Attuning to Play: From Being Seized by Music to Ways of Being-With

In this paper we sketch a hermeneutical-phenomenological framework building on two distinct but complementary bodies of theory. The first is an aesthetics of play, as developed by philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer. The second is a theory of vitality affect and affect attunement, as put forth by developmental psychologist Daniel Stern. This will account for how music may not only seize a listener in the moment of play, but also for what it is that both seizes and becomes seized, in a mimetic movement ultimately describable as attunement through vitality affect – thus providing an important key to what makes music exclusive and irreplaceable to many listeners.