Music: Some Philosophical Questions

Author

David Sanson

Published

March 28, 2016

Some Initial Distinctions and Observations

A song includes both music and lyrics. Not all music takes the form of songs, and, when it does, the lyrics are not part of the music.

Music comes in many different genres. It is not clear what a genre is, or what we are doing when we divide music into genres. This is one of the questions a philosophy of music seeks to address.

What is Music?

Can we provide necessary and sufficient conditions for something’s being music?

Necessary Condition:
A condition that something must satisfy in order to count as music.
Sufficient Condition:
If something satisfies this condition, that is enough to make it count as music.

Some Proposals

  • Music is sound.

Counterexamples to sufficiency?

  • Music is organized sound.

Counterexamples to sufficiency?

  • Music is musically organized musical sound.

This might sound circular. But it isn’t if we can say something helpful about what makes some organizations of sounds “musical” and others not, and what makes some sounds “musical” and others not. Hard cases:

Returning to (A1), is sound a necessary condition for music?

Maybe it is a mistake to try to define music in terms of what it is like:

  • What makes something music is how it is meant to be experienced or judged.
  • Ono’s “Toilet Piece/Unknown” is music not because it has musical features (e.g., organized rhythm or pitch) but because you are supposed to listen for such features in order to appreciate it correctly.
  • Cage’s 4’33” is music not because it has musical features (e.g., organized sounds of the appropriate sorts), but because you are supposed to listen for musical features in order to appreciate it correctly.

So is being music a matter of the artist’s intention? Or does something else determine how something is meant to be experienced or judged?

Poetry and Sound Poetry?

Poetry usually consists of words. But it isn’t just about the words. It is also about the organization of the sounds those words make. Hence Sound Poetry:

What is a Musical Work?

Music often involves the production or performance of a musical work—e.g., Beethoven’s 5th Symphony. Paradigm musical works have some interesting features:

  • They are composed and performed.
  • They are repeatable: the same work can be performed many times.
  • They are scored: the work can be presented not just in the form of a performance, but also in the form of a written score.

Given these facts, what kind of thing is a musical work? Is it a physical thing? A mental thing? Something else?

Mentalism
A musical work is a mental thing that exist in minds. Performances and scores are physical expressions of this mental thing.

Locke held that we use speech to physically express ideas in our mind. Mentalism says the same of musical performance, and so identifies the musical work as the mental thing (the idea) that the performance expresses.

Abstract Structuralism
A musical work is an abstract sound structure. A score describes this structure. A performance is a concrete instance of this abstract structure.

Plato held that justice itself is an ideal abstract structure, and that a just city is a city that concretely realizes this structure (as best as possible) in the physical world. Abstract Structuralism says the same of musical works, identifying the work with the abstract structure and the performance with its realization in the physical world.

Concrete Reductionism
A musical work is nothing over and above the particular concrete copies of its score and its particular concrete performances.

Unlike the Mentalist and the Abstract Structuralist, the Concrete Reductionism locates the work itself in the physical world. The work just is the collection of its performances, or the work just is the collection of the copies of its score.

Nihilism
There are no musical works.`

Upon reflection, you might decide that we do not need to believe in the existence of musical works in order to understand our musical practices. You might suggest that we eliminate the phrase “musical work” from our vocabulary. Or you might suggest that we can keep it, so long as we understand that it is just loose talk, a kind of shorthand for more serious talk of artists, scores, and performances.

Authentic Performances

Authenticity. What makes a performance an “authentic” performance? Is a performance of the Goldberg Concertos on the harpsichord more authentic than one on the piano?

  • pure sonicism: an authentic performance is one that produces all the right pitches in the right order.
  • timbral sonicism: also with the right timbre.
  • instrumentalism: also using the instruments specified in the score.

Thought experiment: Imagine a perfect synthesizer, that performs the entire work at the touch of a button. How does this differ from playing a recording?

Genre

What are we doing when we divide music up into genres? Some ideas:

  • Tracking similarity of musical features (see the Music Genome Project)
  • Tracking facts about different aesthetic standards
  • Imposing aesthetic imperatives (think here especially about punk and country)
  • Marketing