood takes place in another
dimension within the twofold of the clearing, and this dimension is the
open accompaniment to all understanding and saying. The clearing is two-dimensional.
With equal justification one could say that understanding itself cannot
as such come to music (song, dance, gestures) but must rely on the accompanying
attunement with quivering to attain presence in this musical dimension.
The musical dimension of human being was not overlooked entirely in the
beginnings of metaphysics, even as it was providing the fundamental essential
definition of human being with its far-reaching consequences throughout
occidental history. The lo/goj was given hegemony
over the human soul (yuxh/). This does not prevent
Plato, however, from seeing the phenomena and recognizing that the ability
to dance is a god-given gift which is part of the human essence and a precondition
for any form of education (cf. Leg. II 654a). This god-given gift too,
and not just the lo/goj, the ability to speak,
sets us apart from the animals. Our sense of order in movements allows
us to partake of many moods, including joy in particular, through song
and dance:
Fhsi\n [o( lo/goj] de\ to\ ne/on a(/pan w(j e)/poj
ei)pei=n toi=j te sw/masi kai\ tai=j fwnai=j h(suxi/an a)/gein ou) du/nasqai,
kinei=sqai de\ a)ei\ zhtei=n kai\ fqe/ggesqai, ta\ me\n a)llo/mena kai\
skirtw=nta, oi(=on o)rxou/mena meq" h(donh=j kai\ prospai/zonta, ta\ de\
fqeggo/mena pa/saj fwna/j. Ta\ me\n ou)=n a)/lla z%=a ou)k e)/kein ai)/sqhsin
tw=n e)n tai=j kinh/sesin ta/cewn ou)de\ a)taciw=n, oi(=j dh\ r(uqmo\j
o)/noma kai\ a(/rmoni/a: h(mi=n de\ ou(=j ei)/pomen tou/j qeou\j sugxoreuta\j
dedo/sqai, tou/touj ei)=nai kai\ tou\j dedwko/taj th\n e)/nruqmo/n te kai\
e)narmo/nion ai)/sqhsin meq" h(donh=j, h)/dh [$=( dh/] kinei=n te h(ma=j
kai\ xorhgei=n h(mw=n tou/touj, %)dai=j te kai\ o)rxh/sesin a)llh/loij
sunei/rontaj, xorou/j te w)nomake/nai para\ to\ th=j xara=j e)/mfuton o)/noma.
Leg. II 644d - 654a
This proposal says that all young beings, as they say, are unable to
keep still (behave quietly) with their bodies and voices, but always seek
to move and cry out, on the one hand by hopping and jumping as if they
were dancing and playing with pleasure, and on the other, by calling out
all kinds of sounds. The other animals do not have a sense for the order
or disorder in movements, for that which is called rhythm and harmony.
To us, however, the gods who, as we said, have been given to us to dance
with, have also given the sense of pleasure in rhythm and harmony through
which they put us into motion and cause us to dance, by lining us up together
in songs and round dances, and they called these 'choirs' according to
their natural name which is related to chará (= joy).
Not only can we talk and think, but we can also dance, and this observation
would seem to indicate that Dasein in its bodiliness implies a broadening
of scope regarding what constitutes human being in the thinking of the
Other Beginning.
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