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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Home To Roost: Some Problems For The Nested-Types Theory Of Musical Works, Versions, And Authentic Performance, Andrew Kania
Home To Roost: Some Problems For The Nested-Types Theory Of Musical Works, Versions, And Authentic Performance, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
No abstract provided.
Space, Andrew Kania
Space, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
This chapter investigates a variety of ways in which music might be thought to be essentially spatial in relatively literal ways. It begins by considering whether certain spaces or spatial features are essential to musical works or performances. These include the space of a work’s composition, performance spaces for which a work is composed or within which it is performed, and the spatial disposition of performers (e.g., off-stage instruments). It then considers spaces “within” music, paying special attention to the notion of “pitch space”—the space in which we experience musical tones as higher or lower than one another and melodic …
Music, Andrew Kania
Music, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
It is unsurprising that there are chapters on literature, painting and music in this volume - if they're not arts, nothing is. It is almost as predictable that there are chapters devoted to topics such as depiction and metaphor. The issues raised by depiction and metaphor are central to the artistic use of pictures and language, yet these topics do not pertain exclusively to art (there are lots of pictures that are not artworks, such as maps, diagrams and holiday snaps; people use metaphors in all sorts of contexts). Should it be surprising that there is no such counterpart chapter …
Platonism Vs. Nominalism In Contemporary Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Platonism Vs. Nominalism In Contemporary Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Ontological theories of musical works fall into two broad classes, according to whether or not they take musical works to be abstract objects of some sort. I shall use the terms 'Platonism' and 'nominalism' to refer to these two kinds of theory. In this chapter I first outline contemporary Platonism about musical works—the theory that musical works are abstract objects. I then consider reasons to be suspicious of such a view, motivating a consideration of nominalist theories of musical works. I argue for two conclusions: first, that there are no compelling reasons to be a nominalist about musical works in …
In Defence Of Higher-Order Musical Ontology: A Reply To Lee B. Brown, Andrew Kania
In Defence Of Higher-Order Musical Ontology: A Reply To Lee B. Brown, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In a recent article in this journal, Lee B. Brown criticizes one central kind of project in higher-order musical ontology—the project of offering an ontological theory of a particular musical tradition. I defend this kind of project by replying to Brown’s critique, arguing that musical practices are not untheorizably messy, and that a suitably subtle descriptivist ontology of a given practice can be valuable both theoretically and practically.
A Musical Photograph?, Richard Beaudoin, Andrew Kania
A Musical Photograph?, Richard Beaudoin, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
This article compares two objects: a photographic negative made by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1835 and the score of a solo piano work composed by Richard Beaudoin in 2009. Talbot’s negative has come to be known as Latticed Window (with the Camera Obscura), August 1835, and Beaudoin’s musical composition is called Étude d’un prélude VII—Latticed Window. As suggested by their titles, the composition owes a debt to the negative and thereby joins a long list of musical compositions indebted to particular visual images. However, the relationship is deeper, and by explicating their respective ontologies, we hope …
All Play And No Work: An Ontology Of Jazz, Andrew Kania
All Play And No Work: An Ontology Of Jazz, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
If we consider different Western musical traditions, such as classical, rock, and jazz, we can find the same kinds of entities employed in all three traditions. For instance, there are recognizable, reinstantiable songs in all three traditions. There are also events we would happily call live performances of those songs, as well as recordings of them. Yet it is also true that these kinds of entities are treated differently in each of these traditions. For instance, those who produce and listen to rock recordings take, for the most part, a very different attitude toward what counts as acceptable use of …
Definition, Andrew Kania
Definition, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Much of the time most of us can tell whether, and which of, the sounds we are currently hearing are music. This is so whether or not what we are listening to is a familiar piece, a piece we have not heard before, or even music from a culture or tradition with which we are unfamiliar. In cases where we are unsure, or initially mistaken in our judgment, we will often change our opinion based on further information. This near-universal agreement suggests that the concept of music is one shared by different people, and has boundaries which we are implicitly …
Silent Music, Andrew Kania
Silent Music, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In this essay, I investigate musical silence. I first discuss how to integrate the concept of silence into a general theory or definition of music. I then consider the possibility of an entirely silent musical piece. I begin with John Cage’s 4′33″, since it is the most notorious candidate for a silent piece of music, even though it is not, in fact, silent. I conclude that it is not music either, but I argue that it is a piece of non-musical sound art, rather than simply a piece of theatre, as Stephen Davies has argued. I end with consideration …
Musical Recordings, Andrew Kania
Musical Recordings, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Over the course of the twentieth century, there was a major shift in the way that audiences experienced music. The advent of broadcasting and recording technology brought a sea-change in the standard situation in which music was heard. Where, before, music was rarely heard in the absence of musicians producing it live, now one could listen in one’s living room to a performance that was actually going on thousands of miles away, or, stranger still, one that was already finished, and one could listen to the latter kind over and over again. Musicians and theorists had quite a bit to …
The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania
The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it is usually accorded.
Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.
Works, Recordings, Performances: Classical, Rock, Jazz, Andrew Kania
Works, Recordings, Performances: Classical, Rock, Jazz, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
In this essay, I undertake a comparative study of the ontologies of three quite distinct Western musical traditions – classical, rock, and jazz – approached from the unusual angle of their recordings. By the ‘ontology’ of a tradition I mean simply the kinds of things there are in that tradition and the relations that hold between them. A study of this scope is bound to leave many questions unanswered when restricted to this length. The ontology of classical music has been debated in the analytic tradition for close to half a century, and there has been a growing interest in …
New Waves In Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
New Waves In Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania
Philosophy Faculty Research
Since analytic aesthetics began, around 50 years ago, music has perhaps been the art most discussed by philosophers. The reasons for philosophers' attraction to music as a subject are obscure, but one element is surely that music, as a non-linguistic, non-pictorial, multiple-instance, performance art, raises at least as many questions about expression, ontology, interpretation and value as any other art—questions that often seem more puzzling than those raised by other arts.