Michal Lipták - 'Defining Avant-garde Music: Phenomenological Interpretation of Adorno's Philosophy of Music'

Season 9 continues with a presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Michal Lipták Abstract: Adorno always maintained that "new music"—his term for mostly atonal, avant-garde music—was not just yet another musical school within the history of music which would gradually settle down and develop its own idioms, but that it was unique in the history of music and that it introduces a certain rift—"an abrupt, qualitative leap"—due to which it would never settle down. He developed this understanding of avant-garde music in writings that, at the same time, combine a philosophy of music, a sociology of music, and an engaged music criticism addressing contemporary works, whereby this criticism was never value neutral. In this paper, I demonstrate that phenomenology—despite Adorno's explicit but misplaced distaste for it—is well disposed to ground this understanding; in doing so, I use notions developed in general phenomenology and in "classic" texts of phenomenological aesthetics, such as notion of Typik in Husserl, notions of schemata and historical a priori in Dufrenne, or conception of a schematic work in Ingarden. Interpreting Adorno phenomenologically allows us to confirm the profound rift between atonal avant-garde music and the rest of music that Adorno identified, and to disclose it more precisely, describing phenomenologically how such music places unnatural demands on us, while it simultaneously stimulates us. In return, phenomenology of music itself benefits from phenomenological absorption of Adorno's philosophy of music, too. Such absorption helps phenomenology to engage critically with contemporary musical works and thereby test the thesis of the profound rift on the current atonal avant-garde works; this approach also helps to develop criteria to evaluate the avant-garde works. Finally, this rift can be interpreted as a defining feature of avant-garde music, and therefore contribute to discussions about definition of avant-garde music, which are still unsettled in musicological literature.

Biography: Michal Lipták is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of Slovak Academy of Sciences. He defended and published his dissertation on aesthetics of Husserl and Ingarden, and his current research involves Husserlian phenomenology, phenomenology of art (and music in particular), structuralism and post-structuralism, political philosophy including critical phenomenology, Hegelianism, Marxism and post-Marxism, philosophy of new media, and philosophy of law. He regularly reviews contemporary classical music for Slovak cultural magazines. In addition to philosophy, he also studied law and works as an attorney. Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds. The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/ About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/