What is the difference between a performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony and the symphony itself? What does it mean for musicians to be faithful to the works they perform? To answer such questions, Lydia Goehr combines philosophical and historical methods of enquiry. Finding Anglo‐American philosophy inadequate for the task, she shows that a historical perspective is indispensable to a full understanding of musical ontology. Goehr examines the concepts and assumptions behind the practice of classical music in the nineteenth century and demonstrates how different they were from those of previous centuries. She rejects the finding that the concept of a musical work emerged in the sixteenth century, placing its emergence instead around 1800. She describes how the concept of a work then came to define the norms, expectations, and behaviour that we now associate with classical music. Out of the historical thesis, Goehr draws conclusions about the normative functions of concepts and ideals. She also addresses current debates amongst conductors, early‐music performers, and avant‐gardists.
This chapter draws on an agonistic background of Apollonian contest, judgment, and punishment to articulate a concept of improvisationimpromptu. This concept is distinguished from the more familiar concept of improvisationextempore.The two concepts are drawn apart as a contribution to a critical theory that regards our lives, practices, and concepts as constantly contested. The argument interweaves ancient and contemporary philosophical discussions of improvisation (from Quintilian and Castiliogne to Schlegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Ryle, and Derrida) with discussions of the cutting contests of jazz and rap, with the cutting edge, Werktreue or perfectly compliant performances of classical musicians, and the deathly cutting down of Karaoke singers in the Philippines. Special attention is given to the 1940 film of the Harlem RenaissanceBroken Strings.
Lays the foundation for an investigation into the concept of a musical work according to the terms of analytic philosophy. It considers a range of analytic positions, but focuses ultimately on Nelson Goodman's influential nominalist and extensionalist account of musical works and performance compliance. Goodman's view that the musical score is a uniquely specified character in a notational system generates strict theoretical criteria to distinguish between constitutive and contingent features of works and compliant and non‐compliant performances. The critical examination of Goodman's theory is used to prepare the ground for a more general argument against the possibility of reaching a satisfactory account of the complex relation between philosophical theory and musical practice while working within the parameters of analytic philosophy.
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