NEUROBIOLOGY OF MUSIC STUDY GROUP

Our research team successfully combines the humanities with neuroaesthetics and neurobiology. On September 20, 2025, Violetta Kostka and Anna Chęćka received the Gold Diploma as laureates of the international jubilee competition Muzyczne Orły (“Musical Eagles”) in the Event category for organizing (together with Prof. Joanna Schiller-Rydzewska, PhD, DSc) the international conference Meaning of Music.

Below, we share an interview with Anna Chęćka, who discusses the idea of the philosophy of music.

 

 

Karolina Żuk-Wieczorkiewicz: First of all, congratulations on your award! What does this recognition mean to you?

Anna Chęćka, Professor at the University of Gdańsk: Philosophers of music rarely receive awards. We deal with issues that the world often fails to appreciate, because they are entirely unpragmatic and elusive. This award is a recognition of work that may not save anyone’s life, but certainly heightens sensitivity to beauty and deepens our capacity to experience it. In the world of music, awards most often confirm the artistic excellence of conductors, composers, and performers. In this case, however, it is somewhat different: it acknowledges the scientific reflection on music. It recognizes that what happens at the intersection of disciplines - musicology, philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, and music theory - is an important attempt at interdisciplinary dialogue between the humanities, the arts, and the empirical sciences.

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Could you tell us a few words about the conference that received the award? What do you consider the most valuable aspect of Meaning of Music?

Together with my colleagues from the Academy of Music, we organized a large-scale academic event. We received support from the Ministry’s “Excellent Science” program, and the conference was also held under the patronage of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM). We brought together outstanding researchers from all over the world to discuss new theories of musical meaning from a cognitive perspective, informed by neuroscience.

The conference brought together 51 participants from India, Canada, the USA, and 17 European countries including Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Spain, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Switzerland, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Italy (a similar number followed the proceedings online). Among the keynote speakers were the most renowned scholars of musical meaning: Michael Spitzer (University of Liverpool) and Lawrence Zbikowski (University of Chicago). Discussions focused not only on how meaning is communicated through abstract structures in classical music but also in film music and popular genres. Imagine distinguished scholars analyzing emotional tension in a Beyoncé hit, or, in another paper, being moved to tears by Arvo Pärt’s music performed by a robot!

 

What is “musical cognition,” the central theme of the conference?

Cognitive science supports both musicology and the philosophy of music. It studies how we listen to, understand, and experience music. It is an interdisciplinary path that, drawing among others on neuroaesthetics, a field close to my heart, seeks to explain why music is such an essential part of human experience. Following this path, we can uncover meanings encoded by composers in scores, and we can also ask whether music has the features of language or whether it is rather a non-semantic art form.

Musical meaning differs from that conveyed by literature or painting. Music affects us at a pre-reflective level, like an impulse that moves, and sometimes captivates, both body and mind. What makes the mere recollection of a melody unleash a wave of nostalgia and sometimes haunt us all day long? Why do we ascribe intention to specific musical figures, as philosopher Jerrold Levinson does when he hears the embodiment of hope in the overture theme of Mendelssohn? Cognitive science helps performers understand musical structures. That’s why we were delighted by the presence of young artists and music academy students at the conference. For me, as a graduate of that institution, it was the fulfillment of a long-held dream. While playing the piano, I always longed for a deeper reflection on music, on how it reveals, even wordlessly, fundamental philosophical questions about being, becoming, and the nature of time and space.

Today, cognitive science also grapples with the question of artificial intelligence’s creativity, as AI increasingly composes and performs music, becoming both a useful tool and a problematic participant in artistic practice.

 

In your research, you have dealt, among other things, with musical thinking. How would you characterize it, and how does it differ from, say, verbal or visual thinking?

I have written extensively about the pre-reflective nature of music. I was fascinated by the state of wordless thought that music allows, both for the performer and the listener. We can test this on ourselves, especially when listening to purely instrumental music, free from the burden of words. It is particularly interesting from the performer’s perspective, when one plays from memory. Often, one does not think conceptually but relies on automatisms developed through countless hours of practice.

In a few days, the International Chopin Piano Competition will begin in Warsaw. It’s worth treating this time as an exercise in the pure art of listening, without the support of musicological knowledge. We can observe in ourselves whether, while listening to Chopin’s music, we remain in a state of wordless thought and contemplation of sound, and whether, in doing so, we experience associations, images, or memories from the past.

Today, I believe musical thinking is multi-layered; it cannot be reduced solely to immersion in pure sound. Some elements of musical experience relate to mathematics, others to following a kind of musical syntax, and still others evoke imagery. Thus, this hierarchical experience cannot be reduced to a single, wordless state of mind.

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Your research is interdisciplinary, connecting academic fields that may seem quite different at first glance. How does neurobiology connect with aesthetics?

Neurobiology studies how the brain recognizes shapes, colors, proportions, and rhythms, the elements that play a role in broadly understood aesthetic experience, not limited to art. In the early 20th century, neuroaesthetics emerged as a new research path drawing on evolutionary neurobiology. It allows us to understand many questions that have fascinated philosophers of art for centuries. One of them is the enigma of musical expression and the emotions that music evokes. Are they independent of listeners, encoded in the sounds themselves? To what extent is our experience of them intertwined with memory and the evolutionarily oldest regions of the brain?

These are just some of the questions we ask. As a philosopher of music, I remain skeptical about absolutizing empirical methods in the study of musical experience, but I care deeply about fostering dialogue between philosophical speculation, humanistic reflection, and neuroaesthetic research. I strive to develop and interpret the meanings revealed through music and to connect them with everyday experience and existential questions.

 

I was intrigued by the term “metaphysical hearing.” What does it mean?

I believe some people, through musical experience, understand the world more deeply; that’s why I regard metaphysical hearing as a special mode of sensitivity. Musicians don’t need words to communicate something profoundly moving that goes beyond the immediate and the physical. Yet one doesn’t need to play an instrument or compose to recognize that music helps integrate the scattered aspects of human experience.

A person with metaphysical hearing perceives that music embodies both mathematics and sudden insight into the meaning of life. Sometimes, such people can clearly articulate what is revealed in this experience, and if they have a talent for writing, they can describe it in an especially moving way.

 

How does being both a musician and a philosopher shape you? How does it influence your choice of research topics or your various activities?

I think I have been a philosopher since birth, and playing an instrument and studying music only deepened my desire to grasp the elusive material of music conceptually. Combining speaking about music with playing the piano gives me a sense of fulfilment. I am also active as a music critic, which opens up many philosophical questions, such as the values of music and the criteria for sound aesthetic judgment.

Recently, I was asked to give a lecture on the difference between appreciation and evaluation. Much inspiration comes directly from music itself, from being on stage, from uniting with the instrument. These are crucial questions not only for phenomenologists describing musical experience but also for enthusiasts of neuroaesthetics. For years, alongside philosophy, I have been teaching neuroaesthetics and earnestly studying neurobiology, partly through collaboration with colleagues from the Neurobiology of Music Study Group.

Recently, a medical journal accepted an article I co-authored with a doctor from the Medical University of Gdańsk and a student pursuing both medicine and philosophy. Our paper explores the dark side of neuroplasticity- philosophically inspired by the French thinker Catherine Malabou.

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At the University of Gdańsk, you wear many hats: you head the Department of Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture, conduct interdisciplinary research, write essays, and serve as a lecturer and tutor in the Individual Interdisciplinary Studies program. Which of these roles are especially important to you, and why?

Tutoring within the IIS program gives me immense joy. I also teach first-year integration classes, which usually take the form of interdisciplinary discussions about art. Thanks to passionate and individualistic young people, I often discover new research topics, and I thank them for this in my upcoming book The Musical Connectome. Essays in Bioaesthetics, which will be published later this year.

I also greatly enjoy giving general university lectures, where I strive to popularize classical music. These sessions bring together people from various disciplines and methodologies. It is especially important to me to foster thoughtful interdisciplinary dialogue rather than isolating oneself within a narrow specialization.

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What would you say to people who feel that “one discipline is not enough”?

That may sometimes be a sign of superficial thinking, a tendency to flit from one topic to another. But more often, it reveals a need for a holistic perspective on knowledge and a respectful openness to what we can gain through collaboration with others who are curious about the world.

To such a person, I would say: if you are a student, perhaps you should explore your passions through the Individual Interdisciplinary Studies program at the University of Gdańsk. I also believe that the need for a holistic view of knowledge perfectly captures the very idea of the University,not as a “multiversity,” but as a place that unites and honors the richness of diverse perspectives.