Merleau-Ponty on Music: Habit, Passage, and Audience
Merleau-Ponty’s general account of body schema informs his discussion of habit as embodied action. When habits are acquired, the body schema undergoes an active renewal. 4 Habit involves a process, in this sense. In habitual action, our body repeatedly gestures towards objects whose size and volume have ceased to be determined in comparison with other objects. 5 Rather, we engage with objects insofar as they enable that particular habit’s expression. Habit is not constituted by reflex or any form of knowledge such as familiarity with objects’ size and volume. When acquiring a habit, it is instead the body which “knows,” so to speak, rather than the mind’s cognition; subjects are again, for Merleau-Ponty, always bodies. 6 Habit then resides in the body, the latter of which serves as a mediator of the world. 7 Personal acts are prolonged in time and space through the body, solidified into stable dispositions. 8 Moving from this initial claim, Merleau-Ponty describes an organist’s musical performance as an example of embodied habit. As the thing which “knows” regarding habit, the body does not entrust the pipe organ pedal’s spatial positions to memory as a form of knowledge. They are incorporated into the organist’s bodily space, rather than being posited as specified or objective locations. 9 Habit, as knowledge in our hands, is given through bodily effort rather than memory of objective spatial designations. 10 The organist does not behave like someone who draws up a plan of action for each of their individual gestures. 11 An experienced organist is capable of
4 Merleau-Ponty, 143. 5 Merleau-Ponty, 144. 6 Merleau-Ponty, 145. 7 Merleau-Ponty, 146. 8 Merleau-Ponty, 147. 9 Merleau-Ponty, 146. 10 Merleau-Ponty, 145. 11 Merleau-Ponty, 146-147.
Volume VIII (2025) 8
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