Merleau-Ponty: Perception and music

The Phenomenology of Perception does not deal directly with music, but its author, Merleau-Ponty situates musical and sound experience in the context of human perception. In this work some of the musical aspects pertinent to merleau-pontyan phenomenological thought will be highlighted, seeking to elaborate a theoretical basis that justifies the primacy of listening in the construction of musical knowledge and legitimation of taste. For merleau-pontyan phenomenology it is in the experience of the body - with the object, which I perceive - that reality is in the body that resides all the cognitive potential. Since hearing is one of the capacities of the perspective body - the body capable of knowing the world in the moment of its contact with it - it is in the hearing that the senses of music are constructed, becoming explanations a priori or a posteriori, secondary aspects in the process of musical understanding.