Between Sound and Image: Ingarden’s Ontological Analysis of Musical and Film Works

Abstract

The article addresses the problem of the ontological foundations of Roman Ingarden’s aesthetics in relation to the musical and cinematic work within the framework of twentieth-century phenomenology. Its aim is to explain how the phenomenological concept of the work of art makes it possible to grasp the specificity of music and film as intentional entities with a complex structure. The first part presents the origins and main assumptions of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, with particular emphasis on the concepts of phenomenological reduction, eidetic intuition, pure consciousness, and the phenomenon as that which is given in intuition. The development of the phenomenological movement (Brentano, Scheler, Stein, Conrad-Martius, among others) is also outlined, as well as Ingarden’s place within the Husserlian tradition and in the Polish reception of phenomenology. Next, the ontological theses of Ingarden’s aesthetics are discussed: the concept of the work of art as an intentional object, its layered structure, the role of aesthetic experience, places of indeterminacy and concretization, and the relationship between the work, performance, and recipient. The following section reconstructs Ingarden’s theory of the musical work and his understanding of the film work as a temporal-spatial, quasi-real art form situated at the intersection of literature, theatre, and painting, yet possessing its own artistic autonomy. The methodology applied is descriptive-analytical and historical-comparative in nature, based on the study of source texts and their systematic interpretation. The conclusion indicates the influence of Ingarden’s concepts on Polish reflections on film and music, as well as the continuing relevance of the phenomenological method in contemporary research on audiovisual art and its importance for rethinking the relationship between consciousness and the work of art.