Music as Fluidum: A Rheological Approach to the Materiality of Sound as Movement Through Time

Music is an elusive phenomenon with sounds that disappear while sounding. This challenges the description of the music and its processing by the listener or performer. A possible answer to this problem lies in the definition of music as flowing sound energy that continuously modifies its substance and shape. Such an approach adheres to the materiality of sound and allows for a description of music in rheological terms. We therefore take as a starting point the analogy of music as a virtual, motional object that follows a trajectory through time, revolving around three major issues: (i) the relation between sound and motion, (ii) the description of motion or movement over time, and (iii) the embodied and enactive character of musical engagement. The paper relies mainly on historical sources—most notably the work of Alexander Truslit on motion perception and Ernst Kurth on energetics—and connects them to modern paradigms of embodied and enactive cognition as applied to music.