Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 9 Number 3, December 2008
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Jones, Richard Elfyn. Music and the Numinous. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 122pp. Pb: ISBN 978-90-420-2289-8 € 25 / US$ 36 (Series: Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, vol. 8)
Reviewed by
Richard Elfyn Jones has written a highly challenging book about the numinous qualities of music. He argues for Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy to support the idea that music has qualities whose ultimate source lies in the realm of the divine, that is, God. He succeeds only if certain premises are sustainable. Firstly, that there is a God who exists and is immanent in the world and the affairs of the human community. Secondly, that music has special qualities that can only come from a divine source. And thirdly, that Western art music is the sine qua non of music, and although not explicitly stated, it can be assumed from the many statements and examples that the author uses to advance his argument. There was no consideration of musics outside the Western sphere that are not based on the natural overtone system. Limited to a reasonable number of words, I will not argue for or against these three ideas. That would take another hundred or so pages. In fact, I can’t find a single page of Jones’ disquisition on which I have no questions or remarks.
I can say that Jones writes with skill and a depth of understanding of both Whitehead’s process philosophy and the intersection with music, but I must admit, it was not an easy book to read. Content of the 118 pages could have benefited from a substantial expansion to allow more explanation and for easier digestion of the ideas. Each sentence is quite compacted and with such difficult material to understand at first read, one has to go over the ideas and study each facet. In addition, his vocabulary frequently calls for consultancy with a major dictionary, not because the words are unfamiliar in many cases, but because of the nuance that each requires to explain Whitehead’s philosophy and how music is representative. And even at that, Whiteheard is not easy to understand without considerable study. For example, parse the following without having to reread a few times.
The entity prehends objects from its environment. Those objects are said to exert “causal efficacy” on the subject. . . . it need not be conscious. In “seeing” . . . the eye’s enjoyment of a reddish feeling is intensified and transmuted and interpreted by complex occasions of the brain into definite colours and other instances of qualitative “eternal object.” The original physical feeling of causal efficacy is submerged but not eliminated by an inrush of conceptual feelings. Furthermore, conceptual prehensions allow the objective scale of values given by the primordial nature of God to enter the scale of values given by the primordial nature of God to enter the decision, and it is then that we have a display of qualities presented to us. Whitehead calls this experience “perception in the mode of “presentational immediacy.” [sic] (page 64)
It would be unfair to suggest that this represents the full explanation of Whitehead’s process philosophy (Chapter 3), but it does introduce the nature of the opaque quality of both Whitehead’s ideas and the explanation by Jones. The easiest idea to understand is that of becoming, which supports the notion of process.
To his credit, Jones debates the major philosophies that form the basis for a deep discussion of process philosophy by similarity and contrast. The treatise is replete with philosophical references to major figures in Western philosophy since Plato. In addition, he includes in his essay an insightful discussion of process in the writings of major theologians, like Paul Tillich and Karl Barth.
I agree with Jones that process philosophy is a suitable investigation for music’s qualities, particularly since music as an ontological entity exists in a time frame that exposes itself bit by bit. I’ve made the argument on several occasions that music is not notes or the score, nor is it an idea in someone’s mind. It comes alive only when the piece is performed because music is a temporal and sonic subject first and foremost. Its impact is phenomenological. Only as an afterthought is there a substance, a product as a recollection. And as well, I agree that music has a numinous quality, one I place at human spirituality as the source, not the metaphysical headwater that Whitehead and Jones claim. And that is where I was challenged, to find values where I could easily have dismissed the Whiteheadian approach simply on the basis of disagreeing with his metaphysics.
I do have another criticism that may impact my reading, but may not affect others. Coming from a world musics background (I studied Japanese gagaku and have written about multicultural music—which includes Western music—from a variety of viewpoints), it seems that any application of philosophical ideation must apply universally. It is those pesky deviations of human thought that provoke further discussion. Too often Mozart (substitute Bach or Beethoven) becomes a musical Zeus in a pantheon of lesser gods. Music is reflective of culture and therefore highly contextual on values even within the West. Further, there are works of equal value that are quite different from the Western structural edifice deserving of consideration. Javanese gamelan is one such example. With its pélog and sléndro scales and melodically based structures, it belies the automatic assumption of a natural musical system. Do these considerations exemplify or belie Whitehead’s process philosophy? Jones may need to broaden his scope to answer this question. At first glance, they may not.
Nevertheless, reading Music and the Numinous was time well spent. The foregoing review hit only a few of the features of a well-constructed book on the subject. I was compelled to recover some previous readings that had receded over time and place them in a contemporary setting that suggests reevaluation of previous conclusions.