Affectivity

This chapter demonstrates the analytic capacity of the enactive approach developed throughout the book. The author draws once again on Merleau-Ponty, as well as recent additions to his work by the neuroscientist Francisco Varela and the cultural theorist Mark Hansen, in order to explore how listeners’ fundamental capacity to both affect and be affected by musical sounds in essence generates lived musical time. The chapter explores the consequences of this process with an analysis of time and eternity in Louis Andriessen’s monumental work De Tijd (1979–81). The author illustrates how Andriessen creates the conditions of opportunity for the enactment of multiple temporalities, leading to the possibility of experiencing “chronal anxiety.”