The Arts in Ps_vchotherapy, Vol. 16 pp. 91-97. o Pergamon Press plc, 1989. Printed in the U.S.A. 0197-4556/89 $3.00 + .OO

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL COMPARISON OF THE ORGANIZATION OF MUSIC

AND THE SELF

DAVID ALDRIDGE, PhD*

This paper is concerned with an understanding of musical perception and how it is linked with the identity of the whole person. An extension of the understanding is the notion of bring as it is characterized by the tradition of phenomenologi- cal philosophy, which looks toward “being in the world” as a unified experience.

This phenomenological approach sees a corre- lation between music form and biological form. By regarding the identity of a person as a musical form that is continually being composed in the world, a surface appears on which to project our understanding of a person as a physiological and psychological whole being. The thrust of this endeavor is to view people as “symphonic” rather than “mechanic.” By considering how persons come into the world as whole creative beings one can speculate on their potential for health and well-being.

The Perception of Music

As Dennis Fry (1971, p. 1) wrote,

In the case of music there is also continuously interaction between the physical character of the musical stimulus and its physiological and psycho- logical effects so that a more thorough study of music would demand at least the combining of a physical, physiological and psychological ap- proach. Modern science has relatively little infor- mation about the links between physics, physiology and psychology and is certainly not in a position to specify how the effects are related in music, but

most scientists would recognize here a gap in sci- entific knowledge and would not want to deny the fact of a connection.

The problem in understanding the perception of music is inherent too in understanding per- sonal health. Health is complex, yet how is one to make a unified sense of the complexity that avoids fragmentation and reduction? Further- more, how can one begin to understand qualita- tive aspects of personal life as they are expressed in terms of hope, joy, and beauty, which com- plement increasingly sophisticated quantitative knowledge of the human body?

Although there have been many attempts to describe the process underlying the perception of music there has been little success in presenting any satisfactory explanation. The perception is not limited solely by the acuity of the ear (Longuet-Higgins, 1979) and all that impinges on the listener, but is achieved in combination with the conceptual structure imposed by the listener. In this way the knowledge of the phenomenon is intimately linked with the phenomenon itself. Both the knower and the known are part of the same process. Perception in this sense is an holistic strategy.

Much scientific research into the perception of music has concentrated on those aspects that can be measured quantitatively. In this way nature is organized according to the concepts that are im- posed on it. This is the analytic mode of con- sciousness that is predominantly a product of the

*David Aldridge is research consultant to the Musiktherapieabteilung, Universittits Witten Herdecke, D5084 West Germany.

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92 DAVID ALDRIDGE

verbal intellectual mind (Bortoft, 1986) where phenomena are represented by number, and var- iables in equations are represented by quantities.

This paper attempts to demonstrate the need for a phenomenological understanding that is isomorphic with the medium of music itself. An holistic consciousness that is qualitative. non- verbal, and participatory appears in the very phenomenon of music. What is more, the ele- ment of participation by the knower speaks di- rectly to the aspect of music as performance. an aspect that is sadly neglected by many research- ers who reduce research into the perception of music to a restricted range of received sounds.

Heidegger (1962) emphasized the intuitive element in the comprehension of phenomena. When music is heard, the phenomenon becomes its own explanation. It is that which shows itself in itself. Perhaps one can begin to understand people as they come into the world, as music, i.e., composed as a whole.

The explanatory idea of a Frame of Reference is a common theme among a number of writers referring to musical perception and brain func- tion (Longuet-Higgins, 1979; Safranek, Kosh- land, & Raymond, 1982; Steedman, 1977; Walker, 1979). Walker suggests an “Ursatz” (the essential underlying principle) to music that is an all-embracing thought unifying the music and giv- ing a musical structure accessible to analysis. However, he also states that this musical struc- ture is ultimately unknowable (i.e., beyond analysis). In this explanation lies the perennial difficulty of seeking a unifying explanation by an analysis into parts. Somehow that which is intui- tively sought is lost in the process of description. What results is a statement that what is sought is unknowable, rather than a questioning of the ana- lytic method of knowing. This situation also pre- vails in the understanding of personal health.

According to the philosophy of empiricism. knowledge of the world is gleaned through expe- rience. This knowledge comes through the senses. However, there is more to this sensory knowledge than meets the ear. There is always a nonsensory factor involved-that of cognitive perception, the dimension of the mind. This cognitive perception is a process of organization where meaning is imposed upon what is heard. In this way a seemingly meaningless ground of sound is given meaning. To perceive then is to

give meaning to what is heard, an act of identity. However the nonsensory process of cognition is transparent, or rather silent, and appears as if hearing were solely a sensory experience. The process of discovery in science is also one of the perception of meaning. What appears to be em- pirical is indeed cognitive.

If the phenomenon of music is considered as a unified whole the question arises whether this unity is imposed on the senses by the mind, or whether it is the phenomenon itself that is a whole. To a great extent organizational frame- works are imposed on experience: hence there are descriptions that call for a framework of reference in the perception of rhythm and of melody. However, there is a danger of being blinded to this imposed organization and thus to believe that this is the way the phenomenon really is.

Once an attempt is made to synthetically re- produce the act of musical perception the framework analogy is seen as limited. Lon- guet-Higgins’ (1979, 1982) careful and inspiring work demonstrates the utility of a frame of refer- ence approach using tempo and meter for the perception of rhythm. This approach fails, as he remarks, when it is understood how a particular choice of phrasing affects the rhythm. Further- more, the perception of atonal and arhythmic music are still mysteries to analytical methods. Yet one can hear and play arhythmically and atonally.

However. there is an approach to understand- ing phenomena as unified wholes. The roots of this approach are in the work of Goethe’s scien- tific consciousness and the work of Franz Bren- tano (Bortoft, 1986). Both of these men were to be influential in the development of phenome- nology. Goethe perceived the wholeness of the phenomena not as imposed by the mind but by a conscious act of experience. This experience could not be reduced to an intellectual construc- tion in terms of the way the phenomena are or- ganized. Bortoft uses the following example to explain this change of consciousness:

. . if we watch a bird flying across the sky and put our attention into seeing flying, instead of seeing a bird which flies (implying a separation between an entity ‘bird’ and an action ‘flying’ which it performs), we can experience this in the

MUSIC

mode of dynamical simultaneity as one whole event. By plunging into seeingflying we find that our attention expands to experience this moment as one whole which is its own present moment. (P. 31)

In this phenomenological approach sounds are heard as sensory information and as a unified experience, which is music as consciousness. How then can personal health be perceived as a unified experience?

Language as Music

Whether or not music is a language is a run- ning debate through the literature relating to the perception of music. Morley (1981) insists that music is a form of communication analogous to speech in that it has cadences and punctuation. Perhaps the restructuring of the primacy of lan- guage over music to suggest that language is a form of music may be more enlightening. It could be that speech is analogous to music and that the musical components of speech are abdicated in favor of the literal content.

Most in academic life rarely question the pri- macy of the word. As a form of communication the word appears to be central to endeavor whether written or spoken. Underlying this con- cern with language is an analytical conscious- ness. A subject-predicate grammar is used that gives a structure to language. This very struc- ture, in turn, structures consciousness. It is a feature common to Western culture; in the be- ginning was “the word.” To write that creation began with the “word” hides the fact that the author is a writer whose consciousness is struc- tured by the medium used.

It might profitably be asked “How would a musician communicate this primal understanding of consciousness? What is ‘in the beginning’ for a musician?” In communicating in a different way perhaps communication with a different con- sciousness may take place. This understanding may also explain the difficulty of writing and talk- ing about health using a verbal analytic language when there is concern with a realm of behavior necessitating an holistic mode of consciousness. Perhaps an expression of health is something that could better be sung or played.

To move from a position that advocates the

AND THE SELF 93

primacy of the word in speech, and to understand speech in terms of phrasing, rhythm, pitch, and melody, a different consciousness emerges. This consciousness reflects a different range of logics to the predicatory logic of language. Here are dynamic, movement, interval, and time-the very essences of music and of biological function.

If consideration is given to what constitutes people as identity attention may be better di- rected to how they are composed not only in quantitative terms of bones and blood, but how they are composed as musical beings in regard to relationship patterns, rhythms, and melodic con- tours. This may reflect the original biblical notion that in the beginning was “logos” (i.e., order). In music lies the phenomenon of a person coming into order. It may perhaps be that when a sense of that order is lost a person experiences a loss of health.

Hemispheric Processing

In support of the above argument, the realm of cerebral processing and music perception may also be examined. Although language processing may be dominant in one hemisphere of the brain, music processing involves an holistic under- standing of the interaction of both cerebral hemispheres (Altenmuller, 1986; Brust, 1980; Gates & Bradshaw, 1977).

In attempting to understand the perception of music there have been a number of investigations into the hemispheric strategies involved. Much of the literature considering musical perception concentrates on the significance of hemispheric dominance. Gates and Bradshaw (1977) conclude that cerebral hemispheres are concerned with music perception and that no laterality differ- ences are apparent. Other authors (Wagner & Hannon, 1981) suggest that two processing func- tions develop with training where left and right hemispheres are simultaneously involved, and that musical stimuli are capable of eliciting both right and left ear superiority (Kellar & Bever, 1980). Similarly, when people listen to and per- form music they utilize differing hemispheric processing strategies.

Aphasiu

Evidence of the global strategy of music pro-

94 DAVID ALDRIDGE

cessing in the brain is found in the clinical litera- ture. In two cases of aphasia (Morgan & Til- luckdharry, 1982) singing was seen as a welcome release from the helplessness of being a patient. The authors hypothesized that singing was a means to communicate thoughts externally. Al- though the “newer aspect” of speech was lost, the older function of music was retained, possibly because music is a function distributed over both hemispheres.

Berman (1981) suggests that recovery from aphasia is not a matter of new learning by the nondominant hemisphere but a taking over of re- sponsibility for language by that hemisphere. The nondominant hemisphere may be a reserve of functions in case of regional failure. A less de- fensive alternative explanation is that the strat- egies underlying musical process are those same strategies underlying biological process and the maintenance of the identity of the organism.

Rhythm

Rhythm is the key to the integrative process underlying both musical perception and physi- ological coherence. Barfeld’s (1978) approach suggests that when musical form as tonal shape meets the rhythm of breathing there is the musi- cal experience. External auditory activity is mediated by internal perceptual shaping in the context of a personal rhythm. It is interesting to speculate here on the meaning of context, not as a container but as (Y)II tcxtcrc, which is a weaving together. One pattern is then woven against an- other to produce an interference pattern, the basis for matter. Sound is woven together with rhythm.

When considering communication, rhythm is fundamental to organization. Before any consid- eration of content one must connect rhythmically with another person and establish some com- monality. This connection of rhythms is seen as the phenomenon of entrainment, which occurs in the circadian rhythms of temperature and sleep. Should they lose entrainment, then jet lag takes place. Scientists observing such phenomena often attempt to find an underlying mechanism for entrainment (Johnson & Woodland-Hastings, 1986), a master clock as it were. However, when moving from a mechanical perspective a musical analogy for coordinating rhythm might be more appropriate.

The rhythms and pulses that entrain the rhythmic patterns of the human body are non- material. The senses-hearing, smell, taste, sight, touch-in addition to balancing and mov- ing are integrated as a musical form. It is rhythm that provides the ground of being, and a rhythm of which being is generally unaware and that is perhaps the gestalt of identity.

Dossey (1982) writes of disorders of time being particularly prevalent in modern society. This may be rephrased as disorders of disrupted rhythm. The work of Safranek et al. (1982) demonstrates that subjects use a preferred per- sonal tempo in the performance of a motor task. This personal tempo is reflected as a functional reflex in the muscle. However, by introducing a musical rhythm while a musical task is being per- formed, which is different from that of the per- sonal tempo of the subject, then a different re- sponse is invoked in the subject. The authors see this as a “volitional response.” Control over seemingly involuntary movements can be achieved by meeting the personal tempo of a sub- ject and then changing to a slower, even beat. Meeting this tempo has been a central strategy in hypnotherapy. The existence and role of a per- sonal tempo are refined even further in creative music therapy (Nordoff & Robbins, 1977). It may be inferred then that people become aware of the ground of their being not in verbal logic, but in a logic analogous to the ground of their own func- tioning (i.e., music). In this sense insight is had about a person, not in a restricted verbal intellec- tual sense, but as being in the world.

The frame of reference approach mentioned earlier is used indirectly by Povel (1984) to understand rhythm. Tones in sequence are seen as having a dual function. They are characterized by pitch, volume, timbre, and duration. They also mark points in time. These tones then produce both structure in time and c$time. When tones are used in sequence only as temporal con- cepts they can be thought of as providing a tem- poral grid, which is a time scale on which the tone sequences can be mapped for duration and location. It might profitably be asked what the isomorphic events in terms of physiology are that would meet such a dual function. There may be regular sequential pulses of metabolic, cardiac, or respiratory activity within the body that also have qualities of pitch, timbre, and duration. What is important in these descriptions of musi-

MUSIC AND THE SELF

cal perception is the emphasis on context where there are different levels of attention occurring simultaneously against a background temporal structure (Jones, Kidd, & Wetzel, 198t; Kidd, Boltz, & Jones, 1984).

Recent research in cardiology has emphasized the relationship between changes in breathing patterns, personal tempo, and hypertension. The work of Lynch and his associates (Friedmann, Thomas, Kulick-Ciuffo, Lynch, & Suginohara, 1982; Lynch, Long, Thomas, Malinov, & Katcher, 1981) has highlighted the link, between hypertension and fast speaking. A feature of type A behavior in patients with hypertension is that their blood pressure, which is already high, shows an increase when they communicate. Such patients are seen to have difficulties in communication. They often appear disconnected from their feelings and have an underlying sense of hopelessness regarding their ability to com- municate effectively. When people do not expect to communicate effectively their blood pressure rises. Because they do not expect to be under- stood they do not listen. By not listening they miss the chance to lower their blood pressure.

Attention to the environment (i.e., listening) is seen as promoting a deceleration in heart rate and a decrease in blood pressure. Yet, attention to the self is seen as promoting heart rate (Sandman, 1984; Walker & Sandman, 1979, 1982). Changes then in tempo, and the promotion of listening or sounding, will have implications for cardiac and respiratory activity. Lynch et al. (1981) suggest therapeutic activities to promote a reduction in hypertension utilizing slow and deep breathing. Playing improvised music as pure communication, with its absence of verbal con- tent and its primary component of rhythmic ac- tivity related to personal tempo and volitional re- sponse (Safranek et al., 1982), may be the ideal medium for achieving such change.

It is important to introduce a word of caution here. The motor act of communicating is not the cause of the elevated blood pressure. Blood pressure is elevated whenever communication takes place. The elevation points to a process beyond the motor act, which is intent, a feature also evident in change of muscle activity (Safran- ek et al., 1982). This switch from physiology being proactive rather than merely reactive is a significant feature of modern physiological re- search (Walker & Sandman, 1979, 1982).

Rhythm too plays a role in the perception of melody. The perceptions of speech and music are formidable tasks of pattern perception. The lis- tener has to extract meaning from lengthy se- quences of rapidly changing elements distributed in time (Morrongiello, Trehub, Thorpe, & Podilupo, 1985).

Temporal predictability is important for track- ing melody lines (Jones et al., 1981; Kidd et al., 1984). Kidd et al. also refer to melody as having a structure in time and that a regular rhythm facilitates the detection of a musical interval and its subsequent integration into a cognitive repre- sentation of the serial structure of the musical pattern. Adults identify familiar melodies on the basis of relational information about intervals be- tween tones rather than the absolute information of particular tones. In the recognition of unfamil- iar melodies, less precise information is gathered about the tone itself. The primary concern is with successive frequency changes or tmlodic con- four. The rhythmical context prepares the lis- tener in advance for the onset of certain musical intervals and therefore a structure from which to discern, or predict, change.

The implication of this work is that change, whether it be melody or rhythm, is dependent on a global rhythmic strategy. To extend this un- derstanding to biological processes, it can be hy- pothesized that differences in contour (melody) (as in the release of hormones, fluctuations in temperature) and changes in rhythm are detected in reference to a global rhythmic context of the body. This global context may be regulated by the heart or breathing patterns, or may be an emergent property of the varying rhythmic pat- terns of the body. Disruption in this overall global strategy will influence a person’s ability to detect new or changed nontemporal information (Cuddy, Cohen, & Miller, 1979; Jones et ai., 1981; Kidd et al., 1984). One may not be aware of certain changes and become either out of tune or out of time.

Conclusion

The perception of music requires an holistic strategy where the play of patterned frequencies is recognized within a matrix of time. People may be described in similar terms as beings in the world who are patterned frequencies in time.

DAVID ALDRIDGE

A phenomenological approach presses the sci- entist to understand phenomena as direct experi- ences before being translated into thoughts and feelings. The practice of creative music therapy adopts such a position. A person is invited to improvise music creatively with a therapist. It may be inferred from this playing that one is hearing a person directly in the world as a direct expression of those patterned frequencies in a matrix of time. Rather than subject a person to measurement, to be reduced to what is quantiti- able, he or she may be experienced directly. This experience requires no verbal translation as in psychotherapy. What can be heard is the person being in the world. An extension of such im- provised playing as an expression of the whole person is that tendencies to play in differing ways may be heard. There may be limitations in rhythm, melody, or musical structure. By chal- lenging personal tempo one may hear the extent of his or her intent.

If musical form and biological form are isomorphic, improvised music may also provide an holistic strategy for the assessment of health and well-being. Feinstein (1966) stressed the im- portance of clinical logic in the diagnosis of cancer, and the importance of ahowing the pa- tient to speak: “The complexity of man increases the difficulty of studying human disease, but also enables a diseased man to talk. His description of symptoms gives crucial information about the diseased structures under investigation’” (p. 245).

Speech itself is limiting both in content and in form. The creative playing of improvised music offers an holistic form of assessment that is rela- tional, noninvasive, and nonverbal, and that allows the identity of the patient to be revealed and experienced in the world. This context allows the expression of tendencies that have po- tentials for those states called health and illness.

If music is an earlier form of communication than language, and the processing strategies for the perception of music are distributed over both hemispheres, it is possible to infer that this holis- tic strategy is closer in developmental terms to physiological processes and autonomic activity than language. There is an emerging tolerance and even acceptance of the influence of language on physiology. However, there is a more subtle and more precise medium with potentials for representation and influence (i.e., the playing of

music). Music is the ideal medium to discover how people are composed and how they come into the world as whole beings both to create and sustain identity. Not only can such personal ex- pression be recorded for analysis, it can be heard and experienced directly as a whole.

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