The Modifying Mirror : Binding One’s Experiences through Music

Abstract

This chapter compares music listening with the infant’s experience of care. Several scholars have argued that music can be used for scaffolding one’s self-experience. Developmental psychologists, in turn, maintain a wide consensus over the claim that, in early interaction, the attuned caregiver supports and modifies the infant’s self-experience in various ways. The chapter brings these phenomena together, illustrating how the examination of the early self/other relation can teach us something important concerning the listener/music relation. The first section elaborates on the scaffolding function of music and clarifies two ambiguities haunting the debate. The second section relocates musical scaffolding in the register of vitality forms. Once the third section has dealt with early interaction, and analyzed the basic functions of the attuned caregiver, the fourth section uses the gained insights to examine the structural similarities between music listening and early experiences of attunement. Ultimately, this investigation reveals the “thanatic function” of music.