Philosophy of the Performing Arts

challenges to the classical paradigm in music 97
as Elvis Presley, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, and Led
Zeppelin. Here, the sound we associate with the work depends essentially
upon the use of various kinds of technological resources in the recording
process. In such cases, there is no actual or even possible live performance
that sounds like what we hear when we listen to the recording. Generally, the
sound that we associate with a rock work is the result of skillful construction
in a studio. This involves various elements recorded at different times and
in different places and technologically modified in various ways so that the
resulting sounds as they feature in the recording may differ dramatically from
the sounds originally recorded. For example, individual rock musicians and
singers regularly overdub their initial performances, harmonizing with their
own voices or soloing over their own initial solos. Members of a band often
record their contributions individually rather than in a group performance,
and guest musicians may add their contributions in different cities where
they are given access to copies of the bed tracks. Furthermore, many ele-
ments in rock recordings owe nothing to the recording of live performances,
being generated purely electronically. Producers such as George Martin for
the Beatles perform many wonders in the studio by dropping things into and
lifting them out of recordings, reversing tapes, and integrating sound mate-
rial from a variety of sources in a collage fashion, as in the coda to “All You
Need is Love.” Gracyk provides a rich range of examples of such practices in
familiar rock works.^3
Does this present a problem for the application of the classical paradigm
to rock music? Gracyk argues that it does, and that the rock work is the
recording, rather than the song recorded – the electronically encoded result
of what gets done in the studio that is then played back by the listener rather
than performed by musicians. There is no performance of which the work is a
recording, nor does the work receive performances at live concerts. Stephen
Davies, on the other hand, believes that in general the classical paradigm still
applies, save in a few cases that parallel purely electronic works in the clas-
sical tradition. We shall begin by looking at Davies’s attempt to extend his
pluralistic account of musical works to accommodate rock music. Then we
shall compare this to Gracyk’s account, and to an attempt by Andrew Kania
to mediate between these views.
We noted earlier that Davies distinguishes between thin and thick per-
formable works in terms of the constraints they impose on their right per-
formances. But Davies also endorses a broader pluralism concerning musical
works (2001, ch. 1). He distinguishes, first, between works that are, and
works that are not, for performance. He then divides works for perform-
ance – our performable works – into works for live performance and works
for studio performance. Taking the first of these points, Davies recognizes
that some musical works are created not for performance of any kind but for