ABSTRACT
Music’s temporal form inspires Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s double articulation of melodic unity: necessary both in the moment of listening and afterward in the immanent constitution of the work. The latter operation requires the work of memory to reconstruct the work as an aesthetic object. In aesthetic reception, listening is a complex activity that entails physical sensation, as well as the engagement of cognition, judgment, memory, and feeling. Capable of being both positive and negative in the form of music and industrial noise, evoking pleasure and discomfort, our reception of the sounds of the environment, and Rousseau’s attention to it, signals a decidedly modern turn in his aesthetic of auditory reception. In Rousseau’s world, to listen is to parse the sounds that surround us and attach meaning based on the perception of form and the workings of memory. Familiarity with the sign system that conditions the production and perception of sound represents a necessary condition for the cognition of sound.
