L'oreille, premier instrument de musique ?

• Main Author: Catherine Kintzler
• Format: Article
• Language: fra
• Published: Université de Lille 2011-03-01
• Series: Methodos
• Subjects: decision on listening; ear; harmonic body; sounds perceived as if they were without an external cause; amplification; attachment
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/methodos/2542

Musical instruments allow us to make musical sounds, that is to say, sounds perceived as if they were without an external cause (proposed for themselves) and linked to each other in a real or supposed system. But making or manufacturing is not the only way to produce such sounds. They may also simply be produced by a decision on listening - by an ear able of installing these two properties (apparently without an external cause ; linked in a system) of musical sounds, ie by the ear of a speaking being. This is not because they make music that human beings have an "harmonic body", it is because they have acquired an harmonic body (body of a speaking being) that they can make - or rather produce - and hear music. This could also explain why we can be deaf to some forms of music.