The Normativity of Musical Works

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 1-135
Author(s):  
Alessandro Arbo
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Copyright Infringement ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Social Object ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
The World ◽  
Musical Ontology ◽  
Normative Value

Abstract The cases of copyright infringement that occasionally crop up in the world of music raise many interesting questions: what do we mean when we talk about the identity of a musical work and what does such an identity involve? What in fact are the properties that make it something worth protecting and preserving? These issues are not only of legal relevance, they are central to a philosophical discipline that has seen considerable advances over the last few decades: musical ontology. Taking into account its main theoretical models, this essay argues that an understanding of the ontological status of musical works should acknowledge the irreducible ambivalence of music as an “art of the trace” and as a “performative art.” It advocates a theory of the musical work as a “social object” and, more specifically, as a sound artefact that functions aesthetically and which is based on a trace informed by a normative value. Such a normativity is further explored in relation to three primary ways of conceiving and fixing the trace: orality, notation and phonography.

Fictionalism about musical works

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Killin
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Philosophical Naturalism ◽  
Philosophy Of Music ◽  
Musical Practice ◽  
Western Art ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Work Concept

AbstractThe debate concerning the ontological status of musical works is perhaps the most animated debate in contemporary analytic philosophy of music. In my view, progress requires a piecemeal approach. So in this article I hone in on one particular musical work concept – that of the classical Western art musical work; that is, the work concept that regulates classical art-musical practice. I defend a fictionalist analysis – a strategy recently suggested by Andrew Kania as potentially fruitful – and I develop a version of such an analysis in line with a broad commitment to philosophical naturalism.

The Opera and the Omnibus: Material Culture, Urbanism and Boieldieu's La dame blanche

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-114
Author(s):  
Nicole Vilkner
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Business Model ◽  
Public Transportation ◽  
Reception History ◽  
Transportation Systems ◽  
Mass Transportation ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

AbstractIn the summer of 1828, the Entreprise générale des Dames Blanches launched a fleet of white omnibuses onto the streets of Paris. These public transportation vehicles were named and fashioned after Boieldieu's opéra comique La dame blanche (1825): their rear doors were decorated with scenes of Scotland, their flanks painted with gesturing opera characters, and their mechanical horns trumpeted fanfares through the streets. The omnibuses offered one of the first mass transportation systems in the world and were an innovation that transformed urban circulation. During their thirty years of circulation, the omnibuses also had a profound effect on the reception history of Boieldieu's opera. When the omnibuses improved the quality of working- and middle-class life, bourgeois Parisians applauded the vehicles’ egalitarian business model, and Boieldieu's opera became unexpectedly entwined in the populist rhetoric surrounding the omnibus. Viewing opera through the lens of the Dames Blanches, Parisians conflated the sounds of opera and street, as demonstrated by Charles Valentin Alkan's piano piece Les omnibus, Op. 2 (1829), which combines operatic idioms and horn calls. Through these examples and others, this study examines the complex ways that material culture affects the dissemination and reception of a musical work.

Feeling Film: Time, Space, and the Third Image

2021 ◽  
pp. 002216782110180
Author(s):  
Luke Hockley
Keyword(s):  
Present Moment ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Space ◽  
The World

This article explores what it means to feel film. It does so through an exploration of the interconnections between Bergson, Deleuze, and Jung. Central to the argument is the ontological status of the image in these different philosophical and psychological traditions. In particular, image is seen as an encapsulation of coming into being, or what Bergson terms durée. To feel film is to engage with its therapeutic capacity to bring us into being. In the consulting room and in the cinema, this process is embodied and in some way created either between client and therapist or viewer and screen. The elusive present moment is the site at which the past permeates the present, creating as it does feeling toned entry into the process of becoming. Jung thought of this as central to individuation and Bergson as central to being. Feeling film from this perspective becomes a way of finding ourselves in both the world of the film and in our individual psyche.

Authorship in the Age of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.-M. Deltorn ◽  
Franck Macrez
Keyword(s):  
Neural Network ◽  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Machine Learning ◽  
Musical Work ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
New Generation ◽  
Specific Contribution

A new generation of machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) creative tools are now at the disposal of musicians, professionals and amateurs alike. These new technical intermediaries allow the production of unprecedented forms of compositions, from generating new works by mimicking a style or by mixing a curated ensemble of musical works to letting an algorithm complete one’s own creation in unexpected directions or by letting an artist interact with the parameters of a neural network to explore fresh musical avenues. Unsurprisingly, this new spectrum of algorithmic compositions question both the nature and the degree of involvement of the creator in the musical work. As a consequence, the issue of authorship and, in particular, the assessment of the specific contribution of a (human) creator through the algorithmic pipeline may require special scrutiny when AI and ML tools are used to produce musical works.

Music, Ontology and the Need for History: A Critical Discussion

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-62
Author(s):  
Lisa Giombini
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
Musical Concepts ◽  
Musical Works ◽  
Historical Awareness ◽  
Musical Ontology

Abstract Although an ontological approach to musical works has dominated analytic aesthetics for almost fifty years, criticisms have recently started to spread in the philosophical literature. Contestants blame mainstream musical ontology for lacking historical awareness, questioning the cogency of metaphysical proposals that are substantially essentialist with regard to our musical concepts. My aim in this paper is to address this accusation by engaging the historicist critics in a sustained debate. I argue that even if the arguments based on history and sociology turn out to be accurate, this may not be enough of a reason to abandon the ontological project altogether. Ontology and history do not necessarily clash. Moreover, historical-sociological examinations do not fulfil our philosophical interest in music. I conclude by making a plea to “historical ontology,” a perspective that does not reject ontology but closely connects it to the dialectic between historical research and aesthetic interest.

Can Animism Save the World? Reflections on Personhood and Complexity in the Ecological Crisis

Sociologus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-92
Author(s):  
Guido Sprenger
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Moral Commitment ◽  
Nature And Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
Human World ◽  
Communicative Processes ◽  
Politics Of Life

The term “animism” is at once a fantasy internal to modernity and a semiotic conduit enabling a serious inquiry into non-modern phenomena that radically call into question the modern distinction of nature and culture. Therefore, I suggest that the labelling of people, practices or ideas as “animist” is a strategic one. I also raise the question if animism can help to solve the modern ecological crisis that allegedly stems from the nature-culture divide. In particular, animism makes it possible to recognize personhood in non-humans, thus creating moral relationships with the non-human world. A number of scholars and activists identify animism as respect for all living beings and as intimate relationships with nature and its spirits. However, this argument still presupposes the fixity of the ontological status of beings as alive or persons. A different view of animism highlights concepts of fluid and unstable persons that emerge from ongoing communicative processes. I argue that the kind of attentiveness that drives fluid personhood may be supportive of a politics of life that sees relationships with non-humans in terms of moral commitment.

scholarly journals Politico-theologic dispute on identity

2016 ◽  
pp. 267-275
Author(s):  
Nemanja Djukic
Keyword(s):  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Intentional Consciousness ◽  
First Case ◽  
The World ◽  
Levels Of Reality

The phenomenology of identity can distinguish identity as an ontological status and identity as a social-discursive construction. Identity as ontological status is based on the presence of transcendence. It is the result of grace, heritage, tradition. Identity as a social and discursive construction is based on the forgetting of transcendence. It is the result of self-eroticism and self-constituting intentional consciousness. In the first case, the identity is immersed in logos-order community (higher, wider and deeper levels of reality), which is why it is a catholic term of pre-intentional mindedness (polis as a paradigm of the world). In the second case, the identity is an expression of self-erotic intentionality that self reified as the beginning (positive datum ego-cogito), making it an expression of self-constituting awareness that denies any form of experience of otherness that precedes its act of self.

scholarly journals The Reception of Egyptian Modernism in Indonesia: Harun Nasution on Theology of Muhammad Abduh

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-64
Author(s):  
D. V. Mukhetdinov
Keyword(s):  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Human Race ◽  
High Culture ◽  
Entire Area ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Divine Justice ◽  
The World ◽  
Interpretive Model

In the present article we are going look at the interpretation of the theology of Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) undertaken by the Indonesian scholar Harun Nasution (1919–1998). Nasution compares Abduh’s position to neo- Mutazilism, relying on the treatise “Risālah al- Tawḥid”. Nasution carries out a step-by-step interpretation of the most popular “exoteric” work of the Egyptian thinker, proving the rationalist character of his theological system. From the point of view of Nasution, the division of the human race into the elect and commoners characteristic of Abduh is intended to confi rm the special ontological status of people endowed with high culture and advanced intellectual abilities. The elect are able to comprehend the entire area of intelligible being, which includes both God with his attributes and the created world. From this follows the limited, confi rmatory character of Revelation. It does not so much reveal to people a hitherto unfamiliar truth as confi rms (legitimizes) the knowledge already available to the Elect. Nasution believes that Abduh’s views on human freedom and divine justice are in confl ict with Asharism. Man is the source of his own actions, he is given the freedom to independently determine his own destiny. Allah Almighty rules the world through the eternal laws of nature, sunan, and prefers not to interfere in the aff airs of people directly, although he is interested in their welfare. The article concludes with critical remarks challenging the interpretive model proposed by Nasution and other neoMutazilite scholars of Abduh.

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