Phenomenological analysis of musical meaning (on the material of rock music)

An English translation of the article published in Russian

The article was published in:

HORIZON 13 (2) 2024 : I. Research : E. Kosilova : 571–586.
https://doi.org/10.21638/2226-5260-2024-13-2-571-586

Elena V. Kosilova
Lomonosov Moscow State University
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000–0002–2261–7680.

The article deals with the phenomenological analysis of music perception on the material of rock songs. The structure
of a song is simpler than the structure of a classical piece of music, but all the results are valid for any music with
appropriate complication. “Listening device” – a computer program that translates sounds into musical notation -
perceives individual sounds. But the musical consciousness understands the specific musical thought. It groups sounds
into motifs and phrases. The concept of musical thought has different interpretations and needs a thorough
phenomenological analysis based on Husserl's doctrine of the constitution of sense. F. Tagg introduces the concept of
“museme” – a unit of musical meaning. Musemes have meaning only for the understanding consciousness. Musemes
of different levels include motifs and phrases, metric signature, rhythm, and the structure of the whole work. In a
melody there may be "key sites" in which the concentration of musical thought is maximized. They are constituted by
musical consciousness and are largely subjective. The phenomenon of key site is not specific to music; key sites are
found in literature and philosophy. Their appearance sheds light on the peculiarities of acts of understanding. The
understanding of a musical work takes place in time, and this allows the consciousness to mark out a segment of time,
to arrange the intelligible structure in it. A melody is a meaningful whole that has its own logic of unfolding. It
encompasses a segment of time and transforms it into something stationary. Melody can be represented in the form of
a scheme. The subject of music is the compression of time into such structures. An interesting example of musical
perception and understanding is psychedelic rock. When listening to psychedelic music, the constitutive activity of
consciousness is reduced and an altered state of consciousness occurs. The horizon of meaning narrows, the protention
disappears. Here we should recall the notion of “saturated phenomenon” introduced by J.-L. Marion. The saturated
phenomenon does not allow for constitution and assimilation. Psychedelic music modifies the horizons of future
meanings. The article concludes with a question about computer music: will it make sense to us? So far there is no
unequivocal answer to this question.

Keywords: music, rock music, phenomenology of music, constitution of meaning, museme, key sites of melody,
psychedelic rock, saturated phenomenon

The whole text with online musical examples can be read at the author’s site:
https://elenakosilova.ru/makalelerhtml/Horizon_2024_eng

Introduction

Music does not exist on its own – it is created by the composer, interpreted by the performer
and perceived by the listener. Although it is close to mathematics and has its own internal logic, it
does not have the autonomy that mathematics has. The composer expresses a musical idea, the
listener perceives it and, as in any perception, interprets it, relates it to previous musical experience,
understands and enjoys understanding – or does not understand and immediately forgets. Musical
understanding is very difficult to formalize. We grasp the meaning, say, of a melody, but what is
the meaning of a melody? Maybe it is a kind of diagram that can be drawn (essentially translated
into notes – up, down, in figures…)? Or maybe the structure is something like a question and
answer? Is music like a text message? It is completely different, but it seems to have something of
a “message”. Some people, listening to music, seem to receive visual images. The author of this
article has never seen images, but seems to catch a certain pattern of the melody. And there are
purely auditory listeners who do not receive either images or patterns, but hear intonation. There
are also complex options. None of this is "correct". It cannot be said that music is always intended
to convey a non-musical meaning (to paint pictures like "The Seasons") (Hanslik, 1895), but it
cannot be denied that sometimes the meaning that the composer puts into it is precisely non-
musical (describing certain emotions or passions). There is a whole layer of program music. The
semantics of music is very multifaceted.
This article is devoted to some aspects of music perception. I will use rock music as an
example. Rock music is much simpler in structure than classical music, and even more so than
modern academic music. However, all the results are valid for any music, with the appropriate
complication. Units of musical meaning in “simple” songs are obvious, while in “complex” music
they are more difficult to identify, but possible. Partly, the terminology of musical theory
(“motive”, “phrase”) is used, and partly, semantic terminology (unit of meaning – “museme”).
Musical theory was developed primarily for the analysis of classical music (we will consider both
Schubert and Schumann as classical music), while semantic theory is more suitable for modern
songs, including rock compositions. The justification for the fact that rock music is serious enough
to be analyzed is given, for example, by Gracyk (1996). The examples were: 1. Pink Floyd’s
compositions, as they are the kind that most readers know, and 2. songs by an outstanding Turkish
musician Barış Manço, which most people do not know and can listen to without bias. These
authors were chosen because their music differs from the average rock composition in its beautiful
melody, elegance of form, non-trivial musical moves, and at the same time seems natural. In
addition, these authors wrote in the psychedelic style, which will be analyzed at the end of the
article.

1. Musical thought
The substance of music is sound and the sequence of sounds. The essence of music is time.
One sound can sometimes mean a lot, but in most cases the meaningful essence of music is
intervals and their sequence, which then forms motifs, phrases, themes. Unlike a prose text, which
is also read in the flow of time, but is not inherently temporal itself, music is inherently temporal.
This already requires the thinking participation of the listener. We can imagine a kind of a listening
device that is able to recognize sounds. There are already programs that translate sounds into notes.
A single sound can be perceived and recognized by the device. A single interval - probably with
difficulty. For the device, these will be two unrelated sounds. A sequence, a group of intervals is
harmonically and melodically constituted only by musical consciousness. Groups make up motifs,
motifs make up phrases. All this, on the one hand, is the structure of the music itself, on the other
hand, an intentional, constitutive consciousness is necessary to grasp these motives and phrases.
Without the intentional consciousness of the listener, music is pure, as Husserl says, hyletic data
(Husserl, 1994, 26). It is simply a flow of sounds. When such a flow goes on, and the groups are
not grasped and the constitution of meaning does not occur, the listener either stops listening or
falls into a special state of consciousness, without constitution, pure listening. If we are talking
about rock, then examples of this kind can be found in psychedelic music (more on this below).
The problem of musical understanding has been solved in one way or another by many authors
(Scruton, 1983; Kivy, 2001; Chavez, 1961).
Despite the fundamental temporality of music, there are moments in it when the meaning is
concentrated on a separate sound. For example, if a tonic sounds for a long time at the end of a
song, it becomes a single meaning, regardless of the sequence that led to it. This is especially true
when an unstable sound sounds for a long time. At the same time, of course, a tonic or an unstable
sound makes sense only in relation to the key of the song. If the key is complex, for example, in
atonal music, then the impression from each sound becomes as if indefinite (there can be different
options here).
But still, the most elementary unit of musical content is an interval, and the next unit is a
group of intervals, a motive. A motive can be very short, like a micromotive, and a more complex
motive consists of these micromotives and can be called a macromotive. Macromotives turn into
phrases, phrases into sentences and periods. In songs we often have a strictly square structure: one
bar of 4/4, one musical line of four bars, a verse of four lines, and a song can also have four verses
(one of them is an instrumental interlude, usually the third). Complications can be imposed on this
square structure, for example, a micromotive can have 6 sounds. An even more complex example
is the Pink Floyd’s song “Money”, which has a 7/4 time signature. This is not a square music, but
it is still a song by genre.
The British musicologist F. Tagg introduced the concept of museme (Tagg, 1979). In fact,
in his examples, musemes are what are called motives in standard music theory. However, the
concept of musemes can be used more broadly. We can introduce such terms as micromuseme,
average museme, macromuseme. Any musical thought can be considered as a macromuseme
consisting of micromusemes. Micromusemes are several notes grouped in a sequence with
resolution into a stable tone; average musemes are musical phrases; macromusemes cover the
entire song. Rhythm, melody, the entire song are also musemes. An unusual size for rock, for
example, 6/8, is a special unit of meaning, that is, also a museme.
Tensions and resolutions are included in the micromuseme. It consists of them. The drawing
is inside the middle museme. And the macromuseme is a complete work, the whole song. Thus,
the musical idea can be distinguished both at the level of a group of sounds and at the level of the
entire work. This was noted, for example, by J. Levinson and E. Huovinen (Levinson, 1997, 2006;
Huovinen, 2011). Levinson calls the emphasis on the perception of individual phrases
concatenationist theory, the emphasis on the perception of the entire work – architectonic one. In
the language of psychology, a complete unit is called a gestalt, but even within the framework of
the song genre, a part of a line, a line, and an entire song are all gestalts. Micromuseme is often
easy to distinguish by this feature: it can be sung separately from everything else. It has a certain
completeness, which a randomly chosen sequence of sounds does not have.
Thus, both micromuseme and macromuseme are musical thoughts of different levels.
Let's look at Barış Manço’s song Kol düğmeler" (Cufflinks) . The time signature is 6/8, which
is a bit like a waltz, but it is not a waltz; this "rounded" time signature gives the song a special
softness. This is also a kind of museme, a musical idea. And then there are micromusemes –
motives – four syllables each, two grouped in a line, 4 lines in a verse. It is interesting that with a
time signature close to ¾, you expect phrases of 3 syllables, but here we have 4, so the overall
rhythm becomes more complex, the three-part pattern becomes something like an ornament. In the
middle of the song there is a very beautiful departure from this structure, with the words
[sustururum] herkesi, her, her şeyi ([I will silence] everyone and everything, everything!). Here
the melody spreads over the rhythm. Another song by the same author is Halhal (Bracelet). Here
the time signature is 4/4, and the music is quite square. The structure is typical of Turkish rock –
the line is divided into two single motives, the first of which is like a beginning, the second – a
resolution, or a question-answer. Another typical structure of Turkish rock – the last four lines are
based on the harmony sequence 4-1-5-1. In this sequence the tonic chord occurs, as we see, twice,
but both times it sounds different, depending on what chords were before and after it. It is clear
that here we have a typical constitution of meaning by consciousness (from the point of view of
the listening device the tonic chord is always the same).

2. Key sites of the melody

Let us introduce the concept of a key place in a piece of music, a melody or a song. It has
not yet been encountered in literature, which is strange, since there are definitely key places in
many songs and works of other genres. Not in all of them – it happens that the melody is entirely
harmonious, and the whole thing is remembered at once. Such melodies fit Levinson’s analysis of
the “architectonic” perception of music. Some bright melodies seem to consist entirely of key
places. Such is the above-mentioned Pink Floyd song Money or their song Another Brick in the
Wall. Other melodies make sense only as a whole, like Manço’s Halhal. It resembles a beautiful
ornament, where all the lines are of the same type. But there are also melodies in which the
meaning is concentrated in one line or even in one micro-motive. They are best understood through
the “concatenationist” theory. The example of the famous Pink Floyd song Shine on You Crazy
Diamond shows that the key places can be at the end of the stanza, that is, in the fourth line of the
verse (Come on you miner for truth and delusion and shine!). In addition, the melody in them often
goes up, but this is not necessary.
In music theory, there is a concept of culmination, but key places do not always coincide
with culminations. Culminations are usually discussed in relation to classical music of large forms.
Culminations are often at the point of the golden section, closer to the end, often highlighted by
the orchestra, and move into the conclusion. But the key site can be at the beginning and not even
highlighted by anything except the sequence of sounds. For example, The Beatles' song Yesterday
begins with a key place on the word yesterday. The beginning of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is
another well-known key site.
And here we must say one fundamental thing. Key sites, of course, are constituted and
highlighted by the active consciousness of the listener. They can be different for different people.
But do they coincide with the composer's own impression of his music? Did he mean to emphasize
them? This is unknown. Moreover, asking this question is somehow inconvenient, because it turns
out that the composer wrote everything else in vain. Of course, this is not so. Sometimes the entire
melody leads to these sites. Every sound is of value for the composer (probably). Something
similar happens with texts. A philosopher writes an article, putting meaning into every word, and
the reader remembers one paragraph. Of many novels, single scenes have become famous. The
phenomenon of the key site is very common.
Let's touch on another related phenomenon: improvisation. Improvisation is not as
widespread in rock music as in jazz, but it can be found in many compositions. Usually, one can
see a hermeneutic technique in it: interpretation of the main melody of the verses, its variation,
emphasis on certain melodic moves, development of new ones. Let's take Pink Floyd's Money
again. There, in the instrumental part, the improvisation is long, it is even difficult to say whether
it interprets the main music theme. However, it has a key site at the very end, where it makes a
sharp descent downwards. Melodically, this descent leads to a repetition of the music of the verses.
In terms of meaning, it seems to awaken the consciousness, given over to wandering, to the harsh
reality of money.
Another point should be mentioned in connection with the key sites of the melody. The song
is a unity of music and lyrics. In rock, both the lyrics and the music are often written by the same
author. When we talk about intellectual examples like Pink Floyd and Barış Manço, we can expect
that the key sites of the melody will also be the key sites of the lyrics, and this is often the case.
The words of these authors are conspicuous, they are not written to fill the music (as is often the
case in rock and especially in pop music), but for their own sake. Sometimes they influence the
music, emphasizing parts of it that the music itself does not emphasize. But when the key sites of
the music and the words coincide, the impression remains especially strong, as, for example, in
the song Welcome to the machine by Pink Floyd. In this song, the main line is the end of the verse,
welcome to the machine, and it is also emphasized in the music. In Barış Manço, we should cite
the song Hatırlasana (“Remember”), which I analyzed elsewhere (Kosilova, 2023).
Sometimes the key sites of a melody are highlighted by volume, but in rock songs, which
are usually recorded at the same volume, this rarely happens. Sometimes the vocalist emphasizes
them with his voice. For example, Beethoven's culminations are highlighted by many means
(range, playing of the entire orchestra, density of texture, harmony, and dynamics). As for key
sites in rock compositions, they may not be highlighted by anything except the course of the
melody itself.

3. Music and time

A huge amount of phenomenological and philosophical literature is devoted to music as a
temporal art and its connection with time. The most famous thoughts belong to E. Husserl
(although something similar was already in F. Brentano): listening to music, we hold in our
consciousness a period of time, a temporal horizon (Husserl, 1994). Retention holds the past,
protention transfers the future into the present. Both retention and protention are in the present, it
is not the past and the future, it is a way of our consciousness to expand in time. Let's start with
the following question: why do we like to listen to musical works that we already know? Why do
we want to repeat an aesthetic experience? After all, we do not receive any new information. There
may be different answers to this question, but there is one that is directly related to the problem of
time.
Time is an omnipresent and terrible thing. It brings and takes away everything. It is like a
muddy, opaque, irrational stream. It cannot be stopped, you can only rush forward in it to an
unknown destination. All people and all things rush in this stream at the same speed, so that they
should be motionless for each other, but nothing of the sort: we see everything around us as being
in the stream, flowing away. Everything changes for us, everything flashes, everything passes. The
irrationality of time is that it does not depend on anything, but everything else depends on it. It
cannot be influenced. It is “in itself”.
We want to make time more understandable and rational, to tame it, and for this we mark it:
with watches, calendars, daily routines, diaries and journals. These are motionless milestones
placed in it. We want to make at least some semblance of a narrative out of our lives. Sometimes
we manage to grasp a period of time simultaneously in duration and in stillness. This is an amazing
ability of human thought. We observe a period of time from some kind of motionless point. We
seem to leave time and watch it flow from the side. A person has access to transcendence to a point
of motionlessness, from which he/she observes the past and a little bit of the future. If this were
not the case, we would not feel time.
Music is a way to mark a period of time. It is a kind of salvation from the irrationality of the
flow that carries everything forward, mixing everything and never stopping. And only the
motionless can be understood and inhabited. That which is constantly changing is meaningless.
Our mind works with selected points. (That is why we return to works of non-temporal art –
paintings, literary texts. The text is read in time, but in itself is not inherently temporal).
And so the sounding music marks periods of time for some time. They become both temporal
and presented in stillness, they are meaningful. We can draw a melody as a drawing on paper
(Eggebrecht, 1999, 2016). Melody is a meaningful whole. It embraces a period of time and turns
it into something stationary, into itself. Music is a way to tame time. Of course, it is always moving
itself. But it has a logic that takes it out of the chaos of sounds. Logic is stationary, it also tames
time. I know the pattern of the melody, its gestalt. Where it will go, where the high or low places
will be, where the dominants and tonics are, where the key sites for me are. Five minutes of time
for me turned from irrationality into comprehensibility.
This is how composer B. Filanovsky expressed this idea: “For me personally, the subject of
music is the folding of time into intelligible structures” (Filanovsky, 2020, 21). The idea of
intelligible structures is the main one here. The irrational flow of time seems to fade into the
background, it does not stop, but our consciousness is not occupied with it, but with music, the
structure of which has its own logic. Here are tensions and resolutions, here are question-answer
motives, here is a repetition, here is a closed square structure. Even if a person does not perceive
music in such an emphatically intellectual way, but simply listens to it, the logic of music is given
to him/her subconsciously. If a false sound is heard that violates logic, the listener will notice it.
Although there are many people who listen to music in the background, essentially indifferent to
music – but now we are not talking about them. Leibniz’s statement in a letter to Goldbach is well
known: “Music is the mysterious arithmetic of the soul; it calculates without even suspecting it”
(Guhrauer, 1846, 66).
Composer and philosopher M.A. Arkadiev also points to the content of musical time:
“Musical time is a holistic process of musical formation in its multi-component completeness. The
musical process and concrete, living musical time are synonyms, since the reality of time is
manifested in its content” (Arkadiev, 1993, 14).
 This is not an exhaustive answer to the question of why we listen to familiar songs, this is
only one of the answers. Listening to a familiar piece of music, we know the future. We leave the
irrational flow and observe this flow from a fixed point, acquiring a kind of divine properties.
And, of course, it is easy to see that with each new listening, the constitution of musical
meaning occurs actively, we wait for familiar places and re-experience them. Consciousness
rejoices in this constitution. Consciousness in general rejoices in any act of understanding. There
is no space here to consider the question of what it means to understand music, but in short it can
be considered that it is following its logic, grasping its tensions and resolutions, etc.

4. Musical time in rock music

Composer and musicologist M. Rais (2013) identifies five forms of musical time: infinite,
linear, vector, complex and composite. Infinite is characteristic of traditional folk music, primarily
Eastern music, linear – of European classical music, the last three forms – of the academic musical
avant-garde. Although Rais stipulates that aspects of all forms can be found in each work, it is
clear that he primarily means classical and academic works, as well as the avant-garde, for
example, of J. Cage and K. Stockhausen.
In addition, he specifically dwells on the role of rhythm, since musical time is marked by
rhythm. The most important thing to say about rhythm: the rhythm of music is tied to the rhythms
of our body: heartbeat, breathing, walking, swinging a leg, sex. Apparently, the rhythm of music
expresses its corporeal character, its ability to capture us entirely, we immerse ourselves in music
with both soul and body. There can be music without rhythm, without alternating weak and strong
beats (Gregorian chant, Orthodox chant, etc.). If we ask ourselves as a thought experiment what
divine or angelic music sounds like in the incorporeal world, it will be music without rhythm and
even without a beginning or an end. The beginning and end of this-worldly works, from
symphonies to songs, are always an analogue of birth and death. This does not exist in the afterlife
world. If there is time there, it is completely different from here. However, this thought experiment
should be described separately.
What can be said about time in rock music? As has already been said above, the squareness
of the form is important, that is, a large number of "fours". The main four in any song is four lines
in one verse. This is almost always the case. Of course, other options are possible, but they are
perceived as a special game, that is, they are a special musical thought. Such repetition of fours is
the structure that marks time. After one stanza, we wait for the next one, absolutely identical in
form. This repetition lulls the existential anxiety associated with time. It consoles our melancholy.
When the song ends, the melancholy of emptiness returns, and we turn on the next song, in which
the fours of lines will also be repeated. If the structure of the stanza is more complex, then we must
get used to it, but when we grasp it, the joy of listening to it again can be even greater.
It is also necessary to say a few words about rhythm. Of course, as a rule, rhythm in rock
music is very important, since rock as a whole has moved away from its dance roots to a lesser
extent than classical music has from its ones. Since rhythm is physical, many accuse this music of
directly affecting the physiology of the body, that is, of primitiveness. In part, this is a fair
reproach, in part, not. Firstly, there are rhythmic works in classical music, for example, Prelude in
G minor by S. V. Rachmaninov, but no one accuses them of primitiveness. Secondly, rock is not
necessarily rhythmic, in particular, Pink Floyd and Barış Manço, taken as examples in this article,
often wrote music with complex, sophisticated rhythms. Below is an analysis of the Pink Floyd
composition Echoes. One example of Manço's song is Ömrümün Sonbaharında (In the Autumn of
My Life), in which almost the entire melody and lyrics are on the weak beats (but not syncopated),
which emphasizes the sadness and thoughtfulness. In general, the ability of music to captivate us
not only mentally, but also physically and emotionally, contributes to its magic.
Rock songs are usually shorter than the average piece of classical music. In a sonata, we hear
many more musical ideas than in one rock song, but a sonata also lasts longer. (Of course, this
does not apply to such things as miniatures - preludes by Chopin, Scriabin, Webern's works,
Prokofiev's Fleeting, etc.) A form such as a sonata should be compared not with one song, but with
a whole album of rock music. Then the number of musical thoughts can be equal. Of course, one
long piece, as a rule, has a more complex structure than five short ones, and in this sense,
immersion in a sonata is deeper. However, in rock music there are also examples of large
conceptual albums. Pink Floyd's albums are a great example. In the album Wish You Were Here
the songs seem to echo each other, making up a single whole. In musical complexity and
sophistication, this piece is not inferior to classical symphonies. If we mention other bands, then,
say, all albums by The Alan Parsons Project are conceptual. And there are many such examples.
But basically, the characteristic of rock is the brevity of the song. It is more fleeting than a
sonata, it needs to captivate in three or four minutes. Hence the greater simplicity and tendency
towards brightness. Let's not decide which music is better, let both genres exist and please listeners
in their own way.

5. Psychedelic music, altered state of consciousness, saurated phenomenon

What psychedelic music is, is still not a fully resolved question. Many authors have written
about it (Echard, 2017; Spicer, 2017; Matijas-Mecca, 2020; DeRogatis, 2023), but definitions are
either not given or are subjective. It is easier to distinguish it by ear than to define it formally, it is
far from being a hit, from bright melodies, but it engages the mind in a special way. In fact, it is
simply talented music, prone to some kind of thoughtfulness.
Both Pink Floyd and Barış Manço are considered by those who know them to belong to the
psychedelic genre (however, not all of their works, and not even most of Manço's). For example,
let's take Pink Floyd's Echoes. It cannot be called a song, it is a long suite, 23 minutes long. It has
many slow transitions from one sound to another, slow alternations of intervals, sometimes there
are short fragments of melodies, sometimes they alternate with listening to individual chords. The
vocalist periodically comes in. The bright key sites at the end of the vocal fragments are interesting
– it seems that these sites will be key for any listener, they are vocally emphasized. The main time
of the suite is taken up by sorting through the sounds with listening to each sound. Electronic
instruments are playing, so the timbre of the sound is special. Repetitions of micromotives are
important, these repetitions draw you in. The consciousness, to which a picture of such music is
presented, seems to hang, on the one hand, it does not know what to expect, and on the other hand,
it is lulled and calm. The integrity of this long meditative period is provided by light accents on
strong beats, however there are places where they disappear.
Leaving aside the musical aspects of a psychedelic work, one thing that comes to mind here
and that is acknowledged by all writers on psychedelic music is its connection with the use of
drugs. Indeed, it so happened that psychedelic rock appeared at the same time that marijuana and
LSD came into widespread use, and to some extent drugs contributed to the emergence of
psychedelia in music. However, this connection is not at all inseparable. It is quite possible to write
a psychedelic piece without using any drugs, and certainly not to listen to it. The music itself leads
to an altered state of consciousness. (It is possible, one must assume, to achieve this without music,
simply by training in meditation - as there is also meditative academic music - but this article is
devoted to the musical meaning.)
What is the meaning of psychedelic music? It becomes clearer than ever that music evokes
this special state of consciousness with virtually no conventional background, no cultural
upbringing. Psychedelic things draw in anyone who is ready to listen to them. The altered state of
consciousness does not last long, it passes almost immediately after the music ends, but at the same
time, while it lasts, it is an event in the constitution of musical meaning. As J. Deleuze said,
meaning is always born in an event. Any music is an event, but psychedelic music is especially so.
And here we should recall the concept of saturated phenomenon introduced by J.-L. Marion
(Marion, 2014). A saturated phenomenon is characterized by the predominance of contemplation
over synthesis in concepts, it seems to surpass consciousness, it cannot be grasped by
understanding, it is great, it does not fit into the subject. Marion cites Revelation as an example of
a saturated phenomenon. Consciousness perceives but does not constitute meaning, the horizon of
consciousness collapses, consciousness is completely given over to pure perception. We freeze
before a saturated phenomenon. We cannot digest and assimilate it.
Is music such a phenomenon? Usually not quite. As has already been said, we understand
music, we hear how its logic unfolds. When the introductory tone sounds, we expect the tonic (this
expectation is often highly emotionally charged). True, when some music sounds, we cannot think
of any other music, in this sense the horizon is absent. But the background of our habits remains.
There is a certain horizon of this background, there is a certain cultural context, there is also the
constitution of meaning. We are captured by music, but not to the point of complete numbness.
If we talk about psychedelic music, then here the disappearance of the horizon and the
constitution of meaning can be much more complete. This is an event in the life of our
consciousness, this is the novelty of its altered state. Being without constitution, in a kind of peace.
Such music does not so much carry meaning as it modifies the horizon of future meanings. It is a
very special musical experience.

Conclusion
Music has its own structure, which can be presented as objective – motives and phrases,
sentences and periods, sonata structure, structure of polyphonic canon, etc. A similar structure is
in rock music – squareness, widespread alternations of harmonies. It may seem that such a structure
does not depend on perception, or rather, one must learn to perceive it in itself. In its own way,
from the point of view of music theory, this is a completely reasonable approach. Of course,
objective laws of musical logic exist.
This article attempts to demonstrate the constitutive function of consciousness in the
perception of music and the complex aspects of the interaction of music with consciousness. Music
is related to mathematics, but mathematics does not sound, it does not enter our consciousness the
way music does. Consciousness at the moments of listening to music acquires a completely special
experience, the experience of marked time, the experience of understanding musical thought. The
listening device can translate hyletic, that is, unformed, sounds into musical notation, but cannot
constitute their meaning. Music for us carries precisely meaning, and this is a purely musical
meaning, not related to any extra-musical meaning. It is the tracing of the logic of the melody by
a living human consciousness, which is drawn to music for the sake of rest from the irrational and
disturbing course of time.
What awaits us in the future? The listening device is a reality of our time, a reality of the
beginning of the computer revolution. It is clear that very soon artificial intelligence will also
compose music. Will it make sense to us, will it delight us? Of course, it will be possible to order
a psychedelic piece. Will we experience an altered state of consciousness and delight? Many are
skeptical about this, but it seems that this is by no means impossible. Perhaps, soon AI will learn
to analyze music no worse than musicologists do. However, until this happens, we will listen to
music with our human consciousnesses.

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