With Unease as Predicament

On Knowledge and Knowing in Artistic Research on Music

Abstract

The point of departure is Henk Borgdorff’s characterization of the relation between the communities of traditional scholars and of artistic researchers as uneasy. With a short look at the relationship between music and science historically, this unease is revealed to be recurrent, but the origin in Pythagorean thought can serve as a corrective to a purely theoretical attitude. The question of knowledge is pivotal. George Steiner has suggested that the springs of creation lie beyond reach for research. However, artistic research seems to promise a better understanding of the creative process. This kind of research is often, by the researchers themselves, said to fathom tacit, non-discursive, even ineffable knowledge, as opposed to the explicit knowledge of ordinary research. In the article, it is however argued that such an opposition cannot be upheld: artistic research gives voice to tacit knowledge, making it explicit; scholarly studies on music are not closed to the aesthetic impulse; in both fields, explicit knowledge has excited aesthetic expression. Finally, instead of seeing reflective discourse as a problem in artistic research, it is suggested that new ways of letting the world be formulated in language should be striven for. Here, the aesthetic impulse brings a productive unease to both theory and practice.