Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1
Quoted in Max Rieser, “Roman Ingarden and His Time,” Journal of
Aesthetics and Art Criticism 29 (1971) 443.
ix
Preface
work of art was just a particularly useful test case. Precisely this
focus may help explain why, even though Ingarden’s Ontology
of the Work of Art purports to be a phenomenology of art works
(including not merely musical works but also paintings, archi-
tecture, and film) and thus presumably guided by what Edmund
Husserl termed the “things themselves” [die Sachen selbst], his
real concern is to show that musical works remain “untouched”
by performances.
Given that the actual phenomenon of making music has some-
times played second fiddle in philosophical reflections on music,
it is not surprising that musicians have often wondered how those
reflections relate to music making. In contrast, my concern is ex-
plicitly with what composers, performers, and listeners do. I have
been continually goaded by the question that a fellow musician
often asked when I was improvising at the piano: “What are you
doing ?” While he was primarily referring to the harmonic and
structural changes that I was making, his question left me won-
dering what musicians really do. I still do not have a complete
answer to that question. And perhaps that is all for the best: for
music making is a wonderfully complex activity that resists pre-
cise definition.
What is clear to me, though, is that the binary schema of
“composing” and “performing,” which goes along with the con-
strual of music making as being primarily about the production
and reproduction of musical works, doesn’t describe very well
what musicians actually do. In its place, I wish to suggest an impro-
visational model of music, one that depicts composers, perform-
ers, and listeners as partners in dialogue. From this perspective,
music is a conversation in which no one partner has exclusive con-
trol. Of course, the binary schema of composition/performance
always has allowed for a kind of dialogue – and astute composers,
performers, and listeners would be quick to point that out. Yet, I
think the dialogical character of music making is not particularly
x
Preface
xi
Preface
other? And how can there be room for both respect for the other
and creativity?
Although the goal of this text is to provide a phenomenology of
musical activity, there are at least two issues that underlie much of
the discussion. One is ontology, specifically the ontological status
of musical works. Such is the primary concern, naturally, of
Ingarden’s Ontology of the Work of Art, although much of his discus-
sion on music touches (by necessity) on aspects of performance.
In the same way, conversely, much of what follows will necessar-
ily concern the ontology of the musical work. A second issue is
that of hermeneutics, usually defined as the interpretation of
texts. As such, it would seem to be primarily – or even solely – a
matter of musical performance. But, since I hope to make clear
that music making is fundamentally improvisational (in the broad
sense that I describe in Chapter 1), then hermeneutical issues
will be central to the entire discussion. While the “hermeneutics
of music” certainly includes questions of composers’ intentions,
I argue that it goes far beyond them.2 As should become evident,
even though I think the intentions of composers can be known
(at least to some extent) and should be respected, composers
are not the only participants in the musical dialogue who have
intentions, nor do their intentions necessarily trump the inten-
tions of all other participants. Moreover, there may be different
ways of respecting those intentions.3
2
An excellent discussion of “authorial intention” – representing various
sides of the issue – can be found in Intention and Interpretation, ed. Gary
Iseminger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).
3
There is, of course, a further issue that naturally arises in a phenomenol-
ogy of music: what “content” does music communicate? Given the wealth
of resources on the subject, I have chosen not to focus on what music
conveys. Of course, because I assume that composers (as well as perform-
ers and listeners) have intentions that go beyond simply the mechanics of
sound production, I will at points make reference to the musical content
of particular pieces.
xii
Preface
4
Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd rev. ed., rev. trans. Joel
Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (New York: Crossroad, 1989) xxxi.
5
Theodor W. Adorno, “Fragment über Musik und Sprache,” in Sprache,
Dictung, Musik, ed. Jakob Knaus (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1973) 73.
xiii
Preface
xiv
one
1
Nicholas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1980) 64.
1
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
2
Ibid.
2
Between Composition and Performance
Exactly where and when they begin and end may not be easy to
specify.
3
Unless otherwise indicated, I will use the term “classical music” to denote
the sort of music performed in a concert hall (i.e., classical music in a
broad sense), rather than merely music that comes after “Baroque” and
before “Romantic” (Classical music with a capital “C”).
3
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
The manner in which all Airs divided into three Parts [da capo
arias] are to be sung. In the first they require nothing but the
simplest Ornaments, of a good Taste and few, that the Compo-
sition may remain simple, plain and pure; in the second they
expect, that to this Purity some artful Graces be added, by which
the Judicious may hear, that the Ability of the Singer is greater;
and in repeating the Air; he that does not vary it for the better,
is no master.5
4
See particularly Carl Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. J. Bradford
Robinson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1989) and Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1992). The view that I sketch in this chapter is roughly
what Stan Godlovitch would term the “subordination view.” See his Musical
Performance: A Philosophical Study (London: Routledge, 1998) 81–4.
5
Pier Francesco Tosi, Opinioni de’cantori antichi, e moderni (Bologna, 1723);
Observations on the Florid Song, trans. J. E. Galliard (London, 1724)
93. Quoted in Robert Donington, Baroque Music: Style and Performance
(London: Faber Music, 1982) 95.
4
Between Composition and Performance
6
Jan L. Broeckx, Contemporary Views on Musical Style and Aesthetics (Antwerp:
Metropolis, 1979) 126.
7
Jerrold Levinson, “What a Musical Work Is,” in Music, Art, and Metaphysics
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990) 67.
5
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
8
See The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works 13ff.
9
Also see Alfred Schutz, “Fragments on the Phenomenology of Music,” in
In Search of Musical Method, ed. F. Joseph Smith (New York: Gordon and
Breach, 1976) 27ff.
6
Between Composition and Performance
10
Edmund Husserl, Experience and Judgment: Investigations in a Genealogy of
Logic, trans. James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, ed. Ludwig Landgrebe
(Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973) 260–1.
11
Edmund Husserl, Formal and Transcendental Logic, trans. Dorion Cairns
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978) 21.
12
Experience and Judgment 266.
7
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
13
See Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. IV (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1939) no. 537 and Richard Wollheim, Art and
Its Objects, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980) 65.
14
Works and Worlds of Art 62 (my italics).
8
Between Composition and Performance
15
Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols
(Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968) 186–7.
16
Ibid. 178 and 186–7.
9
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
Despite the fact that Bach insisted that anyone could have done
what he did with enough hard work, the way we conceive of the
composing process minimizes the influence of tradition (not to
17
Hans Pfitzner, Werk und Wiedergabe (Augsburg: Benno Filsner, 1929).
18
“What a Musical Work Is” 66–7.
10
Between Composition and Performance
19
Donald Jay Grout, “On Historical Authenticity in the Performance of
Old Music,” in Essays in Honor of Archibald Thompson Davison (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957) 341.
20
Friedrich Blume, Classic and Romantic Music: A Comprehensive Survey, trans.
M. D. Herter Norton (New York: Norton, 1970) 91 and Walter Salmen,
“Social Obligations of the Emancipated Musician in the 19th Century,”
in The Social Status of the Professional Musician from the Middle Ages to the
19th Century, ed. Walter Salmen (New York: Pendragon, 1983) 270.
11
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
artist lives only in the work that he conceives and then performs
as the composer intended it. He disdains to let his own person-
ality intervene in any way.”21
By the twentieth century, this way of thinking about the re-
spective roles of composer and performer had become more or
less the norm. For example, Paul Hindemith speaks of the per-
former as “the intermediate transformer station,” whose role is
to “duplicate the preëstablished values of the composer’s cre-
ation.”22 Aaron Copland likewise characterizes the performer as
“a kind of middleman” who “exists to serve the composer.”23 An
even more striking example of the view that performers ought
to know their place (and stay there) is that of Igor Stravinsky,
who sees the role of the performer as “the strict putting into ef-
fect of an explicit will [i.e., the composer’s will] that contains
nothing beyond what it specifically commands.”24 Stravinsky
attempts to beat performers back into cowering “submission”
(to use his term). He rails vehemently against “sins” against ei-
ther the “letter” or “spirit” of a composition, “criminal assaults”
against the composer’s text, and “betraying” the composer (who,
in turn, becomes a “victim”). What he demands is “the conformity
21
E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Musical Writings: Kreisleriana, The Poet and the
Composer, Music Criticism, ed. David Charlton, trans. Martyn Clarke
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 103.
22
Paul Hindemith, A Composer’s World: Horizons and Limitations (Garden City,
N.Y.: Anchor, 1961) 153.
23
Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1957)
258. Elsewhere, Copland does recognize that “every performance that has
been logically conceived represents a reading in some sense.” See Music
and Imagination (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952) 53.
24
Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knoedel and Ingolf Dahl
(New York: Vintage, 1947) 127. It was Richard Taruskin’s account of
Stravinsky that first made me aware of Stravinsky’s “quasi-religious fun-
damentalism” (as Taruskin so aptly puts it). See his “The Pastness of the
Present and the Presence of the Past” in Richard Taruskin, Text and Act:
Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995)
129.
12
Between Composition and Performance
25
Poetics of Music 129–30 and 139.
26
Roman Ingarden, Ontology of the Work of Art: The Musical Work – The
Picture – The Architectural Work – The Film, trans. Raymond Meyer with
John T. Goldthwait (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989) 25 (my italics).
13
The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue
27
Arnold Schoenberg, Ausgewählte Briefe, ed. Erwin Stein (Mainz: B. Schott’s
Soehne, 1958) 52.
28
See Marsalis’s remarks in Bruce Buschel, “Angry Young Man with a Horn,”
Gentlemen’s Quarterly (February 1987) 195.
14
Between Composition and Performance
Beethoven or Rossini?
29
Truth and Method 362–3.
30
Ibid. 107.
15