The emergence of individual subjects in Western music

Abstract

Thanks to the Homeostasis -the principle which regulates tensional- relaxation energetic processes in music as well as in living organisms- musical texts can be regarded as organic entities, and as individual subjects too, endowed of a proper inner intentionality -despite they are produced by empirical authors. Tarasti’s Existential Semiotics offers theoretical tools useful in describing the combined action of different forces operating in the production of each individual musical text. By combining transcendental (Kant and Fichte), semiotic (Eco), and linguistic (Genette) approaches, this article firstly investigates the a priori conditions of interaction between the Subjectivity (the Being-in-Myself, or the Moi) and the Otherness (the Being-in-Itself, or the Soi) within the artistic text. Secondly, music in its concrete and historical being is analyzed with respect to the communal and individual structures which coexist in any text. By reflecting on the transformations within the ancient Plainchant, I assume a progressive passage from the slavery of the individual difference, subjected to the social identity, to its release, as in the Hegelian dialectic between bondsman and master. In such a process, the music itself discovers its potential autonomy from the word, and its own specific nature. The role of modalities (will, can, know, and must) changes alternatively, according to different perspective and points of view in the processes of individual distinction. In the Western culture the spontaneous idea of distinction has been transformed in that of a forced artistic originality at all costs, but we must not forget that Soi needs Moi in order to actually exist, but Moi comes out only by Soi.