138 performance as art
background for our detailed examination, in the following two chapters, of
improvisation, rehearsal, the role of the audience in live performance, and
the embodied nature of the performer.
2 The Artistic Status of Performances Outside
the Classical Paradigm
Jarrett’s performance at the Opera House in Köln is not, as we have seen, an
artistic performance in the second of the two senses distinguished in Chapter
- It is not a performance that instantiates something else that is a work of
art, nor is it a performance that instantiates a production that has an artwork
as one of its ingredients. Is it, nonetheless, an artistic performance in the
first sense, something that is itself a work of art? Our general methodologi-
cal principle counsels us to look to our artistic practice for guidance, while
holding this practice accountable to rational reflection. But practice, here, is
not on the face of it very helpful. Jarrett’s musical performance is certainly
presented in the same kind of location, to the same kind of audience, paying
the same general kind of attention, as performances of performable works
such as Chopin’s nocturnes. But, as yet, we have seen no reason to conclude
that performances of performable works are themselves works of art. Indeed,
it would sound a little strange to say, on emerging from a Chopin piano
recital, that one had just heard two works of art. If it would in fact be correct
to say such a thing, we cannot rest this conclusion merely on an appeal to our
ordinary ways of talking about performances.
Paul Thom appeals to our linguistic intuitions in arguing against accord-
ing the status of work of art to a performance like Jarrett’s. He maintains,
first, that there is a unified conception of “work of art” that applies across
the arts: “A work of art can be defined as an enduring thing, created in some
medium (such as oil on canvas) by an author (such as a painter) in order to
be beheld in a particular kind of way (namely, to be viewed aesthetically)”
(Thom 1993, 28). Performable works, Thom argues, satisfy this description
if we view them, as he does, as directives for performance which are appre-
ciable in virtue of their performances. For, even though the performances
themselves are ephemeral, the performance directives endure. In the case of
a purely improvised performance like Jarrett’s, however, there is merely the
production of a sound sequence on a particular occasion. Thom rejects the
idea that a performance like Jarrett’s itself brings into existence an endur-
ing performance directive binding on future performances. We shall exam-
ine the idea of what can be termed “improvisational composition” in more
detail in Chapter 8. He concludes that such a performance itself neither
endures nor instantiates something else that endures. What was offered for