Abstract

The dissertation gives an ontological analysis of music considered as a cultural phenomenon. The author adapts Martin Heidegger's hermeneutical method of phenomenological analysis and, in part, his analysis of human existence, to ground a contemporaneous investigation into the aesthetics of music. As before in the history of musical aesthetics and musicology, an attempt is made to answer the question, "What is music?" ;Chapter One provides an introduction into the historically controversial questions in musical aesthetics, along with an outline of the method to be used in the text. Chapter Two gives an ontic analysis of music as commonly understood. Chapter Three is a bridge between the ontic and the ontological analysis of the phenomenon in question, with further emendations on the current method of inquiry. Chapter Four applies the structures of an ontological analysis of human being to the basic facts laid bare in the ontic considerations of music as given in the second chapter. Chapter Five combines the results of the preceding chapters to give a total view of music, both as lived experience and as aesthetically understood . ;In the final chapter, the author illustrates how his analysis of the musical phenomenon expands upon the aesthetic theory Heidegger presents in his now classic paper, Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes