ABSTRACT
Music-making is meaningful. Audible sound events are structured in time in such a way that we can experience music. In this flux of time, musical meaning unfolds. While making music together, the participants communicate simultaneously. Through the consonance of several voices, a collective phenomenon arises: shared music. This is an outstanding achievement that raises the question of how the participants succeed in synchronizing their individual actions continuously. Building on his work “Phenomenology of Music” in “Making Music Together” Alfred Schutz describes his hope that by investigating this communication, aspects of the structure of social interactions can be illuminated. This chapter argues that a theoretical development can be traced in these essays that is more than an addition to phenomenology. Based on videographic findings derived from string ensemble music-making, this chapter shows that this line of argument can be continued by developing the social theory of communicative action, with reference to the concepts of objectivations and sensuality.
