Some facets of making music are explored by combining arguments of Raffman's cognitivist explanation of ineffability with Merleau-Ponty's view of embodied perception. Behnke's approach to a phenomenology of playing a musical instrument serves as a further source. Focusing on the skilled performer-listener, several types of ineffable knowledge of performing music are identified: gesture feeling ineffability —the performer's sensorimotor knowledge of the gestures necessary to produce instrumental sounds is not exhaustively communicable via language; gesture nuance ineffability —the performer is aware of (...) nuances of instrumental gestures, e.g., micro-variations of intensity or duration of musical gestures, but cannot perceptually, and consequently conceptually, categorize those fine-grained variations; and ineffabilities of inter-subjectivity —the non-verbal interaction between performers that makes a performance a vibrant dialogue is similarly incommunicable. An attempt to identify some of the ineffable dimensions of this dialogue is proposed. Further ineffabilities relating the acoustical embedding of performing are identified. (shrink)

Hume’s division of perceptions into simple and complex has been criticized for being vague and perfunctory. Often the division is considered to be a rather weak part of his system, yet there is no agreement on its particular shortcomings and no consensus that it is totally impracticable. At the same time, the division between simple and complex perceptions has not attracted strong interest or attention from commentators. Most accounts consist of short paraphrases, some of which suggest a connection with Locke. (...) The few attempts at a systematic explanation include the accounts of Baier, Frasca-Spada, Garrett, Pears, and Waxman. (shrink)