Memory of the Sound

Abstract

Music can be linked to personal remembrances, taking us back to the time of a particular situation or to a specific moment in our lives. Sometimes the presence of musical sound fills the absence of someone who is no longer with us. A composition can bear witness of the poetics of an artistic movement. It can be a document of the taste of a certain era, within the frame of a certain cultural community. But it can also testify something else, such as an “event”, producing the conditions for the listener to become a witness to it, through the aesthetic experience. Music can offer memory supports to preserve the cultural identity of those who share the forms of its knowledge: listening and interpreting music together provides the ground for rooting a common sense of belonging in the sharing of its meanings. But music can also produce memories to be kept and cherished: then music transforms itself into a monument. The effectiveness of all these functions lies in the relationship between music, the listener's subjectivity, and time. It is therefore necessary to analyse how musical discourse constitutes the competence of listening, and the relation of the latter with the time flowing.