the nature of the performable work 47
to be one way rather than another, but the causal mechanisms in question
are not clear. Second, if it be responded that the kind of explanation in
question does not require such causal mechanisms, but involves our capac-
ity to make sense of our mathematical and scientific practices, then the very
role accorded by the fictionalist to our talk of musical works might seem to
warrant ascribing a similar explanatory function to such works. Third, the
assumption that our criterion for the existence of something is its ability to
perform a particular kind of explanatory role itself stands in need of some
clarification and defense.
We must leave these questions in the air, however, and turn to more
pressing issues. We introduced the notion of the performable work at the
beginning of this chapter when describing Berthold’s attempts to deepen
his appreciation of a particular performable work through attending one of
its performances. This, indeed, is one of the principal ways in which the
concept of the performable work animates our engagement with artistic
performances. But we need to address more systematically an issue that has
occasionally punctuated our discussion. How in fact are performable works
to be appreciated through their performances? How are the properties of
performable works that bear upon their appreciation made accessible to us
in performance? And – a question to which we have already seen a number
of answers, but which requires more thorough investigation – what features
must a performance have if it is to play this mediatory role in the apprecia-
tion of performable works? These questions present themselves even if we
accept the fictionalist’s claim that talk of performable works is just short-
hand for talk about the different groupings of performances that we effect
in our musical practice. For we still need to understand how the qualities of
individual performances bear upon what is rightly said about such group-
ings. It is to these matters that we turn in the following two chapters.
Notes
- See Bell 1914, 33.
- Could we meet these objections by identifying a performable work with the set
of all its possible performances? This might seem attractive to someone who
wants to avoid a “type” theory of performable works (see section 3 below)
because they regard types as ontologically non-kosher. But, if performable
works actually exist, then this option presumably commits us to the view that
their possible performances themselves actually exist, which is itself a some-
what dubious ontological claim. And sets of possibilia , if they do indeed exist,
don’t seem to be the kinds of things that can be created, so we still face one of
the more contentious implications of the “type” theory, as we shall see below.