ABSTRACT

In order to restore the mediators of the world of music, the author have emphasised the means of the musical relationship over its terms – i.e. the works themselves and the audience. Music is a form of sociology: this is on the condition that this sociology agrees to be comprehensive, integrating within the human community the objects that bring people together. Music and its listeners are both the product of a situation, and are both dependent on the places, the moments, and the objects which present them to each other, through the devices and the mediators. Music meets painting at point where they had met before, but moving in the other direction. The linguistic status of the musical is such that it has to be heard first before it may be understood, and this takes more than one person. A. Schaeffner's Essais de musicologie is faithful to a conception of music as commentary on the Scriptures.