Eleven Theses on Sound and Transcendence (original) (raw)

I. Listening can only be localized in the ear by force of reduction. Imagine a room (call it the "music room"), in which sounds are heard; any normal person entering the room is presented with sounds which are audible only there, but which can be traced to no specific source ... A specific sound--middle C at such and such a volume, and with such and such a timbre--can be heard in the room. Yet there are, let us suppose, no physical vibrations in the room: no instrument is sounding, and nothing else happens there, besides this persistent tone. (1) The "music room" is a hypothetical. To function, it requires the force of reduction. This is most apparent in the claim that, "let us suppose," these sounds are correlated to no physical vibration. That moment authorizes the philosopher to distinguish the sonic from the musical: one vibrational, with everything that comes in tow, such as the acoustic, the resonant, the spatial, and the causal; the other, a pure...