Music, Art, and Metaphysics This page intentionally left blank Music, Art, and Metaphysics Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics Jerrold Levinson OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6DP Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. 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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondichery, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King's Lynn ISBN 978-0-19-959663-8 (Hbk) 978-0-19-959662-1 (Pbk) 1 3 5 79 10 8 6 42 Contents Preface vii Acknowledgments xi Introduction xiii Part One: Art and History 1. Defining Art Historically 3 2. Hybrid Art Forms 26 3. Refining Art Historically 37 Part Two: Metaphysics of Art 4. What a Musical Work Is 63 5. Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited 89 6. Aesthetic Uniqueness 107 7. Aesthetic Supervenience 134 8. Titles 159 9. Artworks and the Future 179 10. What a Musical Work Is, Again 215 Part Three: Musical Matters 11. The Concept of Music 267 12. Truth in Music 279 13. Music and Negative Emotion 306 14. Hope in The Hebrides 336 15. Evaluating Musical Peformance 376 16. Authentic Performance and Performance Means 393 Index 409 This page intentionally left blank Preface This book brings together the bulk of my work in aesthetics to date, spanning a bit more than a decade. It consists of twelve previously published essays, plus four new ones appearing here for the first time. Some remarks on the new essays in relation to the old ones are in order. Chapter 10, "What a Musical Work Is, Again," offers further reflec- tions on some of the issues raised in its predecessor, in the course of responding to discussions and criticisms which that paper has at- tracted. Chapter 11, "The Concept of Music," originally composed as the introduction to a reader in philosophy of music destined never to see light, has links with the definitional enterprise of Chapters I and 3, as well as with the other explicitly musical essays of Part Three. Chapter 14, "Hope in The Hebrides" is loosely continuous with Chapter 13, addressing aspects of emotional expression in music there presupposed without being directly examined. Finally, Chapter 16, "Authentic Performance and Performance Means," although com- posed in response to a particular essay by another writer, can be seen as a natural development and partial fusion of concerns present in several of the preceding essays, especially Chapters 4 and 15. The reprinted essays appear with little alteration. There have been minor changes of wording throughout, but no real cuts (with the ex- ception of a short concluding section dropped from "Aesthetic Super- venience"). Some footnotes have been shortened, some lengthened, and some superfluous ones eliminated altogether. To nine of the re- vii viii preface printed essays I have appended "Additional Notes." This seemed a good medium for accommodating a modicum of latter-day thoughts, while also affording me the opportunity briefly to situate those papers in relation to work that has appeared subsequently. My justification for reprinting the previously published essays with minimal alterations is twofold. First, I have not substantially changed my views since writing them, and those views are, as far as their author can tell, more or less of a piece. Second, the essays have, as scrutinized texts, already begun to acquire a small life of their own, and my leaving them largely intact, for better or worse, is a recognition of that. Most of the essays in this volume, old and new, are situated at the intersection of aesthetic and metaphysical concerns: how the category of art in general is to be circumscribed in a way that is both ex- tensionally adequate and illuminating of the act of art making ("Defin- ing Art Historically" and "Refining Art Historically"), how the nature and proper interpretation of an art form cannot be detached from issues about its roots or causal origins ("Hybrid Art Forms"), how entrenched modes of aesthetic experience and aesthetic discourse en- tail or enjoin certain conclusions about the ontology of art ("What a Musical Work Is," "Autographic and Allographic Art Revisited," "Titles," and "What a Musical Work Is, Again"), how the aesthetic and artistic content of a work of art relates to the nonaesthetic structure on which it is erected, be it in sound, word, paint, or stone ("Aesthetic Uniqueness" and "Aesthetic Supervenience"), and how this content, though historically determined, does not fundamentally evolve over time ("Artworks and the Future"). An important second focus of the essays as a whole is a special concern with the art of music. This means, in particular, both (i) exami- nation for their own sake of aesthetic problems peculiar to music, and (2.) illumination of problems of wider aesthetic import seen through the lens of that particular art form. In the first category I would place "The Concept of Music," "Truth in Music," "Hope in The Hebrides" "Evaluating Musical Performance," and "Authentic Performance and Performance Means"; in the second category, perhaps, "What a Musi- cal Work Is" together with its sequel, and "Music and Negative Emo- tion." If one were to characterize my position in art theory as a whole, it would emerge, I think, as a historicist and contextualist objectiv- i Prefacee ix ism. This melding of historicist and contextualist considerations with a fairly thoroughgoing objectivism about aesthetic content, artistic meaning, and the concept of art in effect stands as a third thematic pole of the collection; more specifically, the idea that artworks are onto- logically, interpretively, and evaluatively bound up with their histories of production, the art-historical situations in which they come to be, and the history-involving intentions of their makers is a central theme of the three essays in Part One and of a number of those in Parts Two and Three as well. In rough fashion, then, this accounts for the tripartite grouping of the essays. Those in Part One emphasize above all the historicity of art making. Those in Part Two explore metaphysical issues—as to the nature of art objects, art properties, art causation, and art identity— most prominently. And those in Part Three, while usually evincing historicist and metaphysical concern in some fashion, are predomi- nantly contributions to the rather specific metatheory of musical ap- preciation and criticism. That said, it is clear that on thematic grounds alone, and a somewhat different weighing of the substance of each essay, Chapters 9 and 11 might reasonably have landed in Part One, Chapters 4 and 10 in Part Three, and Chapter 2. in Part Two. But I was also concerned that essays be placed in proximity to those they pre- suppose or to which they crucially refer, and that chronological order be preserved, if possible, for the reprinted essays. These additional desiderata, together with the obvious thematic ones, determined the final grouping. Finally, as the essays will make plain, I generally stand opposed, in style as well as substance, to sociological, relativist—and more nar- rowly, deconstructivist—approaches to the realm of art which have been fashionable of late. This is meant neither as apology nor as defiance; rather, as a caveat lector. I thank particularly four individuals who have had most to do with these essays being written: Kendall Walton, for first having shown me how aesthetics could be both rigorous and imaginative, and for a core of insights I have tried to add to in my own work; Peter Kivy, for having early shown an interest in my work on music, and for enriching it by his sometimes dogged opposition; Richard Wollheim, for his philosophical example and encouragement, and his unselfish praise of