Particles - About the immersive power of music

"Here I am, floating in emerald sea" - the text line from a work by the Icelandic composer Ólafur Arnalds refers to an immersive moment. Immersion, as a sensual-emotional experience of the arts or of music up to the point of (self-)oblivion, seems to be increasingly gaining acceptance among listeners in recent times. In particular, the music history of the second half of the 20th century shows the striving for a music aesthetics oriented towards rational parameters of composing and listening.

The goal was to contain or even reject the degree of emotionalization through music. The particle, as the smallest unit of a whole, cannot necessarily be perceived through the senses, but it offers an access to the aesthetic basis of the immersive power of music. It manifests itself, for example, in silences, repetitions, slow processes of development with the stretching of time. Together, immersion and transcendence create a possible moment of escapism for the listener.

This seems to be especially given by the constant presence of music in the environment and in everyday life. As a consequence, the misuse of this momentary emotionalized "transformation" of the recipients by politically active scenes for anti-democratic purposes must also be examined.