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66

MUSIC

AND

1. Introduction

In our time, certain attempts at theory construction seem to

be dangerously confusing the ideal of objectivity with the un-
real of anonymity. For example, it is part of the business of
a theory to define its terms. Sometimes the definition is cast
in a suitable metalanguage and formalized beyond the reach of
space, time, and culture. Such a definition is set up as a norm
for logical discourse rather than as a guide for musicalexperi-
ence. The result is familiar: the validity of the theory itself
can be tested only by referring back to the truth value of its
defining statements. Under such circumstances, theory and
THE

A PRIORI

THOMAS CLIFTON

experience follow separate paths. There seems little reason

to doubt that this state of affairs expresses the intentions of
the theorist.

But the irresistible urge to formalize and generalize is met

head on by the immovable presence of music as a social phe-
nomenon, that is, something to which people listen in order to
have musical experiences and exhibit musical behavior. So
that if someone wants a theory of music to be formal and gen-
eral, he should also want to refrain from depersonalizing the
theory. Is this possible? What slight-of-hand is required to
juggle the formal with the material, the general with the partic -
ular, and the universal with the personal? What is the terrain
like which lies between a synthetic (for Kant) a priori state-
ment such as 7 + 5 = 12, and the very particular musical situa-
tion whereby, for some person, seven tones plus five tones do
not necessarily add up to 12 tones?

These questions relate to a rather well-worn but still misunder-

stood problem: the problem of the reciprocity between music,
as a process existing independently of a person, and a person,
whose attentive presence is needed to make a musical process
meaningful. Without the exploration of both poles of this re-
ciprocal relation, a theory of music will tend to overstress its
objective or subjective portions. The result is either anonym-
ity or autobiography. One way to avoid these detours is to
adopt a broader interpretation of the a priori than was formu-
latedbyKant. We are not "subjects" who impose laws of thought
onto the experience of objects; we are people at home in the
world and in bilateral dialogue with it. Nor can we be satisfied
with assigning the a priori to a purely formal domain: the do-
main of logically necessary and universally valid propositions.
Such propositions are not proofs, but results of reflective rea-
soning. But music is not something about which a proof need
be supplied, nor is musical behavior the result of reflective
reasoning. Music is the justification of reasoning, and as such,
it is presupposed in all reasoning about it.

II. A General Description of the A Priori

We listen to a musical work and experience its sense. In the

presence of a musical idea, we think and feel musically. Some-
times the musical thought is crystalized into a precise melodic
theme or subject, sometimes it is presented in a more general
manner, involving textures, colors, or gestures whose identity
would not be seriously jeopardized if their individual atoms
were rearranged or exchanged for other atoms. We listen to
these things, and sooner or later conclude that whatever the
musical message might be, it did not come to us as the result
of a laborious and systematic thought process, even when that
process involves a detailed study of compositional technique
(itself the result of someone's systematic thought processes,
and not necessarily the composer's). As with logical discourse,
an understanding of compositional technique presupposes an
understanding of music. This is verified by considering that
the class of people who understand music is larger than the
class of people who understand compositional technique. (It
won't do any good to try to rebut this by arguing that there are
kinds and degrees of understanding, since, in any case, this
is precisely the point.)

What I am approaching is something which is not a presupposi-

tion to musical understanding, but the foundation, the Ursatz
as it were, of all presuppositions. This foundation, which
grounds all logical discourse as well as the experience which
is the presumed correlate of a meaningful discourse, is called
an a priori. In this section, it must be demonstrated that there
is no essential conflict between what is empirically given and
what must be given as an a priori condition of musical being.
Furthermore, certain characteristics of the a priori itself must
be developed to show how it differs from a generality, a rule,
or an innate idea. This last suggests that, while the a priori
significance of music may not be teachable, it is learnable.
This, in its turn, tells us something about the relation between
the a priori and history, which brings us back full circle to the
a posteriori of historical facts. When it is recognized that the
Kantian dichotomies between concept and intuition, man and
nature, reason and perception, and fact and meaning are di-
chotomies of language and not of existence, the a priori itself
takes on a new relevance, especially to the relatively unex-
plored regions of musical experience.

A. The A Priori and Experience

Kant started his Critique of Pure Reason bravely enough by

saying that "There can be no doubt that all our knowledge be-
"*
gins with experience. But he didn't follow through. He
immediately distinguished a priori knowledge as that which is
not derived from experience but from a universal rule. It was
set in opposition to a posteriori knowledge, that is, empirically
derived knowledge.

To rejoin this unfortunate division, one must first say that

knowledge not only begins with experience, but ends in experi-
ence. The a priori is for the a posteriori. This statement is
especially significant for the arts, whose forms are sensual
and given in perception. Secondly, one must consider the way
the word "necessary" is used to characterize both the a priori
and the a posteriori, thus blurring their distinction. To grasp
the meaning of the opening bars of Mozart's C Minor Piano
Sonata, it is necessary to hear the tones as members of an
ascending line. The perception of "ascending line" is at least
part of the meaning of the opening gesture. Expressions like
"ascending" and "line" are necessary, irreducible aspects of
the experience of this sonata. Such words do not refer to facts,
since there is nothing literally ascending, and the room is not
70

suddenly invaded by lines. The science of acoustics has nothing

to say about ascending lines, nor is it its business to say any-
thing about them. It can talk about certain proportions of in-
creasing frequencies, and the fact that certain tones appear
discretely in a certain time sequence. But if this "ascending
line" is not, strictly speaking, in the room the way tables and
chairs are in the room, neither is it in me. The experience
of "ascending line" is my experience, but it is not a purely
private experience. Another person can report that he also
experienced this "ascending line. "

Three important points should be considered before going fur-

ther. First, the a priori is not dependent upon a consensus of
opinion about whether a certain state of affairs is the case or
not. As an a priori, "ascending line" exists independently of
any given number of people, in the sense that their presence
does not create the ascending line, nor does their departure
destroy it. The second point is to realize that "ascending line"
is a meaning and not a fact. As such, it may be a necessary
conditionto an authentic musical experience, but it is a neces-
sity which is not necessarily given all the time. Presumably,
its meaning is not necessarily given to an infant, an Australian
aborigine, or, for that matter, a great many members of the
contemporary North Atlantic community. In fact, music itself
is not necessarily given, in the sense that it is not recognized
as such, on many occasions. Musical meaning is not neces-
sarily guaranteed, but when it does present itself, it does not
do so as the conclusion of an elaborate and systematic mental
process. In this sense, it can be said that music gives its
meaning immediately. This does not mean that musical mean-
ing is given to everyone, or that it is always given at once, at
first hearing. "Immediate" here means without the mediation of
mathematical, logical, or otherwise symbolic methods. These
methods follow from, and render explicit, the immediately
given musical meaning. (This to be read with tongue in cheek
and fingers crossed.) The final point is implicit in the above
statements. That is, the a priori of "ascending line" is im-
manent in the musical otject itself. One must carefully note
the direction of the logic of experience. It proceeds from the
object, rather than being imposed by the subject. The ascend-
ing line is "in" the object, it is a necessary appearance of the
object. But since there are no formal criteria to guarantee a
musical experience, the a priori finds its main function in pro-
viding a basis for deciding upon the objective factors of a mu-
sical experience, when it occurs. Suppose it is true that the
opening two measures of Mozart's C Minor Piano Sonata pre-
sent the rhythmically active gesture of an ascending line, a
 71

feeling of controlled force, an atmosphere of some degree of

tension, terseness, and expectation. . . . (The description
could be infinitely refined.) Well, if all these statements are
true - and their evidence is that of self-validating experience,
not of inference and proof - then they are true, a priori, and
we at least have a basis for continuing the discussion.

This is a very brief sketch of what is entailed by the word

"necessary" as it applies to the a priori. It is only fair to give
equal time to the urgent claims of the posteriori. Certain em-
pirical conditions cannot be denied: The experience of this
sonata necessarily entails either the physical presence of a
person, playing upon a musical instrument which is capable of
producing a sound spectrum, and in a sound-conductive atmos-
phere; or, the remembering, imagining, or anticipating of such
a performance. The person engaged in these acts must nec-
essarily be capable of perceiving, at least pre-predicatively,
psychologically discriminable intervals, tone color, intensity,
volume, etc. Certainly an equal-tempered interval is a mat-
ter of empirical history. For that matter, so was Mozart.
The meaning of this sonata cannot be dissociated from all his
other compositions, the compositions of his contemporaries
and predecessors, and the social conditions of the time. These
are all attendant contingencies to actual experience; something
else could have happened. But if something else did happen,
then our experience of this sonata might well be different. For
example, what if it were Mozart's only extant piano piece?
What if it were the only 19th-century composition to begin with
an ascending arpeggio? We can only conclude that Mozart and
Vienna (where he wrote the C Minor Sonata) were necessary to
each other, which is to say that style, or manner, is not a
superficial covering draped over an essential structure. As
the result of the interaction between a man and his empirically
given environment, style can also be regarded as an a priori
necessity for the experience of a concrete and particular com-
position.

Still, the necessity of both the a priori and the a posteriori

does not create a reversible interaction between them. Facts
and meanings necessitate each other, but the attempt to make
one the genesis of the other appears to be misguided, because
they reside on different and not necessarily connected levels
of human behavior. No amount of factual information can con-
vince a person that the object under consideration is a musical
object having musical significance if he has never experienced
that significance. In this case, facts remain opaque instead of
assuming their proper transparency. Musical significance is
72

not in the facts themselves, but is experienced through them;

intervals, as acoustical facts, are not music. Music is heard
shining through the intervals, but this does not mean that any-
one who can hear intervals can hear the music, or that anyone
who can experience the music can name the intervals - if any.
Thus, it is similarly difficult to move from the meaning to the
fact. The significance of the Well-Tempered Clavier is not
that it provides examples of equal temperament. The opening
of Mozart's C Minor Sonata is not essentially an arpeggio, al-
though it pleases us to call it that since meanings are more
elusive to name, being more real.

Bearing all these things inmind, as well as a number of details

that must be left unsaid for now, it becomes difficult to synop-
size the relation between the a priori and experience. In the
first place, a technical word has to be brought in: the term
"transcendence." We say that the a priori is given in experi-
ence, but that it transcends any particular experience. In one
way, then, it is evident that the a priori is not dependent upon
experience. On the other hand, the fact that the necessary
conditions of the a priori are not always revealed suggests that
the transcendental itself is made knowable only through experi-
ence. Perhaps this dualism can be resolved by considering
the relation between general and specific modes of experience.
Meanwhile, I take refuge again in Mozart.

The opening gesture of the C Minor Sonata has been described

as an "ascending line, " etc. The transcendental aspects of
this description include the following: 1) its significance tran-
scends any particular performance (although a bad performance
might fail to reveal any significance); 2) the sonata's signifi-
cance is independent of the mode of experience, be it perceiving,
imagining, judging, anticipating, wishing, etc.; 3) the experi-
ence of "ascending line" involves not only cognition but re-
cognition. Insofar as "ascending" may be predicated of other
experiences, it is not limited to this or any particular musical
appearance. The implications of this statement are significant
for any descriptive theory and bear closer examination at this
time.

B. The General and the Particular

One might get the impression that the a priori, as a transcend-

ental meaning, is too general to be of any use. After all, the
experience of "ascending line" invokes the general notions of
space, time, and motion. These notions seem to be presup-
posed in any conscious referring to a particular instance, since,
 73

clearly, we have to know beforehand what "ascending line" is

an instance of. Yet if the a priori strikes one as a generality,
he cannot be satisfied to let it remain so. In this, the differ-
ence between the general and the abstract can be observed.
The former is always found in a situation, always attached to
the world we know. It is not only possible to give an example
of a general concept, it is absolutely necessary to do so if we
are to refrain from idealism. Implicit here is a distinction
between that which is abstracted and the concept of the abstract
itself. There is nothing abstract about "ascending line, " al-
though, for purposes of exemplification, "ascending line" is
temporarily abstracted from its setting. Furthermore, the
general-particular relation is not quite like a genus-species
relation. Thus Dufrenne feels justified in saying:

The a priori possesses the generality of a meaning which

may belong to very dissimilar objects and which introduces
a special relationship between them: a correspondence of
analogy more powerful than resemblance. The diversity
of examples. . . attests that they are not the species of a
genus or the members of a species- i.e., objects sub-
sumable under one and the same definition. They are
rather objects animated by the same meaning. *2

I canperceive ascending lines in a painting as well as in a mu-

sical composition, not because I have performed an induction,
moving from an examination of X number of individuals to the
general concept which embraces all of them. This similarity
of meaning, which is apprehended in both the painting and the
music, is presented without mediation, intuitively, and as such,
it constitutes the beginning of knowledge. Woltersdorff has
schematized the relation between the general and the particu-
lar with considerable linguistic precision. 3 Adapting his
scheme for our own purposes, it can be said that: 1) "ascend-
ing gesture" is a case of the general concepts of space, time,
and motion; 2) space, time and motion are exemplified in Mo-
zart's C Minor Sonata; 3) "ascending gesture" is an aspect of
Mozart's C Minor Sonata.

Now, it has been argued that general concepts (or non-individ-

uals) enjoy at best only a purely verbal (nominal) existence.
The tragic, the joyful, the comic, are only words, whereas
what really exists is Hamlet, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, or
Charlie Chaplin; that is to say, individuals. However, the
problems arising from this attitude border on the perverse.
For one thing, it seems to me that one is left without any justi-
fication for experiencing that this sonata which I remember is
74

the same one whose performance I expect to hear next week,

or that this sonata which was mutilated by an inept performance
last month is the same one whose performance I enjoyed last
night. What indeed wouldwe ever mean by a goodperformance
or a bad one? But we can take an example of something even
more personal: the case of our own bodies. How could I, as
myself, maintain my identity through the birth and death of
millions of cells of which my body, as an object, is made?
True, in a certain sense, it can be said that I am not now what
I was thirty years ago, but this only compels the distinction
between an I as a person and an I as a body. My person is
what I mean to myself and to others, and as such it is given
immediately as an a priori. My body, on the other hand, is
indeed this physical object composed of organic materials. My
person is that which is more or less truthfully revealed to me
and to others, while my body is what I and others have to learn
about. The situation in music is similar. We not only have to
distinguish between music and notation, but have to realize
that music is a "person" which addresses us, and with which
we engage in dialogue. Just as the surgeon's knife can never
find my person in my body, since my person is what motivated
the knife in the first place, the analyst will never find music's
person in its body, since it is the music which motivates the
analysis. Analysis does not verify music. (This is not to say
that analysis is pernicious, but only that its aims and limita-
tions should be clarified.)

The moment we consider a composition as only an individual,

it loses its individuality, since it would lose itself in the proc-
ess of its own coming-to-be. Such an individual would be like
one of those sub-atomic particles whose creation demands its
destruction: it has an instantaneous, homeless existence. On
the other hand, the pure generality is not even allowed to seek
a home. It is the result of an attempt to interpret the world
from above it, or from outside it. It is standpointless, without
perspective, foreground, or background. It is indeed in this
sense unreal. But these problems exist only because people
are unable to speak contrapuntally. Actually, the general and
the specific comprise a kind of counterpoint whose lines are
dependent upon, and ihteract with, each other. At the root of
the separation of the general and the particular lies the separa-
tion of concept and intuition. But writers of various philosoph-
ical allegiances have shown considerable unity in bridging this
separation. Piaget, for example, suggests that

the radical separation of intuition from logic or axiomatics

has never been achieved in practice; and in fact, is un-
 75

attainable in principle. . . . The "schema" formed by

formal logic always retains traces of intuition, while the
primary intuition requires some degree of schematization
in order to possess a structure. * 4

My understanding of Mozart's C Minor Sonata is limited neither

to an intellectual accounting of certain of its sonic properties,
nor to a raw and uninterpreted perception of those properties.
I do not attach a metaphorical image derived from visual ex-
perience onto a collection of discrete pitches in order to call
the result an "ascending line." Finally, I do not experience
musical space as an empty container which I proceed to fill
with this "ascending line. " The gesture presents itself as a
meaning for which thought and action have collaborated, so
that the experience of "ascending line" is not so much a matter
of what I think, but of how I act. I have "carnal knowledge" of
this gesture because my eyes and hands have learned what such
a gesture "feels" like, and if it is empirically true that my
senses are distinct, it is a priori true that they are unified,
and that they can teach each other. We not only hear motion,
in the form of lines, bands, curves, and angles, but we hear
colors and textures as well. However, this world of musical
space is too vast a topic to be explored here. I want to move
now into a brief consideration of the difference between the a
priori and the theory of innate ideas.

C. The A Priori as an Aptitude

The distinctionbetween the a priori and innate ideas is a rather

complex one to make, and a clarification of the one is usually
made at the expense of the other. Piaget refused to consider
space and time from the standpoint of the a priori because of
his commitment to experimental psychology, yet his conception
of the a priori appears to be limited to that of a universal rule.
However, to identify the a priori with innate ideas would be to
repeat the error on the side of the person himself by making
him out to be a kind of universal subject, removed from his
personal development and environment. Once these errors
are penetrated, it will be seen that there is no fundamental
disagreement between genetic epistemology and the existential
view of the a priori. Nowhere does Piaget claim that the child
creates or invents time and space, but only that he constructs
time and space. But even so, this is not quite accurately ex-
pressed. It is not time and space itself which the child con-
structs, but only the interpretation of their actualization in em-
pirical circumstances. This is more in line with the fact that
we grasp the sense of an individual musical composition before
 76

we fully understand what music is, or that we learn to speak

before we know what language is. There is always a first time
in which we experience a musical composition as such, although
we may not be able to call it that. Still, the dated occasions
on which we experience musical compositions also serve to
awaken the a priori meaning of music itself. Even Piaget con-
cludes that

Musical rhythm is, in fact, the most intuitive of all time

measurements and is certainly not imposed on us from
outside. The same is true of stress in common speech
and quite particularly of metre in poetry. Here, too, it
was not the theorists who invented the metre but the bards,
thus showing that there is no contradiction between ele-
mentary arithmetic and the expression of rhythm in inner
life. *5

Genetic epistemology has made its contributions in the descrip-

tion of those conditions whereby the a priori is awakened. This
awakening is not felt by everyone in the same manner, nor is
it developed to the same extent by all people. If different cul-
tures and nations produce different musics, still it is the a
priori which enables a person of one culture to say, about the
music of another culture, that "it sounds strange," since the
notion of strangeness is grounded on some resemblance, how-
ever slight, to the music one is at home with. It is for this
reason that education, habit, and environment play an essential
role in the clarification of the a priori.

Is it not curious that this brief description of the a priori thus

ends with a consideration of the nature of habit? But we have
to question two alleged characteristics of habits: that they are
acquired, and that they are determinate. (A third characteris-
tic of habit, whereby the present is made the slave of the past,
will not be discussed here.) Of course it is true that habit is
an acquisition, but one must also consider that it might be a
predisposition as well. One acquires the habit of playing an
instrument because he possesses a certain capacity, an apti-
tude, to do so. Viewed in this light, habit is understood not
as a diminution of one's individuality but as formative of it.
Indeed, it is through a study of habit that we realize that the
activity of making sense out of music is neither automatic
(since not everyone experiences music the same way), nor the
result of conditioning (since I am free to accept or reject any
particular way of experiencing music). The development of
certain listening habits does not determine, once and for all,
that I will forever experience Mozart's C Minor Sonata exactly
 77

the same way. It does not have to have any significance for
me at all, as when I hear it being played by someone down the
street while I am engaged in conversation with a friend, or it
can have a kind of negative significance, as when it is played
to a starving man whose only thought is for more substantial
nourishment. The very plenitude of contingent circumstances
which one can imagine would either inhibit or reveal the a
priori significance of this sonata seems to argue against these
circumstances as the efficient cause of its significance. Once
again, then, a priori significance is referred back to the per-
son whose habits vitalize the aptitude to attune his body to some
circumstance which acquires meaning in a specifically musi-
cal way. Quite possibly, in the absence of this aptitude, one
would not be able to benefit from, or even develop, the habits
which determine whether this or that circumstance is a musi-
cal one. So the a priori is not an innate idea, if by the latter
is meant a kind of knowledge. Rather, the a priori is access
to knowledge, and as such, it is something to be known, as
well as a condition of knowledge.

Before going any further, let me synopsize this description of

the a priori. First, we can still retain the idea of a formal a
priori by regarding it as the form of an object, not the form
of a logical statement, and by regarding "object" as a meaning
rather than a matter of fact. Since it is thus formative, the
formal a priori may be co-extensive with a number of physi-
cal objects. The formal a priori, interpreted as the form of
meaning, is that which links existent objects - not merely
thinkable objects - so that we may have multiple experiences
of a single object as well as a unified experience of many ob-
jects. But Dufrenne has described many other kinds of a priori,
some of which have been informally discussed here. For ex-
ample, it has been pointed out that the a priori is anchored in
particular experiences, yet independent of them. We thus
come upon a material a priori, which can be regarded as a
form necessary to a particular object - not an object-in-gen-
eral - if that object is to appear at all. The formal a priori
does not have to specify a content, but the material a priori is
always concerned with the meaning of this "X". "Ascending
line" is therefore both a formal and material a priori: it is
formal because it transcends the particular matter of Mozart's
C Minor Sonata, and it is material in being a form necessary
to this sonata. But let me clarify that "ascending line" is not
a mere item in an intellectual inventory of qualities, but a con-
crete appearance (inthe object itself) of a transcendental mean-
ing. Because the material a priori is bound up withparticular
objects or events, it can be expected to show considerably more
variety than the formal a priori. We shall soon see that this
is indeed the case.

The materiality of the a priori, together with the merging of

intuition and conception, suggest a third kind of a priori: that
which is given in perception. "Ascending line" is something
which I perceive, and perceive immediately if I perceive it at
all (using "immediate" in the sense defined above). The link-
age of the perceived with the a priori raises a host of problems
which Dufrenne himself deals with. Let me suggest that one
problem - that of regarding perception as lying wholly within
the field of the empirical - can be avoided by considering that
perception is never simply perceiving what is empirically given.
Perception is essentially ambiguous because it is simultan-
eously complete and incomplete. The perception of the opening
of the C Minor Sonata is a complete one; I have no wish to hear
either something else or something more. Yet perception is
incomplete because it is never an isolated act, but it is always
accompanied by acts of imagination and understanding, feeling
and volition. Furthermore, perception is incomplete because
the object of perception is never completely given, so that
while we perceive the given, we experience the not-given of
the object as well. Its not-givenness is by no means to be
equated with non-existence. The whole sonata exists, which
is why we perceive it as unfolding in time.

The final type of a priori intimated here is what Dufrenne calls

a corporeal a priori. Two sides of the corporeal a priori can
be summarized here: the person as meant to himself, and the
world as meant to the person. The person is a meaning to
himself (and possiblyothers) which far transcends the value of
his flesh. He is given to himself in an immediate way, so that,
even in the dark, he does not first have to solve a problem in
coordinate geometry before he can bring one hand to touch an-
other. Secondly, the person is the general vehicle of musical
comprehension. We can speak meaningfully of musical move-
ment because our bodies know how to move. My body is a nec-
essary condition for the personal knowledge of such musical-
topological relations as betweenness, nextness, enclosing, en-
closed, separation and order. Bearing these distinctions of
the a priori in mind, we can now turn to some examples of the
a priori as they are presented in music.

III. The A Priori in Music

A twofold purpose motivates this section: to name and describe

some (not all) musical a priori, and to distinguish them from
 79

meanings which belong more on the side of the empirical. In

this way, we should be able to develop some criteria for de-
ciding whether a certain musical meaning is a priori or not.

Musical time is an a priori, but tempo is not. Time is a tran-

scendental, since it is a necessary aspect of the world. How-
ever, tempo is that aspect of time which we must learn to
measure. The same person who can experience the a priori
relation between time and feeling also must learn to play in
tempo. Tempo is a performance problem, and it becomes
more of a problem the further back we go in history. But mu-
sical time is not that kind of problem. Rather, it is the foun-
dation of all problems of tempo; it becomes problematic only
when we try to describe its varieties. Even then, time itself
is not problematic, but only the attempt to catch the word which
will best describe its appearances. However, we have no trou-
ble talking about tempo. "Play this piece at J = 80mm," is a
perfectly clear, complete statement. This suggests that the
relation between time and tempo is one of ends to means. Time
is the meaning which only a correct tempo can present.

Harmony is an a priori, but a supertonic triad is not. The

harmonious - that is, a balance of contrasts - presents itself
without mediating operations. No "if. . . then. . ." procedure
involving the collection of elements, their addition, and their
final inspection, is required to deduce the meaning of harmony,
since harmony is not deducible. On the other hand, a super-
tonic triad is a fact, not a transcendental meaning. "Super-
tonic triad" is not a term describing the experience of a cer-
tain harmony; it is a member of a vocabulary of technical terms
attached to, and explicative of, a system imposed by the mind
on the harmonious object. In identifying supertonic triads, we
only demonstrate that we have learned the system, not that
we have learned anything about music-as-harmonious.

Dissonance and consonance are a priori, but the ratio of vi-

brating strings is not. Dissonance, as an appearance of in-
stability and disunity, not only transcends pitch relations in
music, but music itself. For example, "dissonance" has be-
come a sociological term used to describe certain human re-
lationships. What makes so much of early music theory rather
dreary to read are the repeated legislations enacted by theorists
to make intervals dissonant because ( ! ) the vibration ratios are
9:8, 16:15, or what have you. Acoustical facts can never be
the efficient cause of dissonance or consonance as experienced.
At most they can provide the setting for such experiences.
 Polarity and opposition are a priori, but sonata form is not.
Sonata form is a particular way of celebrating these a priori,
which also make their appearance at the heart of the drama,
in certain play forms and other ritualized behavior, and in
certain myths. The appearance in history of sonata form had
to wait until the elements of polarity and opposition could be
structured in particular ways, both synchronically (e.g., fig-
ure-ground relationships) or diachronically (e. g., contrasting
ideas presented in a temporal sequence). As general forms,
polarity and opposition become inhabitable by drawing from a
matrix containing (but not limited to) the following characteris-
tics: 1) conflict, which appears not only in music but in cer-
tain sports and battlefield maneuvers; 2) resolution, which may
take the form of either a conjoining of previously opposed ele-
ments (as in the closing measures of Mozart's "Jupiter" Sym-
phony), or an overcoming of opposingelements (as in the myths
of rebirth or resurrection); 3) transformation, which has both
internal and external applications. (Here, transformation
means any operation performed on elements to effect a varia-
tion of some kind.) An internal transformation of opposing
elements within a particular work may either intensify (as in
the case of Schubert's posthumous Bb Sonata) or neutralize (as
in the case of Beethoven's Sonata Op. 101) the opposition. Ex-
ternal transformations may be observed in the identity or si-
milarity of structure of sonata forms exhibiting a wide variety
of styles, instrumental media, tempi, etc., so that it becomes
meaningful to say that both the first movement of Mozart's C
Minor Sonata and Brahms' G Minor Rhapsody are in sonata
form, only if we consider the transformations of the form which
make Mozart's music different from Brahms's. The point be-
ing made here is not subtle: learning what sonata form is, as
a lived experience and not as a scheme, involves self-knowl-
edge, or, more precisely, the recognition of ourselves in the
sonata. Polarity and opposition are meaningful in sonata form
because they are already meaningful as forms of bodily be-
havior.

Order is an a priori, but a twelve-tone row is not. If the state-

ment, "I experience order in this composition, " is true, it is
a priori true, and not because other statements of a stipulative
nature are true. Twelve-tone rows are not the cause of order
in a twelve-tone composition, but the experience of order can
justify the analysis of that composition. An ordered experi-
ence implies an objectof that experience, but that object is not
likely to be found on the level of, say, foreground invariances
of dyads. Order does not necessarily come out of the com-
poser's workshop. It is not necessarily the result of the per-
formance of a score, but of a listener's performance, the ac-
tive-passive behavior which he elicits as the constitutive agent
of musical significance. It is for this reason that the following
sentence by Milton Babbitt is guilty of the genetic fallacy (here,
of making empirical objects the cause of states of conscious-
ness):

Among any events in [Moses und Aron] coherence and con-

tinuity are effected through set forms, transpositional
levels, melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic motivic ele-
ments, individual and composite rhythms, timbre, texture,
and the interrelation of all these factors with the ideational
and sonic structure of the text. *6

Here, I assume that coherence and continuity are states of

consciousness, not words capable of being rigorously (mathe-
matically) defined. In any case, a defined order is not nec-
essarily an experienced order. Therefore, probably the best
lesson we have learned through music's brief flirtation with
serialism is that the difference between a composer and a lis-
tener is not what we usually think it is. The responsive lis-
tener does not create the composition, but he constitutes it as
meaningful for him, and if the composition created by the com-
poser is not quite the same as that constituted by the listener,
still it is the listener's composition which counts for him. In
short, order is constituted a priori by the listener, not im-
posed by the composer. If we experience order in a composi-
tion, it is probably because the composer has also been listen-
ing - to himself and to his composition.

These examples of musical a priori are too few to serve even

as an introduction; they merely state the problem. An investi-
gation of the a priori forms of musical space, for example,
would result in at least a monograph. But perhaps enough has
been outlined to identify various kinds of a priori at work, and
to distinguish them from their empirical associates. All the
examples presented have this in common: Musical a priori
are meanings given immediately in a musical context. Rather
than thinking of the a priori of time, harmony, dissonance,
etc., as universal conditions for the very being of music, these
a priori are regarded as immanent in music and accessible to
perception without the mediating operations of logical proofs.
The very quantity of musical a priori suggests that we consider
them as residing within a matrix, and capable of being pre-
sented in various combinations under agreeable circumstances
of time and place.
As to the kinds of a priori themselves, it can be said that time
is a formal a priori, in the sense that it is formative of the
musical process as perceived. Nevertheless, a certain kind
of musical time may be described as a material a priori, if it
is considered to be an essential aspect of a particular composi-
tion. The notion of temporal overlap, for example, as it appears
just before the recapitulation in the first movement of Beeth-
oven's Third Symphony, seems a reasonable candidate for a
material, temporal a priori. (The future, that is, the rest of
the movement, and the past, the development section, momen-
tarily slide into one another.)

If one is still thinking of harmony as chords, then the appro-

priate a priori form would be that of space. Space, like time,
is formative of music while transcending it. But again, like
time, spatial a priori may be materialized by the essential ex-
periences of line, surface, volume, and color. Harmony, how-
ever, can also be considered as attunement (as in Stockhausen's
Stimmung), in which case it would seem more precise to con-
sider it as a corporeal a priori, as a feeling located in the
body which is present to, and engaged in, a musical situation.

However, these are distinctions which emphasize certain a

priori but which do not separate them from other a priori.
Time, harmony, dissonance, consonance, polarity, opposition,
and order are all perceivable, self-validating experiences, so
that no single a priori can be isolated from, or given prefer-
ence over, all the other kinds. The a priori cannot be separ-
ated from one another any more than the faculties of a person
can be separated, or the a priori "I" from other "I's. "

But what about tempo, chords, sonata form, and twelve-tone

rows? Don't they apply generally to at least the music of a
particular culture, and do they not therefore transcend particu-
lar instances? These questions call for a further distinction
between the formal and the material, based on the realization
that the formal and the material are not always a priori. Of
course it is necessary to play a piece at the correct tempo,
but this necessity does not seem to be directed towards itself
as its own end. There is a reason why we try to play at the
right tempo, and this reason I take to be an a priori. It is not
my reason; it is the music's reason. Similarly, there is a
reason why a certain chord or row form is thought to be neces-
sary, but they are not necessary for themselves. A twelve-
tone row can be said to obey the laws of thought, but I men-
tioned before that the a priori does not depend on what we think.
It is the other way around; what we think depends on the kind
of a priori being presented. I have a certain obligation to at-
tend to these a priori, and this obligation is different from the
constraints which I impose on the musical object ("Avoid par-
allel fifths"). The problem is to conjoin the form of thought to
the a priori meaning in the work itself. Caution is therefore
needed if we are not to confuse the a priori, as the logic of
experience, with either physical requiredness (as in the case
of vibrating strings) or the requiredness of mathematical or
logical propositions. Chords and row forms have a purpose
very similar to doors: they are meant to be opened and passed
through.

In addition to the judgment which identifies ends and means,

another criterion whereby a priori meanings can be distin-
guished from empirical meanings is to consider the different
meanings of words like "learning" and "education." I take it
that learning, whatever else it may entail, is more than the
accumulation and recycling of facts, and I interpret education
in its root sense: as a leading-out or uncovering. In any case,
it is not contradictory to speak of the a priori and a certain
kind of learning in one breath. The feeling of polarity and op-
position is a meaning which may have had to be learned - I
really do not know - but still, when I experience these feelings,
they arrive unannounced, although they may be reflected upon
later on. Not so with sonata form. I had to learn about that.
Furthermore, one does not "know" sonata form until all its
elements and relations have been grasped. In the one case,
a self-validating experience precedes elaborative understand-
ing; in the other, it is the elaboration of facts which precedes
understanding.

A final criterion for distinguishing a priori meanings from em-

pirical meanings is to consider more carefully the notion of
evidence. It has been argued here that an a priori meaning is
an irreducible, self-validating meaning. This meaning is a
content of and for consciousness. I could not, in truth, say that
I experience an ascending gesture at the opening of Mozart's
C Minor Sonata if I were not certain of this experience in con-
sciousness. Thus it is consciousness, or subjectivity, which
provides evidence for the truth of a priori statements. But I
do not for a moment think that my experience of this ascending
gesture reveals some perceptual maladjustment, nor do I equate
my experience with my opinion. Neither of these conditions
exhausts the significance of subjectivity. My consciousness,
and the object of my consciousness, are felt as individuals,
but this doesn't render them hermetic. The possibility of "as-
cending gesture" being experienced by other people is not to
be excluded. However, I feel under no compulsion to equate
my consciousness of "ascending gesture" with factual condi-
tions of existence. The move from "I experience an ascending
gesture," to "There is an ascending gesture, " is one which I
feel can be indefinitely postponed. No last minute subversion
is intendedhere; it just seems that such an isomorphism is not
necessary. But one cannot afford this luxury with empirical
meanings. It would be nonsense to say, "This piece is in so-
nata form, " unless it were verified that such a piece actually
exists and is indeed in sonata form. But with empirical mean-
ings, verification is a posteriori: it follows from the facts,
beingdependent upon their investigation. Thus empirical veri-
fication presupposes that the object being investigated actually
exists.

The conclusion to these remarks is likely to sound somewhat

paradoxical. It is precisely because the a priori is grounded
in subjectivity that we experience a world - a world of objec-
tive meanings. To say that "It's all in the mind, " is to com-
pletely miss the point of these remarks. On the other hand,
empiricism naively supposes that the world adjusts to the forms
of thought, thus giving us a world of subjective facts. This
apparent paradox can be resolved in two ways: by using facts
as means to an end, and by breaking the subject-object dichot-
omy with the realization that each is necessary to the other.
Mozart's C Minor Sonata is an object which has meaning for
me, and as such, it is part of the environment which I consider
as "mine, " and which contributes to the definition of my in-
dividuality. Similarly, the sonata has a certain hold over me.
It is in this area of mutual possession where the a priori are
likely to be discovered.
 REFERENCES

1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1964), p.41.

2 Mikel Dufrenne, The Notion of the A Priori, trans. Edward S. Casey (North-
western University Press, 1966), p. 93.

3 Nicholas Woltersdorff, On Universals (University of Chicago Press, 1970),

passim.
4 Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of Space, trans. F.O. Langdon and J. L.
Lunzer (New York: Norton, 1967), p.448.

5 Jean Piaget, The Child's Conception of Time, trans. A.J. Pomerans (New
York: Ballantine, 1971), p. 303.

6 Milton Babbitt, "Three Essays on Schoenberg," Perspectives on Schoenberg

and Stravinsky, ed. Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1968), pp.57-58.