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THE BIAS OF “MUSIC‐INFECTED CONSCIOUSNESS”: THE AESTHETICS OF LISTENING IN THE LABORATORY AND ON THE CITY STREETS OF FIN‐DE‐SIÈCLE BERLIN AND VIENNA
Author(s) -
HUI ALEXANDRA E.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of the history of the behavioral sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.216
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1520-6696
pISSN - 0022-5061
DOI - 10.1002/jhbs.21546
Subject(s) - active listening , musical , consciousness , opera , aesthetics , sensation , mozart , tone (literature) , art , piano , psychology , visual arts , art history , cognitive psychology , literature , communication , neuroscience
Shifts in the psychophysical study of sound sensation reinforced the changing status of musical expertise in the nineteenth century. The C arl S tumpf‐ W ilhelm W undt debate about tone‐differentiation experimentation narrowed the conception of hearing. For S tumpf, “music consciousness” ( M usikbewusstsein ) granted the experimental subjects exceptional insight into sound sensation. This belief reflected a cultural reevaluation of listening, exemplified in music critic E duard H anslick decrying the scourge of the city: the piano playing of the neighbors. S tumpf and H anslick's defenses of subjective musical expertise both inside the laboratory and on the city streets reveal the increasingly divergent conceptions of hearing and listening.