This paper examines Isabel Mundry's orchestral work-in-progress Motions // Der doppelte Blick (2014-2018) from the perspective of corporeality and sensory perception within contemporary post-tonal analytical discourse. As Mundry avoids unambiguous metaphorical relations, she conceives the work as an imaginary choreography (2014), employing sound figures that relate to movements of the human body. This conception constitutes a challenge for musical analysis.

In this context, the analysis draws on Dieter Mersch's essay »Körper zeigen« (2001), in which a performative aesthetics is developed from the 'play of embodiments' through a double structure of showing: intentional showing-as [Zeigen-als] (indicating, pointing, expressing) and non-intentional self-showing [Sich-Zeigen], in which corporeality occurs as event. Building on this framework, the analysis further adopts a post-hermeneutic perspective in musicology that allows sound to be conceived in its ipseity, as articulated by Nikolaus Urbanek. From the perspective of music theory, the methodological basis of the analysis is provided by post-hermeneutic approaches to the sonic-sensory and corporeal-performative aspects in the music of Helmut Lachenmann and Isabel Mundry, as suggested by Cosima Linke (2025).

These perspectives presuppose the non-eradicability of the body and are situated within discourses on aesthetic difference in New Music, understood, following Ruth Sonderegger, as an ongoing interplay between the autonomy of aesthetic and non-aesthetic experiences. Against this background, the present study places emphasis on sensory perception in music and art, focusing on touch in relation to hearing and seeing, as well as on a mode of looking closely [hinsehen], that, analogous to attentive listening, involves a visually probing retracing of visible performance movements, through which auditory perception may be sharpened or unsettled (Schroedter 2017).

Taking Mundry's description of the work as a conceptual basis, as well as her explicit references to the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge and the experimental films of Martin Arnold, the analysis concentrates on repetition, variation, and transformation of sound events. Rather than opposing music and choreography, this paper examines how the corporeal in music and the musical in the body are brought into a relation from a phenomenological perspective, within which corporeality becomes perceptible as a sensory and performative dimension of musical form.

Mundry, Isabel (2014-2018), Motions // Der doppelte Blick , Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel.

Mersch, Dieter (2001), »Körper zeigen«, in: Verkörperung, hg. von Erika Fischer-Lichte, Christian Horn, Matthias Warstat, Tübingen und Basel: Francke.

Linke, Cosima (2025), »Posthermeneutik und Analyse neuer Musik: Klangsinnliche und körperlich-performative Aspekte in der Musik Helmut Lachenmanns und Isabel Mundrys«, in: SINNE | SINN Zeitgenössische Musik dies- und jenseits von Hermeneutik und Analyse, hg. von Kathrin Kirsch, Joe Reinke, Baden-Baden: Georg Olms Verlag.

Urbanek, Nikolaus (2013), »Spur des Klangs. Posthermeneutische Überlegungen zum Eigensinn der Musik (nicht nur) in der Wiener Schule«, in: Klang und Wahrnehmung in der Musik des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, hg. von Christian Utz, Wien: Hollitzer,, 113-136.

Schroedter, Stephanie (2017), »Musik erleben und verstehen durch Bewegung. Zur Körperlichkeit des Klanglichen in Choreographie und Performance«, in:, Musik und Körper: Interdisziplinäre Dialoge zum körperlichen Erleben und Verstehen von Musik, hg. von Lars Oberhaus und Christoph Stange, Bielefeld: transcript Verlag, 221-244.