Muscial composition as lingering reflection, Exploring the critical potential of music by Rebecka Sofia Ahvenniemi

his research explores the possibilities of music functioning as a critical voice in today’s world. The specific focus of this research lies in musical composition as an activity, discipline and institution, rather than finished, musical works. The aspect of composition that possesses this critical potential I call lingering reflection. This term refers to a way of engaging in dialogue with the discipline, its handcraft, historicity, and surrounding social world. Slow and heteronomous in its nature, lingering reflection presents a counterpoint to ideas that seem solid, are easily accessible and not questioned. I argue that this aspect of musical composition reveals something philosophically significant.
The research consists of five subsections, referred to as articles, each of which contributes to the understanding of a ‘reversed thinking’ in epistemological terms: art revealing something ‘true’ about this world instead of merely being a product of it. This does not refer to the romantic discussion of art ‘exceeding’ given truth. Rather, it advances the idea that art, by identifying with the society, carries the potential of revealing some of its false premises.