Den glatte musikken og muligheten for en erfaring

A word often used to describe music is “smooth”. It is mostly meant as a negative term, used to label music as commercial, light, superficial and easily forgotten. However, smooth music is also well-made, with a high level of professionality. In this chapter I take as a starting point the criticism of beauty as smoothness found in Byung-Chul Han’s book Die Errettung des Schönen [Saving beauty], and investigate how this criticism applies to music. Furthermore, I try to define what makes music smooth. While smoothness can easily be defined when speaking about physical objects, music is evasive. Hence, smoothness is defined metaphorically, and according to what it is not, e.g. a work of art, or something that can lead to an experience, a concept I discuss in light of Gadamer, Heidegger, Adorno and Vetlesen. I claim that due to the elusive character of music almost any music can lead to an experience, but it is not a product of the subject’s efforts alone. Moreover, smoothness as a characteristic of music seems to have a liminal quality to it, as it cannot be defined in light of its opposite, but is trapped in its own perfection.