Can a Musical Work Be Created?

Abstract

Can a musical work be created? Some say 'no'. But, we argue, there is no handbook of universally accepted metaphysical truths that they can use to justify their answer. Others say 'yes'. They have to find abstract objects that can plausibly be identified with musical works, show that abstract objects of this sort can be created, and show that such abstract objects can persist. But, we argue, none of the standard views about what a musical work is allows musical works both to be created and to persist. I. INTRODUCTION IN 'WHAT a Musical Work Is', Jerrold Levinson lays down three criteria that, he argues, any adequate account of what a musical work is must meet. 1 The first of these is what he calls the creatability requirement, namely: (Cre) Musical works must be such that they do not exist prior to the composer's compositional activity, but are brought into existence by that activity. 2 Levinson famously uses the three criteria to argue that a musical work is not a sound structure, but rather a sound-structure-as-indicated-by-composer-X-at

The Ontology of Musical Works and the Role of Intuitions: An Experimental Study

“…10 This is a widely shared belief, which philosophers of music seem to have adopted from Wollheim (1980); however, the language of 'types of sound-sequences' comes from Levinson (1990a). Caplan and Matheson (2004) argue that Levinson's creatability requirement cannot be satisfied by any version of Platonism because no genuinely abstract, Platonic entity can be created. 12 This point is not original to me.…”

Platonism vs. Nominalism in Contemporary Musical Ontology

“…Second, there are of course resources available to the Platonist for giving a positive account of the nature of musical works as abstract and creatable. For instance, Caplan and Matheson (2004) suggest some promising strategies for defending a conception of musical works as sets or types that are creatable, and Simon Evnine has suggested that creation does not require causal interaction, in the case of either concreta or abstracta (2009, pp. 214-15, esp.…”

New Waves in Musical Ontology

“…In a recent paper, Ben Caplan and Carl Matheson (2004) grapple with some of these issues in relation to Dodd's views on musical works. On the nature of abstract objects, they argue that Dodd's claims that 8 A version of this view -that property existence is tied to the possibility of something's being the correlative way -is defended in Levinson 1978 and1992, and appealed to by Dodd in 2007: 63.…”