Philosophy of Music Education Review

Philosophy of Music Education Review 12.1 (2004) 67-70

Response to Mary J. Reichling, "Intersections: Form, Feeling, and Isomorphism"

David Stevenson

Mary J. Reichling's essay regarding the three concepts, form, feeling, and isomorphism, is lucid, well structured, and aptly supported by research of other music education philosophers. She states her purpose in the opening paragraph: "to examine and to elucidate various aspects of these three concepts in her [Susanne Langer's] writing, as they are fundamental to an understanding of her aesthetic theory and to the construction of a philosophy of music and music education."

A philosophy of music education must be the focus in all ensuing debate, and must remain of paramount importance. Arguments, especially dialectic arguments, are not won or lost; they merely strip away the outer garments until more and more of the truth is exposed. My thoughts regarding Reichling's essay are offered in this vein.

Reichling amply makes the point that music is a dynamic moving form. She asserts that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content," clarifying further by saying that "By content Langer is designating the form's import or meaning." And she offers other examples of dynamic, moving forms, among them, "forms created by movements of clouds or fog through the mist and early light." [End Page 67]

At this point, perhaps interjecting the notion of perception is in order. I would suggest that the cloud formations offer no content or meaning outside of the viewer's perceptions or imagination. Music (art), being the nebulous subject that it is, ensconced in subjectivity and steeped in perception, both interpersonal and intrapersonal at the same time, exists to be taken by individuals, each at his or her own level of accomplishment, understanding, and interest. Therefore, does the meaning inhere in the form, as Langer and Reichling assert, or is it assigned by the listener (in the case of music) or by the viewer (in the case of the cloud formation)? "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."¹ William Blake's observation notwithstanding, the truth is that perception is the only thing that we have with which to view our existence. I believe that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that reality does exist. However, we mere mortals lack the ability to view the world through anything other than our own perceptions. The knowledge or meaning gained through contemplation of the form is, in all likelihood, quite different for each observer.

Likewise, imagination and conceptual ability play a role in interpreting what the senses have perceived. Langer, and by quotation, Reichling, offers the notion of a red dot placed on the rim of a spinning wheel that appears to the viewer as a red circle. "When the spinning stops, the form, the red circle, evaporates. Did it really exist? Does it have ontological status? Is it merely an illusion?" I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine a spinning wheel with a red dot placed on the rim. I asked them, "As the wheel spins, do you see the dot?" The answer was that they saw a red circle. Did they really see a red circle, or even a spinning wheel? Of course not, we were in a music classroom. Yet they were able to conceptualize or imagine the image, and I would suggest that that carries more weight in the realm of art than does actual ontological status.

The problem with the experiment of the preceding paragraph is that "Langer argues that form is not separable from content, writing that it is not possible 'to divorce the logical form from its one embodiment or expression.'" In the subsequent paragraph Reichling states,

When the music stops, when the ballet is concluded, when the play ends, when the wheel stops spinning, memory may remain but the content (content as meaning-my parenthetical interjection), the feeling, the red circle, the image the dancer created is gone. Is this illogical or has knowledge...