Nickolay Almayev ¹

(A Phenomenological Model of the Process of Understanding Music)

The aim of this essay is to sketch a possible way of interaction between phenomenology and natural sciences about man: psychology and neuroscience.

Husserl has considered such interaction in a number of works contained in Volume Nine of the Husserliana³. He stressed several times that, although the approaches of Psychology and Phenomenology are different, it is Psychology, among all sciences, that maintains a particularly close relation to Phenomenology⁴. In the "Amsterdaemer Vortraege" Husserl views Psychology as a propaedeutics to Phenomenology. At the same time, the contribution of Phenomenology to Psychology is in the definition and clarification of Psychology's basic concepts, or in laying its foundation. Phenomenology must reveal the most basic, most inevitable characteristics of psychic phenomena that definitely refer to all and each phenomenon in this field. Husserl sees the main cause of the triumph of natural sciences in that they revealed and fixed the universal characteristic of the subject of natural science: res extensa, or extension in measurable space and time. For the field of consciousness, which is the field of both psychology and phenomenology, the corresponding universal characteristic is intentionality.

Considering the causes of the crisis in psychology—e.g., that psychology, although desiring for several centuries to become a science about inner experience, nevertheless suffered an evident defeat in this field—Husserl sees sensualist assumptions as its main flaw⁵. Sensualism means inability to understand the pure ideal character of intentions and, what amounts to the same thing, inability to fix the universal characteristic for the entire field of psychology. Later on we shall see how important it is to follow the Husserlian way of introspection and how drastically it differs from those that were practiced by the 19th-century psychologists and later criticized by the followers of various trends in the 20th-century psychology.

Speaking about the most fundamental features of consciousness, Husserl explicitly names only intentionality. However, many times he refers to inner temporality as a universal form of any living-through process⁶, as well as the form that unites different living-through processes⁷. Inner temporality is constituted on the basis of the primary intentional modifications that have the following structure: impression - retention - protention - actualization (Vergegenwartigung, which is often translated into English as "reproduction," or "re-production").

This structure of inner temporality—which also has intentional nature—may be treated as some extension and refining of the grounds of psychology and phenomenology.

Husserl's entire project was scientific from its very beginning⁸. In the cultural climate of Germany it had influenced some psychologists who developed an experimental approach⁹. It considerably enriched psychology and psychopathology (first of all, through the understanding of the Gestalt character of many psychic phenomena), although in general the influence was rather localized¹⁰.

Subsequently, Heidegger (1927) substantially reformulated the basic concepts and aims of phenomenology. This new perspective seemed to have opened the new horizons for analysis, but at the same time it was a much more radical challenge to the entire scientific approach to the world.

The second—and possibly even more powerful—impact of Phenomenology on Psychology occurred when L. Binswanger, M. Boss, C. Jaspers, and other authors began to adopt "existentialist" (first of all Heideggerian) intuitions to the practice of psychotherapy.

In the middle of the century the existentialist approach spread on to American psychology where it encountered behaviorism: a trend as radical as itself, but from the naturalistic site. These two trends formed the "contrasting bases of modern psychology"¹¹. Behaviorist ideology considered the experimental nature of this approach as one of its greatest virtues. It was ready to sacrifice much for its sake. On the contrary, existentialists (who worked in the field where experimental approach is less of all efficient) did not miss their chance to criticize the whole experimental paradigm, together with the uncritically assumed naturalistic premises that were characteristic for their radical opponents.

As a result, the phenomenological¹² and experimental paradigms until now were almost totally separate. It seems absolutely natural if a work in phenomenological psychology contains no experimental proofs of its statements. It seems equally strange to see a reference to Husserl in a regular work on, e.g., cognitive psychology. Rare exclusions¹³ only seem to prove the rule.

This state of affairs is characteristic for the world of contemporary psychology which is very much different from the psychology of the end of the fifties.

The active nature of perception (described by Husserl in the twenties) is now regarded as a cornerstone of contemporary cognitive psychology¹⁴. "Mental models," "mental representations” (in the West)¹⁵, and the "image of the world" (in Russia)¹⁶ are declared as the main subjects of psychological investigations.

The concept of “object relations” i.e. relations to intentional objects seems to form the foundation of contemporary psychoanalysis¹⁷.

The experimental paradigm itself has developed considerably. Now it possesses the powerful and sophisticated methods of semantic differential¹⁸, Kelly's “personality constructs,” and some other techniques of subjective scaling that are directed towards consciousness itself and try to reveal how things are presented in subject’s consciousness. At the same time, the confirmatory bias and the tendency to exploit arbitrarily built models that are not firmly grounded in previous observations and descriptions are sharply criticized from within experimental psychology itself¹⁹. The motto of this criticism—"back to the phenomena!"— strikingly resembles Husserl's slogan zur Sache selbst.

Phenomenology has also broadened its borders since the time of Husserl and even Heidegger. Now it is viewed as the Phenomenology of life, with the "self-individuation of life" as the main subject of investigation²⁰.

These observations—which could be extended indefinitely—permit us to state that the different branches of Phenomenology, Daseins-analyse, psychoanalyses, experimental psychology, and neuroscience are developed now to such an extent that they can productively cooperate in a concrete research of the particular domains of human life, as if they were the branches of one science.

The mystery of understanding music will serve as an expository device in the present essay which will present only an idea of a phenomenological model of this process.

During our previous attempts to bridge phenomenology and experimental psychology that were based on the material of natural language²¹ Husserl’s teaching on intentions and inner temporality proved to be very efficient in describing the processes of realization of meaning while understanding words and expressions. The models of meaning realization in concrete particles and prepositions based on Husserl’s teaching proved to be 100% compatible with the experimental method and provided a very high statistical significance (p<. 005) of results in a very small control group (17 subjects).

At the same time, the attempts to describe the realization of meaning solely on the basis of classic Husserlian concepts revealed that the latter are not sufficient in some important respects. Intentional directedness towards objects alone cannot describe why objects are sometimes realized and sometimes not. Nor can it describe why, instead of the objects at which our consciousness tries to direct itself desperately, some other objects are realized in it despite our will.

Unlike Heidegger who—probably, feeling as well that the Husserlian approach is too narrow and too intellectual to cope with the reality of the living-through processes—began his enterprise with "Being," we preferred to turn to the concepts of psychology and physiology that are already existent, well-proved and easily comprehensible. We tried to apply, as it were, a technique of the "mutual elucidation" of concepts: naturalistic by means of phenomenological, and phenomenological by means of naturalistic. The resulting model will have to be proved on the material related to understanding music.

The ability of music to induce emotions, thoughts, and ideas is striking. It seems that it can express almost any living-through process, with its numerous shades and transformations. At the same time, music is a very well structured system of signs that is constituted by two parameters: the duration and pitch of tones²².

The phenomenon of music attracted many scholars. We would like to mention just a few: who are, may be, least of all known in this capacity. A Russian phenomenologist A.F. Losev devoted several works to this topic in 1920’s. Unfortunately, at that time he was unaware of Husserl's theory of temporality, and Losev’s attempt, although promising, nevertheless remained isolated. H. Kohut, an outstanding psychoanalyst, in the late fifties wrote an essay on the topic of psychological meaning of music. For him music reflects the process of coping with the noise (thunder) that is very important for a baby. Through the organization of tonal structure noise is transformed into something manageable, and music itself reflects the process of the taming of growing noise²³.

There is a considerable amount of contemporary psychological literature on music. The majority of works are devoted to musical education and performance. They implicitly treat the ability of music to induce emotional states as a black box, without trying to build an explicit model of how it may happen.

Some works focus on the cognitive psychology of music, its perception and understanding.

In general, the latter trend is characterized by a plethora of references to acoustics, anatomy, musical theory, cultural stereotypes, and even linguistics and psycholinguistics: however, they contain very few, if any, references to the living-through process and its structures. Probably, the most comprehensive—or, at least, the most frequently cited—work in this field is Sloboda's "The Musical Mind"²⁴ .

In the first part of his book Sloboda exactly (and intentionally) follows the way of those works in psycholinguistics that tried to adopt Chomsky's model of generative grammar (not at all psychological from the very beginning) and to search for some psychological correlatives to it²⁵.

As it is common in contemporary psychology, Sloboda speculates about the possible models of perception of music without any particular references to the immediate living-through process. Following a long tradition in this field, he seems to assume that introspection cannot substantially help a psychological investigation.

Finally, concerning the question of “musical semantics” the author asks²⁶: "What is it that makes music have meaning for us?" According to him, "one of the most popular suggestions is that musical sequences somehow denote or stand for certain emotional states".

Then he refers to D. Cooke’s (1959) work in which the following idea is expressed: "there are many melodies which start on the dominant of a minor scale, then rise over the tonic to the third of the scale, before falling, possibly via the supertonic, to rest on the tonic. It conveys the feeling of a passionate outburst of painful emotion, which does not protest further but falls back into acceptance: a flow and ebb of grief".

Sloboda writes: "As psychologists, however, we need to ask what psychological mechanisms allow for these these meanings comprehended by a listener?"

Unfortunately, then he considers the pros et contras of only one very strange possibility²⁷: "that the motifs are intrinsically neutral with respect to the emotions, and acquire the meaning through association with exactly the kind of words that seem to habitually accompany the motifs".

As if we need words to understand music! How, then, is it possible to understand instrumental music never accompanied by any words? Or how could foreign songs with unknown words induce emotional response?

Even in the case of one’s native songs this strange assumption does not answer the question why this or that specific motif "habitually" corresponds to specific words!

As a result, that which is said about the contents of such psychological mechanisms almost amounts to nothing.

It is most striking in Sloboda's case that both he and his colleagues possess a very acute perception of music, as well as a subtle ability to express its modulations in the words of the natural language. Their problems start only when they attempt to build a psychological theory concerning the realization of meaning in music.

To a phenomenologist, the reasons for such a state of affairs are obvious. The description of the extremely delicate processes that take place in our psyche while understanding music requires a habit of proper introspection and—which is most important—an adequate method of constructing a theory on the basis of this introspection. However, contemporary psychology, with its naturalistic and sensualistic premises (that still have not been overcome), is as yet unable to provide a suitable climate for such a habit to be cultivated.

It is obvious that the perception of music is an intrinsic process of the human psyche. According to its nature, it has to be grasped through some kind of introspection. However, the old 19th-century associative and sensualistic introspection encountered too many difficulties, and at the dawn of the 20th century a "psychological crisis" broke up. As a result, the idea of introspection itself in Anglo-American psychology was discredited for decades.

One of the crucial aspects of the psychological crisis was the phenomenon of “imageless thoughts”. It seemed—as it still does now²⁸—that introspection was limited by such thoughts.

At the same time, Husserl many times insisted on the "imageless" character of intentions speaking about their "pure ideality"²⁹.

There is no other way to pure consciousness, except through dealing with the intentions themselves, instead of their objects, i.e., the realizations ("fulfillments") of intentions: as it is common to the naturalistic attitude in our everyday life.

In order to illustrate that every human being can very well operate with imageless thoughts let us consider a simple example.

Can we think about a thought? When we had lost our thought and then tried to remember it, didn’t we think about it? We considered one thought but it was not the right one; then another, but it wasn't the right one, either. It means that we were able to establish the identity of that particular thought with itself, despite the fact that its contents was unavailable to us.

Finally, we found the thought that we had lost. It means that we identified the thought itself with its contents, or, in the terms of Husserl’s Logical Investigation, the intention itself with its realization (fulfillment).

What do we need in order to think about a thought (not about its contents)?

Actually, we need nothing else but the ability to establish its identity with itself. According to Husserl's teaching³⁰,

intention is that which enables something whatever to be identified with itself.

Correspondingly, intentionality is the Washeit ("Whatness") of objects and their ability to be identified for the moments of "inner temporality."

In "Amsterdaemer Vortraege" Husserl stated that, while phenomenology is the first science and philosophy, and as such cannot depend on the concrete contents of the sciences about the world that is historically changeable, psychology is the natural science about animated beings. Due to this, during the transition from phenomenology to psychology the primary basic principles of phenomenology have to be enriched by the contents that constitutes the a priori of natural sciences ³¹.

We can define one of the basic a prioris of the neural science (a statement that defines its specific point of view) as follows:

To every contents (i.e., thought) in our consciousness corresponds some processing unit, this contents being a result of its activity.

This unit obviously has at least two different states: switched on (activated)—when the contents of a thought is present in the consciousness—and switched off: when the contents of a thought is not present in consciousness. If so, then every such device must have a “mechanism” of “switching on,” or some sort of a neural trigger that activates the processing unit.

The connection between the consciousness and such a trigger is intention in the Husserlian sense.

Intention identifies not the contents itself but the unit that produces / transports this contents. (Taking into consideration the network-like character of neural mechanisms "produce" cannot be truly separated from "transport.")

In a great number of his works Husserl describes how object constantly changes, while ideally being the same. He also pays attention to such a phenomenon as the intention of "something whatever." This can be easily interpreted as connecting a given device to many others, with an open possibility of adding still new ones. The "something whatever" shows a broad spectrum of such possible connections.

Intention, so to say, denotes the “knowledge” of the psyche concerning “where” this or that content is located. In computers—at the lowest level—the memory address plays a role analogous to the role of intentions. At a higher level this role belongs to file names and all sorts of other identifiers.

Inevitably, the intentional nature of consciousness must be universal, simply because, in order to be able to function, every “part” of the psyche (down to the neurons) must “know” its closest “partners” with whom it works.

Speaking in a more physiological fashion³², intention corresponds to the efferent (descending from the relative center of the CNS) way of activation spread, while realization (fulfillment) to the afferent (ascending from the peripheral zones of the CNS).

The Ways of Introspection: the Advantages of the Husserlian Way in Comparison to the Associative

Now we can better understand the crucial difference between the Phenomenological (Husserlian) introspection and the kind of introspection that was applied in the 19th-century psychology. In the latter trend introspection had to distinguish between elementary sensations and to find out how the more complicated contents of consciousness are built of the former through to the mechanisms of association.

If we look at Figure 1 we will see that sensations correspond to the ascending arrows, while intentions to the descending. During a response to a stimulus the number of participating devices grows. Correspondingly, the amount of afferent response (ascending arrows) grows as well. In order to reveal the patterns of our consciousness, activity correspondence between intentions and realizations has to be controlled. Otherwise, the flow of realizations becomes uncontrollable, which results in a failure to perceive what exactly they are realizations of.

In the sensualist attitude scientist expects identification of sensations from which consists a content of consciousness under analyses. Correspondingly, in order to permit ever more sensations to enter to the always limited scope of consciousness, reflection has to descend to ever more partial, transitory and dependent contents of the living-through processes. That actually was the case in the 19-th century psychology. It is striking, but e.g. parts of the Titchener’s text book³³ which are devoted to the elementary sensations and perception are 3-4 times more voluminous then those which are devoted to thought, action, emotion.

That is why a critique of such practice (from different directions in the end of the 19th—beginning of the 20th century³⁴) was absolutely justified. However, it does not mean that this is the only possible way of introspection.

On the contrary, successful identification of intentions permits to stop descending of reflection at any desirable moment. It makes it possible also to identify new intentions in the neighborhood of an actual, which automatically means ascending in the level of a phenomenon consideration.

Due to this advantage Husserlian introspection that always develops in a situation of phenomenological reduction permits the identification of intentions with their realizations and then, through the procedure of eidetic reduction, the discovery of the invariant intentional structure of the phenomenon under consideration.

The tradition of prolific cooperation between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis is rooted in the works of L. Binswanger and M. Boss. Both of them started as practicing psychoanalysts. Both of them tried to purge the genius intuitions of Freud and his followers from many arbitrary assumptions and awkward definitions that did not do a good service to this trend.

At the present time “Phenomenological Psychology” (the journal of the American Psychological Association) publishes many articles devoted to the elucidation of the concepts and theories of psychoanalysis.

One of the key concepts of Psychoanalysis is "psychic energy." In fact, the adherents of its various branches may argue about various topics—the transcendent designation of this energy, whether it is "sexual"(Freud), "social" (Ammon), or that of a "collective unconsciousness" (Jung)—but phenomenally all of them describe one and the same matter: the investment of energy into an object (“cathexis”) and the liberation of energy.

In general, this concept is taken as intuitively understandable, as if it does not require any further definition or elucidation. At the same time, it is not clear, for example, if energy possesses directedness or not. On the one hand, any talk about “good” or “negative” energy is definitely of a shamanic nature and goes beyond the scope of scientific research. On the other hand, the possibility of cathexis and transference presupposes some kind of directedness of energy.

Therefore, the relation between psychic energy and intentionality requires clarification.

It is obvious that "energy" is a dimension that is independent from the dimension of "objects," because any object of our psyche can acquire energy and lose it. At the same time, energy is not separate from intentions because when an object has energy its intentions are fulfillable, while they cease to be such when it loses energy. Thus, "energy" describes not the actual but the potential state of intentionality.

Energy is the ability to restore continuously the "Whatness" of the former objects, but also the ability to create the "whatness" of the new objects and the new moments of inner time.

If we combine an "intentional" definition of energy with the aforementioned "neural a priori" we will have to postulate the existence of a specific function that reserves a "resource of identification," or a "whatness resource," in order that any kind of object might exist in the psyche. Thus, psychic activity should be considered not only in the dimension of objects, but also in the—independent—dimension of energy management.

If we are allowed to use a computer metaphor, energy acquisition will stand for the process of memory allocation that is necessary for a program to work. The fact that our psyche is far from being similar to a computer of the von-Neumann architecture does not mean that it does not need some information resource in order to pass from one state to another. Energy may be defined as an information resource that is required to provide the loading of ever new neural units in order to connect with the active units. Correspondingly, the usage of such resource decreases when the connections are already well established and functioning.

In various psychoanalytic theories the concept of psychic energy is closely linked with the concepts of consciousness and unconsciousness, and, correspondingly, with those of "Ego" and "Id." Although psychoanalytic theories share this common point, they are substantially different in many other respects. In some theories the relation between the Ego and the Id is complicated by the participation of the "Self" which, e.g., for C.G. Jung, obviously means something different than for H. Kohut or D.W. Winnicott. Every such theory deserves an analysis that could easily exceed the volume of this paper by many times.

However, in order to start the present analysis, the following preliminary definition may be proposed that describes the relation between consciousness and the unconscious as

between something that is made by us (i.e., refers to the ego and demands energy) and something that is made by itself (i.e., refers to the Id and may spare some energy).

Such definition presupposes a gradual relation between the different levels of implementation of activity, or the different states of formation of activity, and not a firm border between the entities. It corresponds to the basic ideas of the Russian physiologists as P.K. Anokhin³⁵, N.A. Bernstein³⁶, and P.V. Simonov³⁷.

We can postulate the existence of at least two variables of psychic energy management that are necessary for the latter and obviously constitute some significant characteristics of all living-through processes. These are: 1) the intensity of energy acquisition (in which the ego is presently engaged); 2) the estimation of the level of energy (presently available to the ego).

These functions may be viewed as the dimensions of the space of emotional states. For example, in depression that is very often accompanied by anxiety the demand for energy is high (anxiety), while its actual level is low (depression). On the contrary, feeling joyful and free (I mean the kind of feeling that is best of all expressed by Luesher's³⁸ yellow color, from the eight-color set) corresponds to the low demand for energy combined with a high level of available energy.

The state that corresponds to Luesher's red—directed activity—may be characterized as a high energy demand combined with an equally high level of available energy.

The empirically found dimensions of the semantic differential that are reproduced in almost all the factorizations without any considerable dependence on the material of scaling are: attitude (good-bad), strength (strong-week), and activity (active-passive)³⁹.

The strength factor easily corresponds to the possession of energy or its lack. The activity factor may be traced to an intensive search for energy, or the absence of the above. As for the first factor, its meaning may be interpreted as a protention of some energy resources for the sake of an object (good), or an inhibition of such protention (bad).

These examples are intended to show that the two aforementioned functions are easy to detect in the living-through processes of emotional states. At the same time, we can hardly hope to find them empirically without taking into consideration the intentional modifications of inner temporality. Moreover, an attempt to consider the intentional and energetic components of the living-through processes separately will lead to a simplification and a loss of the precision of our models.

Physically sound is measured in frequencies (Hz). But how can frequencies expressed in Hz produce meaning? The physical scale expressed in Hz should be somehow correlated, so to say, with the "human scale" which is at the same time physical and spiritual. In this respect, the only hypothesis concerning how it happens that immediately comes to mind is the one of the mechanism of resonance.

We often refer to this phenomenon during particular activities: for example, when we tune in to a melody or a pitch using a musical instrument or a singing person, or when we experience an unexpectedly powerful sound, etc. Correspondingly, sounds may possess symbolic meaning stemming from the association with the parts of body to which they are “tuned in” through resonance. This topic is far from being well investigated and it is impossible at this point to define a symbolic meaning of a concrete pitch played by a concrete instrument with a concrete volume of sound. Moreover, individual differences may be too great for a meaningful identification of some average meaning.

What one needs here is simply to grasp the general sense of higher-lower relation and to define it in terms of energy and intentionality.

The unconscious is always considered as something that is "under" consciousness and its center: the ego. We can easily observe that the lower sounds resonate with the chest or even the stomach, while the higher with the throat and this or another section of the cranium. Throughout all of the Indo-European tradition beginning from the Vedas the chest (heart) is associated with the will and passions, while the stomach with drives or desires (unconscious and relatively more abound in energy), and the head—together with some sapient division—with reason or the mind (conscious but very often lacking energy).

Such observations, as well as the everyday experience of speech and music, lead us to formulate the basic assumption of the present model: the rising of the tune corresponds to the more intensive demand for energy, while its falling to the energy demand of reduced intensity.

The main principle of the inner temporality of consciousness that was discovered by Husserl as early as in 1927⁴⁰ is as follows: that which is impressed transforms into that which is retended and that which is retended passes to that which is protended. This basic passive transformation encounters the ever new impressions that enrich and correct it.

In many of his late works, and most of all in the last voluminous "Experience and Judgement" (1938), Husserl described the many levels of synthesis at which intentional structures experience modifications during the functioning of our consciousness. This multi-level character of synthesis is one of the basic principles of our model.

To all these characteristics, two independent dimensions must be added: first, the demand for energy, and, second, the estimation of the level of energy.

The “understanding” of a musical piece occurs when such a pattern of energy distribution is found that fits both the retended Gestalt of the melody and the living-through process that is meaningful for a personality.

Every contents, in order for it to continue being active in the psyche, needs a certain amount of energy. This is precisely why we can consider every sound as demanding a certain amount of energy for its subsequent retention and protention. Correspondingly, the amount of sound in a particular period of time—i.e., the intensity of energy demand—is, perhaps, the most important characteristic of a living-through process. In traditional psychology and physiology its correlate is arousal. In music it is encoded in the tempo. The realization of concrete retentions and protentions of each tone substantially changes depending on the context of the tempo: as we shall see below while comparing two contrasting examples.

The intensity of energy demand that is encoded by the pitch of the tone should not be confused with the intensity of energy demand that is encoded by the tempo. The relations between them are really interesting and deserve a separate experimental research. In general, we can express this relation as the one between "who" demands which is encoded in the pitch—it may be the "understanding," "will," "passions," every such term requiring a further phenomenological clarification, of course—and “how much” which is encoded in the tempo.

The rhythmic organization of a musical piece may also be viewed from the standpoint of energy and inner temporality. Energy requires a certain time to be accumulated before its consumption. The regularity of such a process that combines the phases of accumulation and consumption—which permits to protend both the next consumption and the next accumulation—is encoded in the rhythm.

Everything we said before did not presuppose the existence of this or another musical system. That which is said about energy—to some extent including even the rhythm—refers to speech (its intonations and speed) as well as to music.

Now let us consider an example from the European diatonic system and see how our model can be applied to the explanation of the difference between the major and minor keys. In C-major the first, third, and fifth degrees are C-E-G, and in C-minor C-Eb-G. The psychological difference between these two sequences is obvious: the major key sounds much more confident, abundant in energy, while the minor key sounds obviously lacking in energy. Since the first and the last degrees of both sequences are equal, the psychological difference must be rooted in the different order of the intervals. According to our basic assumption, the rising of melody reflects a demand for energy.

Let energy be counted in Libs (from Libido, the name for psychic energy in the works of Freud and Jung), one Lib being equal to a semitone, 1Lib = 1 semitone (that is a rather preliminary and rough approximation).

Then, in the case of the major key we have a rise of first 4, and then 3 Libs, while in the case of the minor key it is first 3, and then 4.

Let us first consider the case of the major key. After the first tone (C) has finished sounding it is retended, and the protention of the same tone and the same energy demand is active. Then a higher tone (E) sounds, and correspondingly we have a higher demand for energy (+ 4). This rise in the energy demand is reflected by our consciousness at the second level of the synthesis and, in its turn, is being protended. It means that we passively expect the next rise in energy by the same 4 points. However, the next sound (G) requires only + 3. Consequently, at the third level of the synthesis our consciousness reflects a relative decrease in the energy demand and correspondingly we have a feeling of a surplus of energy: 4 - 3 = 1.

In the case of the minor key the situation is slightly different at the first and second levels of the synthesis, but is crucially different at the third. The transition from C to Eb requires only 3 Libs, but the further transition to G requires 4 Libs. Thus in the minor key we have a relative increase in the energy demand, instead of its relative decrease in the major. Correspondingly, 3 - 4 = -1.

Now we can easily feel the reason why, in particular in the 17th and 18th centuries, music was often considered as closely related to mathematics. (Mozart himself said that music is joy that wants to calculate itself).

The parallel to mathematics is obvious here: the relation that determines whether the key is major or minor corresponds, so to say, to the second derivative from the function of the rising of the tune.

In general, the constitution of musical systems is a task for further research and elucidation. E.g., concerning the European system, the nature of the relation dominant-subdominant-tonic is not clear.

Let us consider now a more complicated example, the first four bars of Mozart's famous 40th Symphony (we shall consider only the melody without the accompaniment).

This music usually induces a sense of some winged motion: happy, joyful, but, perhaps, tensed; a kind of a pursuit that is not going to stop. The transition from the first tone to the second means a very slight reduction in the energy demand. Such reduction may be caused by either the absence of energy (additional energy is not available) or, on the contrary, by a surplus of energy (additional energy is not necessary). Then, after the second tone has ended, we again expect a fall of one semitone. However, this does not happen: instead, the second tone repeats itself and sounds twice as long as before (1/4 instead of 1/8). It means that the level of energy demand has at least been stabilized. Then the whole piece is repeated twice. A repetition of a piece obviously means the end of the energetic object formation. At the end of second repetition the tune unexpectedly jumps up from D5 to B6 and then begins a relatively slow descent (one semitone down for each new pitch) from its new level. A spontaneous jump and then, after a pause, a repetition of the same pitch shows a considerable amount of energy available. A constant descent shows a relatively more intensive spending of energy then during the first three repetitions. This little intensification of spending is only emphasizing the amount.

This will be the melody from the Prelude VIII, Es-moll, from Book 1 of the "Well tempered Clavier" by I.S. Bach. Even when it is played without flourishes and accompaniment it produces a feeling of deep grief⁴¹.

The first long quiet sound that is followed by a long pause provokes an expectation of very little dynamics in the further development, and correspondingly a small amount of energy both demanded and spent. But this expectation is thwarted by a rather quick rising of the tune from Bb to Eb and then to Gb. The transition from Bb (which sounds for only 1/8) to Gb signifies a more intensive energy demand then the one from Eb (that sounds about three times longer then the previous tone) to Gb. Perhaps, the energy that was accumulated during the previous pause is about to vanish. Still, at the end of Gb we passively protend the rising of the melody. Contrary to these expectations, it falls back to Cb and freezes there for 1/2 of a tone until it ceases at the end due to a pause (in spite of the protention of rising that is still active). The first protention of a little dynamics is broken by the second protention of a rapid dynamics, while, in its turn, it is again broken by a yet another protention of a slow dynamics. How can it be? The following explanation can be proposed. The rapid dynamics stands for the need in the demand for energy that cannot sustain due to the almost total lack of energy. A resource, hardly found, is immediately spent to satisfy a new demand, but in vain. The same pattern is repeated, this time two tones higher: which, due to the proposed semantics of pitches, has to signify an increase in the Ego involvement. Then the Ego decides to mobilize its resources and to solve the problem through intensifying its activity: the durations transit to 1/16^th.

The whole pattern when psychic energy is needed (by the Ego) but is unavailable for it corresponds to the state of depression or grief.

These examples are intended to show how the logic of the proposed model works in application to a concrete subject. Of course, it does not mean that another subject that belongs to a different culture or possesses a different background will appreciate these pieces in the same way. In order to obtain more representative results a significantly broader experimental research is required.

We have proposed just a very general idea of a model for understanding music. It has to be explored in more detail in application to concrete scales and measures. From our point of view, the most appropriate method for the beginning of a study with many unknown variables seems to be the semantic differential⁴² with subsequent factorizations of obtained matrices. It is desirable to consider a number of different melodies that will be analyzed by variously oriented and musically educated groups of subjects.

The subjects will also be asked about their favorite melodies and concrete pieces and will have to analyze them. A comparison between their favorite music and the pieces that were suggested in the experiment may possibly provide important additional information about the subjective processes of evaluating music.

We also need answers to some very concrete questions. What exactly is the tempo (i.e, the density of energy demand) at which a transition from the higher pitch to the lower is experienced as a relief (energy not necessary resulting from its surplus) and at which it starts to be experienced as the absence of energy? What are the intervals between the higher and lower pitches that are crucial for this (both for musicians and for non-musicians)? In what degree does the absolute value of the pitch affect this crucial meaning? What is the role of the tonality? How much does the accompaniment affects the situation?

There are also general problems which can be described by the following fields of study: the meaning of a pitch, so to say, the "intrinsic semantics" of concrete sounds (and perhaps concrete instruments); the dominant-subdominant-tonic relations; the phenomenological constitution of a scale (in the European system, as well as in other systems of music like Chinese, Indian, etc.).

The process of understanding music can serve as a powerful instrument of penetration into the reality of psychic energy management and its qualification in the terms of the natural language. Dealing with such a well structured realm as music can help us to build exact models of intentional / energetic states corresponding to many adjectives like majestic-miserable, or passionate-lacking passion, etc., which can be used to describe music. After the exact characteristics of time have been obtained, it will become possible to teach a connectionist "neural" model, in order to "understand" some pieces of music⁴³, or—even better—to create a new class of models that mimic the human trait of searching for energy in order to supply intentional processes.

In any case, it is obvious that the validity of any model or theory is based on the quality of the previous description of a phenomenon that is being modeled. This paper was intended to show some new opportunities in the description of the subjects of the inner world that are opened up by the method of Husserlian phenomenology, in cooperation with the various branches of contemporary sciences about man.

1 I would like to express my most cordial gratitude to my friends O. Bychkov, Ph.D., Toronto, Canada, and D. Lucin, Ph.D., Moscow, Russia. Initially, Prof. Bychkov kindly agreed to proofread the text, but then he substantially expanded the task and greatly improved the style of the English. Prof. Liousin provided an expert opinion regarding the music part of this paper. I am also greatly indebted to both of them for the hours of very interesting discussions that helped me to define the subject of this paper more precisely.