Abstract

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.
- Leibniz

While music and mathematics have long been understood as companion disciplines, nowadays the concerns of music research are often much more concrete; music therapy, for example, treats a range of neurological and psychiatric disorders. How is it, then, that music – this wonder of such physiological and psychological power – remains also an art of sheer mathematical beauty?

My presentation aims at an account of the correlation between music’s formal structures and music’s effects. Drawing upon phenomenological investigations of inner time-consciousness, I explore the “parts” and “wholes” of time in relation to musical rhythm, linking the constitution of the body-subject (through acts of recollection, recognition and gesture) with musical form

Short bio

Jessica Wiskus is Professor of Music at Duquesne University (Pittsburgh, PA, USA), where her work concerns the intersection of music and philosophy. She is the author of The Rhythm of Thought: Art, Literature, and Music after Merleau-Ponty (University of Chicago, 2013) as well as articles in Musiktheorie: Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, The Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Philosophy Today, Epoché, Angelaki (among others). Her research at AIAS investigates the phenomenology of time-consciousness in music as a foundation for ethics.

Jessica Wiskus' project at AIAS

What is a Fellows' Seminar?

The AIAS Fellows' Seminar is a session of seminars held by the AIAS fellow or by other speakers proposed by the fellows. In each seminar, one fellow will present and discuss his/her current research and research project, closing off with a question and discussion session.

All seminars are held in English and open to the public. Registration to the seminar is not necessary.  Read more about the AIAS Fellows' Seminar here.