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Listening and Voice: Phenomenologies of Sound

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One of the big gaps in phenomenological discourse is that of musical production. At the one end, we find phenomenologists who have a great respect for music. These philosophers have done great work on the act of passive listening, but being trapped within their "regional ontology," their expertise on musical production is less well-developed. Conversely, some well-read musicologists have taken phenomenological concepts and run with them, often to unconvincing ends.

When I began reading "Listening and Voice," I felt certain that it would fall into the former category. The majority of Ihde's phenomenological work has been centered on technology. This rewrite of his earlier work on the auditory field, headed by the word "listening," invited a certain mode of skepticism. However, this has turned out to be a uniquely powerful work on auditory experience that has both confirmed and changed many things about the way in which I listen to and create music, noise, and silence.

Central to Ihde's thesis is the fact that we live in a socio-academic realm that is profoundly attracted to visuality. The metaphors that we use to explicate knowledge betray this bias: i.e. "enlightenment," "insight," or the "mind's eye." He proposes to enhance our discourse by taking an "auditory turn" away from this visual reduction. His following discussion on the auditory and visual fields, the primordial meaning of voice, and the pervasiveness of the auditory imagination are highly profound and relatively readable compared to most phenomenological monographs.

The lowdown: There are times when this book makes me stand up and cheer, and others when it makes me furrow my eyebrows and stare off into space. This is where a really great philosophical works should take you. Any fan of music, poetry, drama, or, most ethically, silence, will hold this work close to their heart.