performances as artworks 139
the appreciation of the audience in Köln, therefore, was not a work of art,
but only an “aesthetic object,” an arrangement of aesthetic qualities.
In a response to Thom, Peter Kivy trades linguistic intuitions with his
opponent (Kivy 1995, 124–128). He disputes both the claim that it is part of
our concept of a work of art that the latter must be an enduring entity, and
the claim that performances do not endure. A performance endures, Kivy
argues, insofar as it is repeatable. And performances are repeatable because
numerically distinct performances by an orchestra can manifest the same
interpretation of the work performed. This latter point seems questionable
however, in that it conflates questions about performances and questions
about productions and interpretations. A production of a play, like a conduc-
tor’s interpretation of a symphony, certainly endures in the sense that there
can be different performances of that production or interpretation at differ-
ent times. In this sense, a production or interpretation, no less than a play
or a symphony, can be characterized in terms of an enduring performance
directive. But individual performances do not endure, nor are they repeat-
able. And the question of concern to Thom, and indeed to us, is whether
individual performances – not productions – can be works of art.
Kivy’s first claim – that a work of art need not endure – is more difficult to
assess if we are appealing to linguistic intuitions. It might be thought to weigh
in favor of Thom’s intuitions that, if we allow that Jarrett’s ephemeral per-
formance on January 24, 1975, preserved through recording, is a work of art,
we must presumably say the same for all of the other wholly improvised solo
performances given by Jarrett over the past 40-odd years. It would be odd,
after all, to say that the contingent fact that Jarrett’s performance was recorded
is part of what makes it an artwork. Surely, if it had not been recorded, this
would not have affected any of the qualities that make it artistically interesting
- the qualities that presumably make it an artwork if indeed it is one. It would
have deprived us only of the ability to appreciate an artwork, assuming it to be
one. But then we must maintain that many ephemeral events only appreciable
by a small number of people present at a given place and time – Jarrett’s unre-
corded concerts, for example – can be artworks. This kind of consideration is
not decisive, however, since it isn’t clear why one who shares Kivy’s rather than
Thom’s intuitions shouldn’t happily embrace this consequence.
We will perhaps make more headway if we consider different aspects of
our practice regarding performances in the performing arts. Philip Alperson
(1984) argues that jazz improvisations, as individual events, should be treated
as artistic performances in our first sense, and thus as artworks. He argues
this on the grounds that the criteria that we bring to bear in our appreciative
assessment of improvised performances are in many cases the same as those
that we bring to bear in our appreciative assessment of performable musical
works. Alperson notes, first, that improvisers share with composers the task