Music and the Ineffable: A Case for Profundity in Music

Abstract

Few philosophical issues are more recalcitrant to scrutiny and identification than the sense of profound experience in a musical encounter. The effort of catching in words the impression of an awe-inspiring, sublime or even devastating truth having brushed the soul might seem at such times to be wholly futile. Nevertheless, such effort gives us (contra Wittgenstein) a good reason not to lapse into silence, but rather (with Adorno) to “insist instead that philosophy consists in the effort to say what cannot be said”. We take our initial bearings from the writings of Peter Kivy, who dealt with this issue in no less than four of his papers. Although (to his own discomfiture) he reached a negative conclusion, his disquisitions are worth inspecting inasmuch as this outcome rested on unquestioned presuppositions, which perhaps prejudiced his layout of the case. Our aim is therefore to question the unquestioned behind this downhill slide and then to build up a more propitious pathway towards a resolution.