Play, interpret, listen. Practice music, or make it act?

Abstract

In this article, Antoine Hennion masterfully takes up the questions of sociological mediation. Drawing on the particularities of music, he argues that it provides a model of approach to works of art that proceeds in a double feature: on the one hand, music is the object of a necessary performance of the work; but on the other, music is assumed to be an active performance by those who appreciate it (amateurs) in the broad sense. To exist, a musical work must be performed and (re)lived. Going further, Hennion defends that reading music is not the same as reading a novel and has even less to do with the idea of reading a painting. Not to mention the need for an interpreter or orchestra to interpose between the average listener and the musical score.  Even in the case of mental reading, the operation is very different: "reading" music supposes that we perform it in our head, that we are its own performer, which requires highly trained action, competence and skill, immeasurable with the mere reading of a written work, a competence that – in contrary - is ordinary and transparent. We are no longer faced with a dual opposition between work and reception, but enveloped in overlapping layers of presence, passages that make the event denser and intensify things obliquely.