ABSTRACT
Phenomenology and music are linked both historically and theoretically. On the one hand, already in phenomenology’s infancy music was a topic of consideration by “proto-phenomenologist” Carl Stumpf, who used the concept of tonal “fusion” to explain musical consonance or harmony (Stumpf 1890). Early phenomenologists, such as Waldemar Conrad, Hans Mersmann, and Gustav Güldenstein, attempted phenomenologies of music with varying degrees of fidelity to strict phenomenological method (Conrad 1908; Mersmann 1922–23, 1925; Güldenstein 1928). On the other hand, the way in which we hear a melody becomes a crucial part of Edmund Husserl’s explanation of internal time consciousness (Husserl 1991: 5–53). Phenomenology has been widely used as a way to explore music, particularly the ontology of musical works and our experience of musical sound.
