Qualcosa di musica. Sublimazione?

Abstract

In order to free reasoning from a possible paralysis due to the many meanings of "music" (although I do not believe to the existence of so-called "musical universals"), I invite the reader to consider some (in a way) ‘basic’ musical examples, in which virtuosity is strongly reduced. I observe how music gives a pleasure consisting in nothing but its flux in the present. This pleasure seeks to be continued and increased, and it builds a time and a space – a place – for sharing. The psychoanalytic attribution of this pleasure to the sublimation of (“sexual”?) impulses should bear the burden of proving the derived and diverted essence of what appears fulfilled in itself, furthermore of proving the existence of a traumatic component in this pleasure. However: how can a fulfilled pleasure originate from suffering? And is it not true that only what is more complete can 'explain' what is less accomplished? Indeed, it also happens that some psychoanalytic explanations of sublimation use, for this purpose, images or concepts taken from what they should clarify... Musical pleasure can create places and experiences where the established boundaries and hierarchies between culture and nature, organic and inorganic, human and animal life – including the singing of birds – are exceeded. Even concepts like cause and effect, origin (in a certain time) and aim do not work properly. A philosophical concept like that of ‘metamorphosis’ could do better justice to – and better fit with – the flux of the manifold interchanges of energies in life.

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