Ferrara, "Chapter 2: Should the method define the tasks?"

Ferrara, "Chapter 2: Should the method define the tasks?"

Summary

Should the method define the tasks, Ferrara asks. There is no doubt that each method does indeed define their task. All means of musical analysis enables one to accomplish the method, thus it's tasks. And, on a rudimentary level, success is achieved when a method's criteria are satisfied.

The author suggests a more encompassing measure of an analytical approaches' robustness. The analysis must work on multiple levels of significance, and the work should define the method, not the method define the work. Ferrara explains that "music analysis must benefit from an eclectic method that supports the disclosure of the multiplicity of levels of musical significance." He later clarifies that he does not mean to demean or challenge established methods. In fact, he states the each level of analysis is critical- particularly that phenomenology and reference would be unfounded if not for a syntactical perspective.

Entering an analysis can never be completely pure. All studies are inherently subject to one's past knowledge, or "pre-understanding". Hans-George Gadamer described this as prejudice. Man is a product of his time, and can never remove himself from it. He continues, "[o]ne's tradition is always understood in some relation to the present."

An analyst must engage a work in reference to his own time and place. While there may be some degree of importance to the composer's onto-historical world, Ferrara warns that one should not limit themselves to the composer's intention. He also adds that analysts may not be best suited to judge a contemporary work, as s/he may not be able to remove themself from their "immediate life-world".

Analyst's must also be listeners, or put themselves in a listener's shoe, so to speak. Music has an impact on those who listen to it, and one should not remove themselves from that experience. In experiencing, one engages a work as an aesthetic object... s/he enjoys the work in it's form and reference. An art object is something removed from one's appreciation. It exists until someone gives it meaning.

Phenomenology can be bifurcated into two seperate philosophical approaches: 1. Husserlian's descriptive phenomenology, known in the book as phenomenological principles and, 2. Heideggerian interpretive phenomology, referred to as hermeneutic.

Husserl believes that man discovers himself (thus his consciousness) first, then the world. Heidegger suggests the opposite, and further, that "to be historical means to be characterized by the present status of one's tradition". His philosophy is used in the study of referential meaning.

Ferrara draws a "loose" analogy between the three forms of analysis and a physical examination. Syntax is an x-ray, (supposedly) objective. Phenomenology is the actual physical examination, control with a more hands on approach. Referential meaning is the patient's history and background, which is important to understanding his/her current condition.

The author ends by noting "[p]henomenological and hermeneutic systems are able to respond to new and different questions posed by a musical work." Syntax is important in anchoring the former methods, but it's objectivity is superficial. Form is more appropriately titled 'obscured subjectivity'. The method (convential analysis) defines the work, and filters out it's sound and meaning.

Reaction

Ferrara's articulation and explanation of his eclectic method are, as usual, spot on, insightful, and well justified. His introduction of Gadamer's principle of prejudice and tradition does much to explain an analyst's position in relation to a work, and interestingly transcends music. One's prejudice, that is, the effect of their onto-historical world on their personality and views, can help to explain why people do what they do and think what they think- both positively and negatively. 

The bifurcation of art object and aesthetic object also transcended the musical realm for me. Specifically, the author's explanation of everyday items' artistic validity, in the era of modern art, was insightful. He says, "the transformation of ordinary objects into aesthetic objects, natural or man-made, relies solely on the attitude of the appreciator." I appreciate artists like Marcel Duchamp, whose readymades are subject to much controversy in artist circles.