Open AccessAre musical works sound structures?
Author(s) -
Vítor Guerreiro
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
filozofija i društvo
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.116
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2334-8577
pISSN - 0353-5738
DOI - 10.2298/fid1901036g
Subject(s) - musical , nominalism , dilemma , sound (geography) , ontology , object (grammar) , epistemology , philosophy , musical form , fetishism , musical analysis , platonism , aesthetics , linguistics , literature , art , theology , geomorphology , geology
This paper is about the dilemma raised against musical ontology by Roger Scruton, in his The Aesthetics of Music: either musical ontology is about certain mind-independent ?things? (sound structures) and so music is left out of the picture, or it is about an ?intentional object? and so its puzzles are susceptible of an arbitrary answer. I argue the dilemma is merely apparent and deny that musical works can be identified with sound structures, whether or not conceived as abstract entities. The general idea is this: both Platonism and nominalism about musical works are a kind of fetishism: musical works are not ?things?, in Danto?s sense of ?mere real things?; they rather involve complex relationships between objects, events, and different kinds of functional properties. For this, I draw on Levinson and Howell?s notion of indication, combined with Searle?s approach to institutional reality... with a little twist of my own.