1 Introduction
I suggested in the previous chapter that we have good reason to reject the
Goodman argument and the premises on which it rests. But we must also
ask what is required, more generally, for something to be a correct per-
formance of a musical work over and above compliance with the notational
elements in a score. We have already rehabilitated, as elements required in
a correct performance, those temporal and expressive qualities that depend
upon verbal prescriptions in the score. But what we count as a correct
performance of a performable work does not depend solely upon what is
explicit in the composer’s prescriptions for that work, as represented by the
score in standard cases. We have seen that the performed arts differ from
other multiple art forms in the role accorded to interpretation in generating
performances. Interpretation, here, is a matter of going beyond what the
composer, playwright, or choreographer may have prescribed, and thereby
realizing various artistic and aesthetic possibilities within the performative
“envelope” furnished by these prescriptions. But performance of a perform-
able work also requires interpretation in another sense. In the case of works
within a written tradition, performers must interpret the inscriptions in
which the artist recorded his or her prescriptions for the work. Before we
can interpret within the performative “envelope” furnished by these pre-
scriptions, we must determine what the prescriptions actually prescribe.^1
Nicholas Wolterstorff raises these issues in the context of asking what it is
to perform a musical work. It is, he maintains, not sufficient for correct per-
formance that the performers succeed in their attempts to follow the directions
explicit in the score. For composers seldom specify all the things that matter
4 Authenticity in Musical Performance
Philosophy of the Performing Arts , First Edition. David Davies.
© 2011 David Davies. Published 2011 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.