Music Cognition, Semiotics and the Experience of Time: Ontosemantical and Epistemological Claims

Abstract

This paper is about musical epistemology. It stresses the role of how a listener can have a unified coherent experience over time. Central questions involve the conceptual construction of time, the role of non-objectivist as against objectivist cognition, and the role of cognitive mediation and imagery in music cognition. In order to discuss these claims a conceptual framework is introduced that does justice to the dynamic ongoing characteristics of the sonorous unfolding in time, leaning on the theoretical work of Kant, Husserl, and Schütz. An attempt is finally made to provide a formal description of dealing with music that objectifies the temporal unfolding of sound under the guise of presentational immediacy and as a kind of synthetic activity of the mind, stressing both the sequential experience and the construction of relational continuity.