4 - Presence of the Self

Summary

Part II, ‘Hearing Presence’, examines in more depth two aspects identified in the opening chapters that contribute to a sense of subjectivity in music: the feeling of embodied presence or immediacy of self-possession, and the notion of vocality, epitomised here in what I call the ‘coming to lyricism’ paradigm. Crucial in philosophical accounts of subjectivity since at least the start of the nineteenth century is the notion of self-consciousness or self-recognition. By this token, ascribing subjectivity to music is to hear it not only speaking as an I, but speaking as if knowing it is speaking as an I. When does music appear to be aware of itself, and how might this be manifested? Chapter 4, ‘Presence of the Self’, offers an initial approach to answering this question, examining the healing of the divided self by the emergence of a sense of unifying, embodied subjectivity in some of Schumann’s songs and instrumental works, and to what extent we might speak of such moments as constituting a form of musical reflexivity or self-consciousness – a topic which will necessarily spill over into the following chapter.