Making tracks: The ontology of rock music

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism

Volumn 64, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 401-414

  Kania, Andrew ^a  

^a TRINITY UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049198694     PISSN: 00218529     EISSN: 15406245     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-594X.2006.00219.x     Document Type: Review

References (36)

1. In a broad sense of 'interpretation.' For a narrower one, which a work performance might lack, see Jerrold Levinson, "Performative vs. Critical Interpretation" reprinted in his Pleasures of Aesthetics (Cornell University Press, 1996), pp. 60-89.
2. Stephen Davies, Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), pp. 317-318.
3. Theodore Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise: An Aesthetics of Rock (Duke University Press, 1996).
4. Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise, p. 13.
5. The terminology of ontologically "thin" and "thick" works is Stephen Davies's: "Pieces consisting of abstract structures of note types are ontologically thinner than those specified at the level of note tokens. Thinner works determine less of the fine detail of their performances than do thicker ones, but performances are always thicker than the works they are of" (Musical Works and Performances, p. 3).
6. One criticism Davies does not focus on is Gracyk's sidelining of the importance of lyrics in the rock tradition. Gracyk oddly treats rock music as an almost purely sonic (that is, nonverbal) art: "To be blunt, in rock music most lyrics don't matter very much" (Rhythm and Noise, p. 65).
7. However, the lyrics of Bob Dylan's early work were surely at least as important as his "sound" in earning him the central place Gracyk knows he occupies in rock history. Gracyk redresses the balance somewhat with his second book on rock, which, in focusing on how people use rock tracks in constructing their identities, implicitly assumes that lyrics are an important part of a rock track. See Theodore Gracyk, I Wanna Be Me: Rock Music and the Politics of Identity (Temple University Press, 2001).
8. Davies, Musical Works and Performances, p. 32.
9. I make some of the following points in my review of Davies's Musical Works and Performances, in Mind 112 (2003): 513-518.
10. Stephen Davies, "Comments on Andrew Kania's 'Ontology of Rock Music'," presented at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in San Francisco.
11. For discussion of the ambiguity of 'performance' in the classical tradition, see Jerrold Levinson, "Evaluating Musical Performance" reprinted in his Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 378-379.
12. Contra Roger Scruton, who argues that one distinctive feature of music as an art is that we can hear its sound as sourceless. See his Aesthetics of Music (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1-13.
13. Perhaps we undergo a perceptual illusion when we listen to recordings, just as we cannot help but see film images as continuously moving, despite knowing that they are not. (See my "Illusion of Realism in Film," The British Journal of Aesthetics 42 [2002]: 243-258.) Or perhaps we engage with recordings in a way analogous to how some argue we engage with visual art: we imagine hearing a continuous performance.
14. (See, for example, Jerrold Levinson, "Seeing, Imaginarily, at the Movies," Philosophical Quarterly 43 [1993]: 70-78,
15. and Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts [Harvard University Press, 1990] on imagining seeing.) Perhaps we do both these things, but in response to different kinds of recordings. For instance, it might be that the appearance of continuity in recordings of classical works for performance and their ilk is purely illusory, while in listening to rock tracks and classical electronic works we imagine hearing a continuous performance. A conflation of these modes of listening might go some way toward explaining why Davies's view of rock recordings as performances of some kind is intuitively plausible.
16. The Grove Dictionary of Music, ed. Stanley Sadie (Macmillan, 1988), p. 235.
17. Davies, "Comments on Andrew Kania's 'Ontology of Rock Music'."
18. Radiohead, I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, Capitol (2001). Another permutation I do not have space for is the phenomenon of live recordings of rock concerts. As a first pass, I would consider them to be in the same ontological boat as live recordings of classical concerts that incorporate electric instruments.
19. See my "Not Just for the Record: A Philosophical Analysis of Classical Music Recordings" (M.A. thesis, University of Auckland, 1998)
20. Ontologically, at least. Gracyk discusses the different purposes a cover can be made for, and put to, in I Wanna Be Me, pp. 63-66.
21. I discuss these conditions further in Chapter 3 of my "Pieces of Music: The Ontology of Classical, Rock, and Jazz Music" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2005).
22. Nicholas Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), pp. 99-105.
23. Nelson Goodman, Languages of Art: An Approach to a Theory of Symbols, 2nd ed., (Hackett, 1976), p. 128.
24. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 128, n. 1.
25. Goodman, Languages of Art, p. 178.
26. For a variety of responses critical of Goodman's argument, see Alan Tormey, "Indeterminacy and Identity in Art," Monist 58 (1974): 203-215;
27. Wolterstorff, Works and Worlds of Art, pp. 98-105;
28. Jerrold Levinson, "What a Musical Work Is" reprinted in his Music, Art, and Metaphysics, p. 87, n. 34,
29. and his "What a Musical Work Is, Again" in Music, Art, and Metaphysics, pp. 257-258;
30. Bengt Edlund, "On Scores and Works of Music: Interpretation and Identity," The British Journal of Aesthetics 36 (1996): 367-380;
31. Scruton, The Aesthetics of Music, pp. 111-112;
32. R. A. Sharpe, Music and Humanism: An Essay in the Aesthetics of Music (Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 98-99;
33. Aaron Ridley, "Against Musical Ontology," Journal of Philosophy 101 (2003): 203-220.
34. A notable exception is Stefano Predelli, who argues that Goodman's account of the relationship between performance and score can be saved with minor modifications. See his "Goodman and the Wrong Note Paradox," The British Journal of Aesthetics 39 (1999): 364-375.
35. Liner notes to Pet Shop Boys, Discography: The Complete Singles Collection, EMI (1991). Note the group's casual yet clear distinction between live performance and track construction.
36. Thanks to Jerrold Levinson, Stephen Davies, Theodore Gracyk, and Lee B. Brown for helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. I also benefited from discussion of an early version at the 2003 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics, in San Francisco, and thank the ASA for financial support toward my attendance at that meeting.