Philosophy of the Performing Arts

performances as artworks 145
of classical works. Their ways of interpreting and performing those works
articulate an artistic content of their own.
On the other hand, the status of a work-performance as an independent
work of art shouldn’t be thought to follow simply from the fact that the
performer uses the performance to make a statement of her own. Berthold
uses Eliot’s lines to express his own invitation, but there is only one artwork
in the vicinity, even though there is a measure of interpretation in his use
of the quoted passage. The personal statement that the performer makes in
performing a performable work must be articulated artistically , in line with
the analysis of this notion sketched in Chapter 1. Nor should the status of
a work-performance as an independent work be thought to follow simply
from the fact that the performance involves interpretation , for we need to ask
what general purpose the performer’s interpretation serves. Thom talks, for
example, of the need for interpretation even in performances that aim for
authenticity in the sense discussed in Chapter 4. Authenticity and interpreta-
tion go together, he argues: “To perform authentically is to do at least what
the work directs; to interpret is to go beyond what the work directs in ways
that illumine its directives” (Thom 1993, 95). But where the aim of inter-
pretation is indeed to “illumine [the] directives” of a performable work, why
should we think that the interpretive performance is itself a work distinct
from the work being performed? The purpose of the performance in such
a case is to do justice to the work performed, not to bring into existence a
separate work that may compete for the audience’s attention. The distinctive
artistic values that are made apparent to receivers by such a performance
are values that the performers take to be implicit in the performable work,
although it may require great interpretive and performative virtuosity to
discover this.
It is, of course, true that, to the extent that performance involves
interpretation, it brings into being aesthetic qualities that are not mandated
by the performable work, some of which may be intentionally added by the
performer without any suggestion that they are somehow implicit in the
work. Thus Kivy is right in thinking that we have an artifactual collection of
aesthetic qualities for which the performer, not the composer, is responsi-
ble. But it is wrong to think, as Kivy suggests, that, if this is the case, then
we must have an independent work of art. It may be, as in the case of the
performer striving for authenticity, that the aesthetic qualities furnished by
the performer are realizations of the aesthetic potentiality of the performa-
ble work – they are aesthetic qualities that the prescriptions of the composer
make possible , without themselves being prescribed. The performance counts
as an independent work, however, only if the aesthetic qualities not man-
dated by the prescriptions of the performable work serve the performer’s