"This means that as listeners, we must first ask ourselves why and how a musical work exists, rather than simply rushing to judge whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly."
(Luciano Berio, Forme, 1960)
I find this idea particularly interesting... Whether listening “passively” or simply for aesthetic reasons, according to the criteria of taste prevailing in a given society, Berio invites us to question music: both the question and the answer must be constructed by the listener. But ultimately, it is a matter of understanding why and how a musical work was composed and is being performed here and now. What makes it possible, even necessary? What space does it create? What temporality?
More than sixty years later, Bruno Latour's work, An inquiry into modes of existence: an anthropology of the moderns (Harvard University Press, 2013), perhaps invites us to revisit the question posed by Berio...
What are the modes of existence of music? And what new art of listening can this question give rise to?
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