appreciating performable works in performance 67
identical to the original, is simply a device used to make a philosophical
point about what is possible in principle.
Notes
- Jean Sibelius: The Symphonies. Originally recorded in 1963, 1964, and 1968 and
released on CD by Decca Records 1991. Released in the USA on London
Records 430 778-2. - Or, indeed, by the composer himself. Andrew Kania has pointed out (private
communication) that Sibelius made substantial revisions to his Violin Concerto
after the first performance, although it is not clear whether he was respond-
ing to what he heard in the performance or to the suggestions of critics. - See, for example, S. Davies 1994; Matravers 1998, 99–187; Levinson 2005.
- See, for example, Dodd 2007, ch. 2.
- An amended form of this question might also be posed to the continuant the-
orist. Continuants, we are told, are higher level entities that depend upon but
are not reducible to their embodiments. But, given that performances of
works are among their embodiments, why should we think that the timbral
and expressive properties that we encounter in a performance of the Second
Symphony can also be possessed by the higher order entities that are
continuants? - The restriction to “shareable” properties is to exclude properties that types by
their very nature cannot possess, but that all tokens of certain types must pos-
sess in virtue of being particular things, for example, having a particular spa-
tial location at any particular time. - This account will need to be more nuanced if we want to allow for performable
works to manifest different and sometimes mutually incompatible properties in
their correct performances. For the interpretive freedom of the performers –
upon which composers depend for the realization of the timbral and expressive
qualities of their works – may allow for different expressive qualities to be real-
ized in performances that respect the prescriptions of a given work. In such
cases, while we might appeal to other constraints in order to rule between such
interpretations, we might also take the work to have a measure of expressive
indeterminacy – or, to put a positive slant on this, expressive richness. Then, in
describing the properties of the work analogically related to such expressive
properties of its performances, we might talk of what the work allows , rather
than of what it requires , in its correct performances. - See, for example, Quine 1969, 39–41.
- For a fuller discussion of the significance of this point, see D. Davies 2009a.
- For a general defense of this principle, see D. Davies 2004, ch.1; 2009b.
- For a detailed critical examination of the Goodman argument, see S. Davies
2001, 154–158. - Will the instrumentalist also claim that status as a work-instance cannot be
divorced from history of production? If the specification of instrumental