ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: PIECES OF MUSIC: THE ONTOLOGY OF CLASSICAL, ROCK, AND JAZZ MUSIC Andrew Kania, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation directed by: Professor Jerrold Levinson Department of Philosophy Iinvestigate the nature of, and relationships between, works, performances, and recordings in the Western musical traditions of classical, rock, and jazz music. I begin in chapter one by defending the study of musical ontology against a recent attack by Aaron Ridley. This leads into a discussion of the appropriate methodology for investigating the ontology of art, and the reasons for doing musical ontology, particularly in a comparative way. In chapter two I review and reject several theories of what a classical musical work is. I defend the view that such a work is an abstract object – a type of performance – against several objections, most notably that abstract objects cannot be created, while musical works are. In chapter three I argue that classical recordings, as they are typically made, are correctly conceived of as giving access to performances of the works they purport to be of, despite the fact that they are not records of any single performance event in the studio. Before tackling rock and jazz, in chapter four I investigate the concept of a work of art in general, arguing that there are two necessary conditions an art object must meet to be a work: (1) it must be of a kind that is a primary focus of critical attention in a given art form or tradition, and (2) it must be a persisting object. I argue further that (i) there is no need to subsume all art under the work concept, and that (ii) drawing a distinction between works and other art objects need not lead to valuing the former over the latter. In chapter five, I argue that the work of art in rock music is a track for playback, constructed in the studio. Tracks usually manifest songs, which can be performed live. A cover version is a track (successfully) intended to manifest the same song as some other track. In chapter six, I discuss various proposals for the ontology of jazz. I argue that in jazz there are no works, only performances. PIECES OF MUSIC: THE ONTOLOGY OF CLASSICAL, ROCK, AND JAZZ MUSIC by Andrew Kania Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2005 Advisory Committee: Professor Jerrold Levinson, Chair Professor Georges Rey Professor Garry L. Hagberg Associate Professor Michael Morreau Associate Professor Richard G. King ©Copyright by Andrew Kania 2005 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Iwould like to acknowledge the help and support of many people throughout my writing of this dissertation. I was extremely fortunate to find in Jerrold Levinson a supervisor who is not just an excellent philosopher, but also a generous and understanding person. I would not have made it through the Ph.D. without his help – academic and otherwise. I was also fortunate to find at Maryland an ideal environment for a graduate student of analytic philosophy. Not only are the other grad students supportive of each other and interested in each other’s work, but the faculty always have time to discuss our work with us, treating us with great respect as junior colleagues. In particular I would like to thank Peter Carruthers for increasing the tangible support for grad students, and helping me in various other ways in his capacity as Chair, Michael Morreau for being on my committee, and Georges Rey for reading drafts of everything I gave him, and taking me up Mt. Tamalpais to discuss them. With his rock musicology course, Richard King showed me that good interdisciplinary work is possible at a large state university. The American Society for Aesthetics provided another warm professional home for me. I particularly value the conversations I have had there with Stephen Davies, Ted Gracyk, and Lee Brown at the meetings of the last few years. This dissertation is much better than it would have been had I not lived for the last four years with the philosophers of 4800. Sometimes I think the Finn, the Frog, Anna, Borotsori-chan, and Brad know more about comparative musical ontology than I do. I thank them all. I also thank my parents, Susi and John, and Barry Weyburn and David ii iii Post, for all the support they have given me and, at least as important, all the support I have taken from them. Finally, I would like to thank Julie, who has changed all my life for the better, including this one small part of it. Thank you. CONTENTS Acknowledgements ii 1. Chapter for the End of Time: In Defense of Musical Ontology 1 2. Nothing New Under the Sun? The Ontology of Classical Works 33 3. Authentic Recording Practice: Classical Performances and Recordings 88 4. The Work ‘Work’ Does: Works of Art and Other Art Objects 113 5. Making Tracks: The Ontology of Rock 134 6. All Work and No Play: The Ontology of Jazz 167 7. Conclusions 201 Works cited 204 iv 1 CHAPTER FOR THE END OF TIME: INDEFENSE OF MUSICAL ONTOLOGY In a recent paper in the Journal of Philosophy,Aaron Ridley, a notable philosopher of music, attacks the study of the ontology of music (2003).1 His conclusions range in strength from the claim that musical ontology is ‘absolutely worthless’ (203) to the suggestion that ‘in musical aesthetics, ontology comes last (at the end of time, perhaps)’ (215). I do not think that this dissertation is absolutely worthless; nor am I prepared to postpone my submission of it indefinitely. I must, therefore, defend the practice of musical ontology – of saying what kinds of musical things there are. The best way to be convinced of the value of musical ontology is to read some, and thus I hope that by the end of my dissertation, at the latest, the reader will find Ridley’s conclusions implausible.2 But here I can at least dispatch Ridley’s negative arguments, say something about the benefits of musical ontology, and describe my methodology. I.CONTRA RIDLEY Ridley’s strategy is as follows. He first argues that musical ontology has no consequences for musical aesthetics or practice, and that no one is in fact, or should be, puzzled by questions of musical ontology. (By ‘musical aesthetics’ he seems to mean the study of 1Aslightly different version of the paper appears as the fourth chapter of Ridley 2004. 2This much does not even depend on my conclusions’ being true, or my arguments’ being particularly good. If a reader is interested enough to engage with them, then the value of the field is surely granted. 1 Musical Ontology 2 questions of musical value.) From this he concludes that no one should engage in debate over questions of musical ontology. He then argues that, contrary to musical ontologists’ claims that answering questions of value requires an ontological theory, or at least ontological assumptions, in fact the reverse holds: the ontological facts about music depend on facts about its value. Thus the ontologist cannot defend herself by claiming only to be doing musical metaphysics, divorcing her inquiry from questions of value. Iwill argue against each of Ridley’s claims. First, I will show that Ridley’s main argument about the relationship between musical ontology and value fails, since it equivocates on the notion of the ‘content’ of a musical work. Second, I will show that his subsidiary argument – that musical ontology is not worth doing since genuine ontological questions never arise in musical practice – does not succeed, and that Ridley fails even to keep controversial ontological assumptions out of his own article. Third, I will show how the ontology of music can have important consequences for questions of musical value, though a much more concrete case is made for this conclusion by the following chapters than by my abstract arguments here. 1.1 Ontology and content Ridley’s argument against doing musical ontology independently of, or even prior to, musical value theory is the following. [A] performance of a work cannot be ‘faithful’ to it unless it evinces an understanding of it. And if a performance’s faithfulness is, minimally, a matter of the understanding it shows, then a performance is, in that much, to be valued in proportion to the richness, depth, insight, subtlety and so on of the understanding it evinces. But if this is right, evidently enough, much of the ‘content’ of a given Musical Ontology 3 work is only revealed in the understandings that faithful performances of it evince. And that means that any attempt to specify that content – the content to which a good performance is faithful – in advance ofevaluative judgements about particular performances of it, or independently of such judgments, must be futile and self-defeating. (Ridley 2003: 213) (Note that by ‘faithful’, Ridley seems to mean ‘good’, or ‘valuable’, since according to ordinary usage, but contra Ridley’s, one can produce a performance that is faithful to a work, without its being revelatory, or even particularly interesting.) The first thing that calls for comment in this passage is Ridley’s apparent misconception of what it is musical ontologists do. When he says that much of a given work’s content is revealed only in performances of it, this is supposed to be a rebuke to the musical ontologist. But I cannot think of a musical ontologist who would claim that his theory can tell you what the content of a particular work is. Musical ontologists theorize about the kinds of musical things there are – works, scores, performances, recordings – and the relations between them. Musicologists (broadly construed), on the other hand, talk about particular works, performances, scores, and so on. To give a concrete example, Stephen Davies, in an important recent book on musical ontology, essays a theory about the relation between a work and a performance of it. He argues that three necessary conditions jointly suffice for a performance’s being of a particular work: ‘(1) the performance matches the work’s content, more or less; (2) the performers intend to follow most of the instructions specifying the work, whoever wrote them; and (3) a robust causal chain runs from the performance to the work’s creation’ (S. Davies 2001: