Pianosa

Connect Sociologie, the sociology of the music questions the sociological fact in his relationship with musical creation. A contrario, it is interested in the possible shifts between the reception of a Art very often founded on a theoretical reflection a priori , and often listens to it listeners (music lovers or others) in obvious shift with these new theories.

In practice, reception of the music, like whole art, request certain adaptations (cognitive, physiological, cultural,…), and to approach a musical practice requires to be integrated into it completely (it is enough to see the difficulties encountered with the non-European listening of some musics or, even, of last creations of the Modern music).

Thinkers and theorists of the sociology of the music

Henri Pusher, type-setter and theorist, was made the herald of a scrupulous study of the relationship between the artist - and thus, of course, the Musicien - and its lived in the company. The Art often seeks to organize different communications, communications of another kind that those of the directions. Moreover, it is not only a Pensée individual and individualistic. It is also action and interference on the collective Conscience and the immediate data which escape the conscience. Thanks to him, our awakening of our place in this world is organized around an image that we forge ourselves world. Thus, the spirit of time, the data of the moment, the culture of the time, etc, can strongly influence all these paradigms a priori at the base of our representation: work of Kuhn on the adhesion of a company to a Paradigm, those of Foucault on the forms of being able, or even those of Edgar Morin on complexity, takes part with good of other thinkers in the development of a sociological diagram which would go in this direction.

Under these conditions, the artist is obligatorily a particular presence in the general culture and his environment: he reflects the concerns of the moment, and remains anchored in his time. On the other hand, it is subject to the influences of this environment and contributes of the kind to the development of certain values.

One will refer on this subject to the " definition; sociale" and sociological of the music.

Reception and statutory values

The sociology of the music shows how the reception of the music calls upon a common memory between the source and the recipient, memory who allows to be based on a certain number of references, suggestions. It approaches the ground of the cognitive then.

Two categories of music continue to cohabit: a written music - music of the eye - and a music whose transmission is only oral, prerogative of the majority of the extra-Western musics. For these non-European musics, a branch of musicology was born, the Ethnomusicologie: anthropology of the musical fact, it considers it in its at the same time formal, esthetic and sociocultural dimensions, and extends its research at the same time towards musical creation and the relationship between musicians and company (art or Chamanisme, esthetics or Transe, etc).

Creation and statutory values

The artist, in these two Culture S completely different, is confronted with the concern of the relevance - in the cultural context of his creation, namely geographical, historical, but also Structure L and philosophical. He is subjected to the same problems as for any attempt at communication: the work and its author are reports/ratios in the world, and in this direction, a preoccupation with a effectivity guides the intentions and transmute the desire to respect the authenticity of the tradition. The memory of work builds a certain future which will influence creation to come.

The sociology of the music does not seek so much to analyze universal cultural bases but research rather how is built the collective memory around the forms of composition and of their reception.

Sociology of the Western music

With regard to the Western music, the sociological analyzes of max Weber, the tendencies of the musical forms showed to evolve to the abstraction, calculation, the rationalization, tendencies confirmed at the 20th century but which are in fact omnipresent. The historical analysis of the evolutions of this complexification proves, if it of it were need, that the Compositeur arrived at a stage where it is difficult not to confuse complexity and complication: the type-setters are in general complicated only when they cannot be complex; in these complicated musical works, only the decoding - within the meaning of the Information theory - remains more difficult, but the contents of the music are not obligatorily richer.

Art does not seek to be in phase with its time. But, insofar as it handles a material by principle in-yes and that the receptivity of new material cannot émanciper of the progressive phases of an initiation in this new sound and musical world, the Western type-setter operates true a Création without knowing the cultural bases of the reception.

Let us recall that the two directions of the Art are the Vue and the Ouïe, because their operative fields extend from the immediacy to the depths of the Inconscient. The music should establish an adequacy between the reception of the data of our environment and their working, but criteria other than those of the immediacy suitable for the sight. There thus exist forms of training of the social reception - training which can be more or less long - which make it possible to take part in construction conduits of listening. The music supposes that are taken into account of the strategies of listening, listens interior of the type-setter, listens external clean with the social reception. These strategies traverse musical work by a significant process seeking to reach the depths of the sociological personality of each being. It is amongst other things the base of what Hans Robert Jauss describes as esthetics of the reception: the esthetic variation would measure the distance between waiting of the listener with respect to work and what contains work itself. The strategies of listening would then become trainings to decrease this variation; but for Jauss that means by no means that the esthetic value increases or decreases by this fact.

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