"Language is the dwelling place of the truth of being"- Martin Heidegger
The kind of phenomenology, if one could call it as such, that Martin Heidegger employs to give an "analytic of Dasein" (lit. there-being), the kind of being that human beings have qua taking issue with one's own existence. Early Heidegger systematically employs an understanding of being that traditional western philosophy had previously ignored, instead focusing on what he called "logocentrism". For me, Heidegger acts as a kind of prophetic interpreter of the crazy genius of Kierkegaard and Nietszche. The later works of Heidegger shows a kind of turn away from his attack on logocentrism and instead attempts to embrace the disclosure of being that Kierkegaard and Nietszche had focused most of their lives and work on. With thoughts on poetry and other aesthetic artforms encompassing most of his later lectures, I found it surprising that he has little to say about music (and if he did, it's ambiguous as to his actual stance in relation to his philosophy).
My sister's an aspiring composer in high school. She recently told me she has writer's block on writing more compositions. When I left for the states to go to uni back in 2015, my sister was a rising freshman in high school with my other sister, a rising junior. Now fast forward three years this academic year, she finds herself relatively alone in terms of sibling company as my other sister is in New York now studying humanities (the vagueness is intentional, she keeps changing her major). My little sister's development as far as I can discern from my other sister's long phone call catchups, is that as a person engaged in music, my little sister has shifted from being less a musician that performs and more a musician that composes. This leads to her leaning towards music theory rather than music performance. My other sister and I, somewhat more on the musician/performing side have stopped at ABRSM's grade 5 (out of 8) music theory while my sister is gunning for the top level.
When she told me she recently got a writer's block in composing, I had Kierkegaard's either/or (which I'm currently reading) in my mind (specifically his writings on Mozart in the volume 1's "either"). So I thought that instead of giving her some kind of stimulus/inspiration to write from, I suggested she read specifically Kierkegaard's essay (via pseudonym "A"'s essay in either/or called the musical erotic/immediate stages of the erotic) on Mozart's Don Giovanni. I then also gave her links to different writings by Adorno, Morricone, etc. on the topic of philosophy of music, with the intention of giving her some source material to have an inspiration on why one does music instead of what to write about.
Whether or not she does read it, I realized that my advice comes implicitly from my reflections on Heidegger. I'm no Heideggerian scholar, but I do appreciate his philosophy and am very happy to study Heidegger's work in my free time. And when I interact with my sister, I'm reminded of my pre-Heideggerian days in high school where I would spout out "cogito ergo sum" in my social media bio descriptions. I remember myself trying to compose music and always thinking about different techniques and music theory ideas. I thought about motifs, inversions and whatever else I learned from (I)GCSE music and studying for the ABRSM grade 5 music theory exam. I don't remember any of those compositions. The ones I do remember are when I approached music as an outlet for the feelings that I went through, I even lamented the kind of sick joke it is for musicians to go through so much pain to write music so replayable and memorable. Granted, I don't mean to say that my music that I'm proud of is actually good. Quite the opposite actually. Because of the fact that the music I wrote that I find meaningful are the purest reflection of the situation I was in.
It's almost as if music is a medium through which the world as I knew it looked like. Heidegger said that we are "disclosers of worlds", and this realization I had only cemented a deeper understanding of what he meant. Heidegger described the structure of worldhood in Being and Time with the systematic rigor of phenomenological analysis that Husserl had imparted on him but that Heidegger made his own. Without getting too much into the actual specifics, Heidegger seems to bring about a notion of focusing on the telos of an action, or what Aristotle called the final cause. Whenever we engage in meaningful activity, we engage with the world for the sake of the action. Our actions don't end with that simple final cause. We also engage in activity in order to define the purpose of the action. We then come back to another for the sake of which something that defines our identity as being-in-the-world.
And Heidegger acknowledges that without language, this structure of worldhood couldn't be defined. It now comes to my attention to reflect on whether music is such a kind of discloser. The easiest initial defense to come to music's aid is most likely Heidegger's inspirations. Kierkegaard championed truth as subjectivity and dedicated a whole essay to music in Either/Or. Nietszche said that "without music, life would be a mistake". But even so, if Heidegger were to simply join the underdogs of philosophy, who worked tirelessly and with a almost schizophrenic writing rigor, Heidegger wouldn't be able to come close to his ultimate goal– to dismantle philosophy from within the tradition, like a secret spy planting explosives at the very core of western philosophy– the logos.
So taking Kierkegaard and Nietszche's advice won't do for Heidegger. Music must be held accountable to the same standards. What comes immediately when one encounters music depends on whether or not one is listening, performing or composing. What's the same in all of them is that the Dasein in music is always engaged with the world, in the world.
To narrow this rough analysis' scope further, we must eliminate the encounter of music in which music is not the focus and is merely in the background. Kierkegaard and Nietszche would agree as the former's writing on Mozart's Don Giovanni was an almost obsessive argument for the aesthetic and the latter was a musician in his own right with some of his music even on spotify.
As soon as the music is intelligible, attentive listening becomes an active engagement. It may be tempting to go through the Cartesian tradition and think of music becoming a reflection of consciousness but that would simply be an analysis of music as pseudo presence at hand or, if done right, presence at hand. One may look at the structure of the music, analyze all the chords and keys and instrumentation but miss the entire experience that music is as part of the world to be engaged with. Dasein instead would normally be concerned with the practical aspect of music in its immediacy. Dasein listens to music for the sake of hearing a song, in order that the song may be made intelligible and finally, for the sake of ultimately defining Dasein's worldhood identity. And the way that music, when engaged with, makes sense comes from Dasein's understanding of music's equipment. Be it headphones, speakers or a live outdoor concert, these equipment are part of what make music itself intelligible. Otherwise, the primordial Dasein unfamiliar with this kind of music would not treat it as music and maybe treat the phenomena as something else (a warning signal or a battle cry, for example).
So if we speak of music that is familiar to Dasein, the clues that give context to acknowledging and engaging with music qua music is particularly intelligible to Dasein when he/she engages in music by disclosing a world. A good example of this concept is a familiar genre of music. When listening to say for example "pop music", Dasein would understand music and engage with it in a matter that relates itself to music and the rest of the environment around him/her. In a club, for example, music can be listened to for the sake of being happy, in order for a birthday is celebrated and finally for the sake of which defines Dasein as a person, at the club, celebrating a birthday celebration. Music thus discloses Dasein's engagement with music at a club, if Dasein is particularly actively engaging with it.
The analysis of trying to sort out music as a language in the same manner that our language as we speak it ultimately ties the similarity of Dasein's engagement in terms of its concern with the world. Dasein is particularly concerned with its being-towards-death, an example of awareness of one's existence and its inherent finitude. Temporality, which unites being, inherently points at music, whose finitude is enough to be a kind of mirror of Dasein's own finitude. Heidegger brings about concepts of authenticity and inauthenticity to describe Dasein's focus or lack thereof in engaging with one's awareness of one's existence. Inauthenticity is tempted by Das man (the they) that drown out Dasein's focus and forcing it to the background. The inauthenticity may simply be a symptom manifested by the angst/anxiety that comes from the awareness of one's being-towards-death or more colloquially– the "existential crisis" that ensues.
Music is the kind of language that potentially establishes a line that may draw Dasein's engagement with the world towards either authenticity or inauthenticity. And through either path chosen, being dwells. That which being dwells is reflected by concern with the world that affects one's ability to tune into the engagement with the world that affects the way one engages with the world– what is termed "mood". Music is particularly a language that Dasein is fluent in, one does not need to think about breaking down music and build up an understanding from it, Dasein's engagement is the understanding of music and its bearing in the world that Dasein discloses.
Music's idiosyncrasy is mood. Dasein tunes in to music and instantly understands it, and if payed attention to, is concerned with it. Is music a purer form of language than our systems (english, german, chinese, etc.) because of its immediacy manifested as mood? In some ways it may be so. Dasein is a skillful coper in the world. And when one engages with music, be it the budding bassoonist tirelessly practicing her scales and timbre through each breath or the dedicated listener lying in bed and immerses himself in it. And each time, gets better at disclosing the world of Dasein through its engagement with music. Music expresses being so well because it does not tempt expression of beings inherently. And yet, music is an activity, an activity that when Dasein engages with it, is able to cope more skillfully with the world that at the same time Dasein is actively disclosing.
Music is indeed a language, but not the kind that can be captured structurally by the worldhood of Dasein. Instead, music is that which utters being through dwelling. It is the pure language by beings that when made, somehow stops becoming an expression about beings and instead simply a disclosure of being. This distinction is important– beings are entities (the many) while being refers to that which is made intelligible. And so music may elicits a language through Dasein. As one is skillfully coping music, it is already an elicitation of being. Music is a language in so far that it requires the language of Dasein in order to utter a single note. In this sense, music does not exist neither "externally" nor "internally", it is the medium of communication/expression that Dasein discloses as a world when one is actively engaging with it.
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