The Epistemic Power of Music

Can art advance our understanding of the world? Is, specifically, music capable of generating knowledge? The idea of artistic research has recently established a significant career in academia and beyond. Everyone in the field agrees that artistic research is neither research about art (as in some of the humanities), nor research for art (applied research in the service of art, as provided by some technical specialties). Rather, it is meant to be research in and through art. Beyond this general outline, though, disagreement and hence need for clarification starts. This holds for music in particular, since its material tone and sound appear so remote from the conceptual sphere, closely associated with the notion of research. Scientific research is typically seen as the methodical process, with systematic intent, of gaining new knowledge that others can put to the test. Artistic research may well be different from scientific research in certain respects. Without significant overlap, however, we should not talk of artistic research at all. Specifically, research, any research, must aim at producing knowledge of some kind; otherwise the very idea wears away. The current project on music as a field of artistic research is thus referred to epistemology, philosophys sub-discipline that, i.a., explores the nature of knowledge and then goes on to distinguish between different types of knowledge. This renders the project an interdisciplinary pursuit, mediating between musicology and philosophy. Both forms of inquiry must interlock. Philosophically, the project aims at an adequate notion of knowledge (and types of knowledge) to capture artistic research (in music). Musicologically, the issue is when, how and in what sense music in its various practices (in particular composition, performance, improvisation, listening) has produced knowledge (rather than just presupposing knowledge, as is obvious in many instances). This should lead to a direct answer to a question that has been controversial for some time: Has research been a feature of music throughout historical time and across cultures or has music as an art form changed only over past decades in such a way that it could (sometimes) figure as research? In all this, however, we must resist simply applying philosophical concepts to music; if and when musical phenomena suggest a fine-tuning or even correction of epistemological notions, we should be prepared to follow that line. The Epistemic Power of Music: On the Idea and History of Artistic Research through Music thus assumes, within an international network of researchers, the character of a pioneering project at the interface between epistemology and music research.

How does research through art, rather than about or for art, facilitate understanding? This question seems particularly challenging for music. Since Carolyn Abbate's 2004 essay "Music-Drastic or Gnostic?" musicology has emphasised performance, materiality, and carnality. Yet, how do we understand the cognitive dimensions of these aspects? As the field of Artistic Research demonstrates, performance and the body entail knowledge, not only in terms of knowing how to do something, and knowing what conventions shape music practice and how, but as a means of understanding. The "Epistemic Power of Music" project examined music's four modalities and their contribution to understanding: (1) Listening. Listening is imbricated with positive and negative bias, sometimes leading to the marginalisation or silencing of certain musical voices and features. Thus, listening is well-conceived as an intimate act, as a space of give and take that allows the "sonic-affective" markers of performance to emerge, inviting deep listening; (2) Performing. By examining tacit knowledge and emotions as concepts that are ideal end-points towards which we move, music gives felt shape to emotion concepts, extending our understanding of them. For example, in Schubert's Der Lindenbaum, an emotional landscape is created which affectively shapes the concept of grief, and accompanying feelings of fondness and sadness; (3) Participating. Utility music gathers people together; collective intentionality is one way of understanding how. Ethel Smyth's March of the Women mobilises the power of assembly as intentional practice, facilitating a moving to (as coordinated action), and a moving towards (a goal). Its afterlife in her art-music embodies the motifs of freedom, and the strength and ingenuity of women; (4) Composing. Music "makes sense", by transcending musical constraints (thereby opening new avenues of making musical sense) and by transcending existential constraints (including suffering). Music also makes world(s), by creating and dismantling musical, social and cultural contexts. These forms of musical understanding are contiguous. Florence Price's compositions show how she "makes sense" of social constraints and the broader context of the Black Renaissance, and how she combines her own musical heritage (including African-American folk songs and dances) with the idiom of classical concert-hall music through worldmaking processes. Through such analyses, and a philosophical penetration of the knowledges concerned, the project traced and confirmed music's epistemic power, showing that artistic research has always existed as part of diverse musical practices even if its current methodological refinement and explicit institutionalisation are unprecedented.