Interdisciplinarity and Metaphors. Historical Reflections on Music Theory and the Psychology of Music

Abstract

Music theory and the psychology of music have maintained a close relationship, especially since the 1980s. Yet, the liaison between these two fields can be further traced back to the late 19th century, the formative period of both modern musicology and psychology. This article deals with those interdisciplinary works of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which we may refer to as early music psychology marked by the writings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Carl Stumpf, Hugo Riemann and Ernst Kurth. Instead of tracing the historical origins of current studies, however, this article attempts to contextualize the discourse of early music psychology and identify how these theories were constructed. The linguistic and metaphorical formations that appear frequently in early music psychological writings are examined – in particular the metaphors related to the notion of musical force, most of which were imported from the contemporary sciences such as physics and physiology. An examination of the “source domains” of metaphors such as »life-force«, »living force« and a group of terms related to physical forces reveals different conceptions of the ways in which the boundaries between the natural and mental sciences may be crossed and of different notions of listening to music. To borrow Morris Berman’s expressions, we may observe here a shift from “disenchanted” to “re-enchanted” music psychology. It is often said that the subject matter of psychology (i. e., the human mind) is constructed by practising psychologists themselves, and that changes in psychological language signify psychological change in their own right. The same holds true for the psychology of music. How do we conceptualize music? How does this conception shape the field of music psychology? By evoking such questions, historical and critical reflections on early music psychology may serve to rethink present-day interdisciplinary works between music theory and music psychology.