The Problem of Reference in Musical Quotation: A Phenomenological Approach

The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59:2 Spring 2001 A musical quotation is a deliberate evocation within a composition of a different musical work.1 It can be distinguished from both coincidental similarities between works and plagiarism on the basis of intention: The composer does not mean for the audience to hear the quoted passage as his or her own unproblematically. In this paper, I discuss the problem of reference in musical quotation as formulated by Nelson Goodman2 and later discussed by Vernon Howard.3 Briefly put, this problem has to do with whether a quoted passage can be aurally marked as different from a passage that is merely contained by another without being quoted. I propose a solution based on the listener’s experience of musical quotation and inspired by Howard’s suggestion that loose analogues of language and other symbol systems may enliven music’s capacity to add nuance to what exists primarily as an auditory experience.4 In the final section of the paper, I suggest some ramifications if my account of musical quotation is correct.