Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: Historical Approach
by Lydia Goehr, second part of the book
Now, in order to introduce the historical claim, Goehr describes pre-critically the work-concept (Goehr 1992, 89-90):
It is an “open concept” the usages of which can be both “original” and “derivative”. This distinction will be emphasized more later in the book.
It approximates “ideals”, understood as the aesthetics ideals ever beyond grasp yet strived for. A musical work is thought of as an abstract entity, separate from any particular performance. No single performance is the work itself, but rather an attempt to express the ideal version.
It is “regulative”. A regulative concept keeps normativity of the general on a conceptual level, without speaking of the particular works as norms1. Regulative concepts and auxiliary concepts engage in a dialectic where they determine the normative substance of each other (Goehr 1992, 103).
It is “projective”. The objects we project the work into are in fact non-existent, i.e. having a fictitious or “projective” existence. This “object” is more than performance and scores. This object is non-existent, but the projected work-concept does exist (Goehr 1992, 106).
It is “emergent”2. Emergence is a transition from one period to another, where even if the former period contains musical elements resembling the latter, they lack organization and relations with respect to each other which admits the concepts “regulative function” (Goehr 1992, 108). Emergence occurs through the slow development of the musical process, which incorporates and forms new theories.
Alas, the central claim is made clear that musical works in the 1800s are regulated normatively by the work-concept (Goehr 1992, 111). This claim will allow us to say with historical and epistemological justification (Goehr 1992, 114) that even though Bach was not regulated by the work-concept at the time of composing, what he composed could retrospectively be attributed as musical works.
Now we proceed to examine how the work concept comes about by examining the development of music since the ancient times leading up to the Enlightenment (Goehr 1992, 120-147), which could be characterized as a process in which musical wholes started shedding its societal functions and divorcing from alternative mediums such as texts and gestures which it previously adhered to for meaning, and allowed instrumental music to develop.
This shift occurred as the function of music transformed. In ancient Greek societies, music served social functions and pedagogical roles and carried crucially civic and legal information. It was also moral inculcations which conveyed the idea of “good or educated life” (Goehr 1992, 126). Musicians’ societal functions ranged from technicians of the instrument to philosophers and scientists. Instrumental music existed, but did not occupy a foreground role, due to its lack of referential meaning which only extra-musical was capable of specifying. Christianity and the middle age (Goehr 1992, 131-135) brought about the ritualistic function of music, enforcing top-down teaching from the church. The demand of being sung in churches further emphasized the texts and sometimes even excluded instruments by being purely vocal, but it also brought about changes such as what Johannes Scotus Erigena proposed, that the complexity of the chants ought to match the complexity of the cosmos (Goehr 1992, 132).
Renaissance brought back the classical emphasis on music’s secular function, but it is still a function of persuasion, serving as the means to the ends of ideas primarily relying on its lyrics (Goehr 1992, 135-139). Opinions started forming, however, that the musical practice can be judged based on its consumption experience –this change could have only taken place in the broader Renaissance contexts of human emotions and expression taking hold as values. This can be retrospectively seen as instrumental music’s impulse to become an independent art itself.
In the following centuries prior to the 1800s, music’s application widened albeit the still strong hold of religion. Music became more explicitly scientific, mathematical and rule-bound. However, an important “principle”3 developed in aesthetics theory, which was a refurbished understanding of “memesis”, which emphasized the imitation of general4 or “essence” instead of particular (Goehr 1992, 141). The development of theories around mimesis brought art towards an independence from its reliance on extra-artistic features, but it also devalued non-representational and non-imitative instrumental music further. This further devaluation, however, was also met with a stronger resistive avant-garde undercurrent as Goehr gives historical record in Music History5 as evidence describing musicians challenging compositional rules. As the century progressed towards the end, art had shed more and more expectations of explicit teaching, and was increasingly valued for its imaginative, “non-rational and non-cognitive” aspect, hence leading to the development of new concepts such as the Beautiful and Sublime (Goehr 1992, 146). This marked a significant change in aesthetics judgment which allowed instrumental music to have value in itself.
As the functional aspects of art6 subsided and the “new romantic aesthetics” which increasingly allowed music to be an ends in itself (Goehr 1992,156) developed, and crafts were separated from fine arts, instrumental music was seen as referential to, and itself encompassed transcendence due to its materiallessness, but even with such transcendence music was still obligated to provide meaning, albeit with only itself. The foundation of this change of aesthetics with regard to music depended on the separability principle (Goehr 1992,157), which means the separation between artistic objects and the mundane, and applying which also decreases the mundane properties of fine arts.
Separability principle convoluted art’s relationships with nature (Goehr 1992, 159-170). On one hand, it demands a separation between the artificial work and the preexisting and the mundane, on the other hand there is still a total reverence for nature. The resolution of this contradiction is that the end product of art was expected to conceal its making process, appearing like an non-artificial object. The consequence of “the equation of civilization with artificiality” (Goehr 1992, 165) is an acknowledgment and heightened expression of artificiality. This acknowledgement introduces a new understanding which Goehr called “aesthetics remainder” (Goehr 1992, 166), which is art being an elevation or “transfiguring” of everyday objects into something of aesthetic significance revealing the remaining properties of the objects, once the non-aesthetics had been cleared away (Goehr 1992, 167) .
Separability principle resulted in a different status of instruments which are constitutive of godly creations which must serve crucial roles as indispensable parts-of-the-whole, and artists who now occupy a god-like position, since they’re creating god’s-creation-like objects.
It resulted in the formulation on the receiving end of artistic creations (Goehr 1992, 168-171), such as indicated in Kant’s aesthetics judgement7 which requires the experience to be “universal”8, the viewers to be “disinterested” (Goehr 1992, 168), the subject being experienced to be “purposive without purpose”9 (Goehr 1992, 168), the judgment being dependent on “sympathy”(Goehr 1992, 169). This formulation further guaranteed art’s self-determination, forming an important break with the past by requiring art’s association with the extra-art to be formed upon irrationality and intuition, rather than explicit, cognitive and mundane rationales. It also separated art from products of mundane labor, i.e. crafts (Goehr 1992, 170). It resulted in the emphasis on form and the unity of form and content (Goehr 1992, 171-172), since if the artwork is the end in itself, it is imperative to no longer overlook the form by overemphasizing the content, which in the past had carried the primary functions of the artwork. If nothing that exists in an artwork serves a referential function hence everything exists purposefully and indispensably, then the form must be an integral part of art’s independent existence as well as the content.
It resulted in the physicality of the artwork. Museums spun up the display of visual spatial artworks, which, given the established change of climate in aesthetics theories in the case of music, corresponds to the projected display of musical “object called the work” (Goehr 1992, 174) in the imaginary museum.
So how was music composed without being regulated by the work-concept, prior to the 1800s10? Goehr went about investigating the concepts of authorship, ownership, notation, instrumentation prior to 1800.
The authorship of the piece was not emphasized, so composers could reuse bits and ideas of others, and borrow from their own other pieces when composing a new piece, such as Bach borrowing his secular and sacred music from each other (Goehr 1992, 177). But originality was a concept that theorists were aware of, although the lack of it was a nuanced problem. Samuel Wesley criticized Handel for “pilfer[ing] from all Manner of Authors” and showing “a meanness in putting even his own subjects in so many different Works over and over again”11, but it was not such a crucial criticism that it would influence Handel’s identity as a composer.
Similar reasoning applies to the ownership of the piece. A piece was not owned by who composed it, but by the occasion or person who commissioned it (Goehr 1992, 183). Because the composition was frequently not meant to outlast its performance, notation was underspecified and incomplete12. Similarly, the role of a conductor evolved as well from someone whose sole function was to keep time13 and who was dispensable. Because of the frequently underspecified notation, performance frequently had an element of improvisation in it. Extemporization was seen to have the same value, but an alternative to following the scores (Goehr 1992, 189). The success criteria of the composition was the success of the performance, which was determined by whether the audience was occasion-appropriately influenced by the music (Goehr 1992, 192). This also meant that rehearsal was uncommon, since the goal of the performance was not to strictly adhere to the score. Rehearsals were uncommon also because of the absence of professional orchestras (Goehr 1992, 194). The concept of “rehearsals” evolved from the initial equivalence with the performance itself, to a separate procedure near the very end of the pre-workconcept period which conveyed practice14.
Because the composition was broadly commissioned for either various occasions or an occasion which the composer may not have full insight into, the result had to be adaptable to a more general instrumentation. However, there were also nuances here where a composer could argue for the higher suitability of an instrument which may have been deemed increasingly obsolete (Goehr 1992, 196-197).
Additional consequences of the blurry differentiation between the musical work and its performance included that on the publication procedures (Goehr 1992, 197). The work was frequently dated with the performance date upon publishing, and instrumental music was frequently published as “sets, collections or series” (Goehr 1992, 199) due to the lack of individual performances of themselves.
After 1800, composers’ social status changed from service-providers to authorities of their own creation. Their creative results grew increasingly independent from the functional demands and worldly influence of religious or royal institutions. Evidence could be found in Beethoven's 1814 conversation with J.W. Tomaschek (as cited in Sonneck 1954, 104, cited in Goehr 1992, 211) where he questioned whether music was a 'free Art,' and in his 1801 letter pleading for a 'single Art Exchange... to which the artist would simply send his works, and be given in return as much as he needs' (Hamburger 1801, cited in Goehr 1992, 211).
This liberation came with the tension for musicians who could now be elevated “above” society to be yet “within” society (Goehr 1992, 209), to do which their identities were split into two, one composing for the art, and the other for the public. This then corresponds to the split of the concept of a musical work splitting into “absolute work” which is purely musical and “program work” which is referential, functional and extra-musical (Goehr 1992, 212). Such a differentiation, which although associated with the division between musical and extra-musical, arised out of the need of their union—the need for music to be both transcendent and societal at the same time. Evidence such as drama was examined through secondary sources, including H.-L. De La Grange’s Mahler (1973, 215) and Hogarth’s Music History (1845, 78) about Mozart, in so far as its extra-musical elements exist in harmony with its absolute essence, to examine how the distinction between absolute and program music was in fact an emphasis of music’s independence (Goehr 1992, 211-218), which composers wished to stress even for compositions about the world.
The fact that music had become an end in itself meant that works had to be individuated, with their ownership specified by copyrights (Goehr 1992, 218-220). The development in copyright brought development in the concept of originality (Goehr 1992, 220) and plagiarism (Goehr 1992, 221). The emphasis on originality gained an “untouchability” (Goehr 1992, 222) for the original works which further differentiated the original work from those which derive15 from it.
The composer’s new authoritative position allowed them to require a composition to be played exactly as-is at every performance. This led to fully specified notation, instrumentation manuals (Goehr 1992, 226), titling which connected the work to the composers or revealed the composers’ own intent (Goehr 1992, 228), disappearance of interpretations and extemporization16 (Goehr 1992, 234). These changes can be understood by examining the separation between composers and performers (Goehr 1992, 228) evidenced by the intentional “unplayability” of works composed (Goehr 1992, 230) by composers such as Beethoven and Schoenberg. This separation between work and its performance was moderated by the standardization and specification of notations, with which the composer’s sole responsibility was to make the work possible to perform, and with which the performers’ responsibility was to preserve the ideal17 of the original work to their best ability (Goehr 1992, 231).
Demand from the musical receivers also grew alongside the dignity of the composers and autonomy of the work-concept, as musical halls were built (Goehr 1992, 236). Concert etiquette18 formed (Goehr 1992, 237), and criticism grew its own language (Goehr 1992, 239). Erecting concert halls influenced the concerts conducted within them in terms of their unity, length, volume of music performed (Goehr 1992, 240). Music history started concentrating on compositions of great composers rather than compositions grouped by their functions (Goehr 1992, 240), alongside increased production of “bibliographies and music journals” (Goehr 1992, 241). New institutions were formed, such as the Royal Academy of Music and Society of British Musicians (Goehr 1992, 242).
Goehr introduces the concept of “conceptual imperialism” (Goehr 1992, 245) to refer to the way the concept of a “musical work” is imposed retrospectively on past practices and on other kinds of music such as Jazz (Goehr 1992, 250), inadequately on world music. It is made possible through our two ways of using of work-concept: “original” and “derivative” usage (Goehr 1992, 253), which produces original and derivative examples, and also corresponds to explicit and non-explicit usage19 of the concept. It then follows that the counterexample method fails in particular instances when the examples chosen are in fact works of the nature of a derivative example. The complexities of conceptual usage presents a substantial challenge to the counterexample method (Goehr 1992, 257-260).
There are reasons for why it is intrinsically difficult to achieve the effects conceptual challenges want20. Concepts could have either adopted “contemporary meaning” or been “neutralized”21(Goehr 1992, 265-266). Lots of challenges merely modify, instead of undermining, the meaning of a regulative concept22 (Goehr 1992, 266). Additional difficulties are created by the paradox of tearing down the practice within the practice and institutions itself (Goehr 1992, 261), using existing terminologies of familiar conceptual framework to tear down these terminologies (Goehr 1992, 270), the movement of anti-culture itself being part of the culture (Goehr 1992, 270).
What a real conceptual change would need, the author says, is a “global change” (Goehr 1992, 271) which must stem from within from discontent and manifests as new ideas and principles. But examining the mainstream right now should indicate that the tension of discontent has not yet reached a critical mass.
The ambivalent independence of conductor from the work (Goehr 1992, 273) and their relationship with the orchestra (Goehr 1992, 274) reveals the deeper unanswered question of the significance of the musical work–whether the meaning lies “in the work itself, in its realization through performance, or in the interpretative act of listening to a work” (Goehr 1992, 275). Conductors themselves were usually faithful to the original work, while recognizing the necessity of interpretation, but the tension of the two would not get resolved.
A relatedly ambivalent concept is “authenticity” as seen in the early music movement (Goehr 1992, 279), which aims to play early music historically informedly. For example, to assign significance to preserving early instrumentation is to assume the instrumentation as an essential part of the early ideal, not just circumstantial (Goehr 1992, 280-281). Pursuing authenticity without historical context or “be faithful more to the music itself than to all the conditions of the original historical context”, however, is anachronistic, since “being true to the music” is easily conflated with “being true to the work”, and the latter problematically projects the work-concept onto music from a time when this concept didn't yet exist (Goehr 1992, 282). Another solution is the “post-modern conception” (Goehr 1992, 283) which dispenses with a fixed sense of authenticity by dispensing with “fidelity, however fidelity is understood” (Goehr 1992, 283), but the author points out by denying musical history to have revolved around work-based aesthetics at all, this strategy is overly revisionary, especially for a movement which resists revisionist tendencies (Goehr 1992, 284).
The author concludes the book with a re-emphasis on the necessity of using an “empirical, historical” (Goehr 1992, 285) method to construct the model of musical ontology.
Reference
Kant, Immanuel. Kritik of Judgment. Translated by J. H. Bernard. London: Macmillan and Co., 1892.
Collingwood, R.G. 1938. The Principles of Art. Oxford. Croce, Benedetto. 1922. Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic. Translated by D. Ainslie. New York.
Levinson, J. 'What a Musical Work is', Journal of Philosophy, 77 (1980), 5-28.
Sonneck, O. G., ed. Beethoven: Impressions by his Contemporaries. New York, 1954.
Beethoven, Ludwig van. Beethoven: Letters, Journals and Conversations. Edited by M. Hamburger. New York, 1951.
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.
A distinction was made here between regulative concepts and constitutive rules, where constitutive rules are guidelines which exerts their normative force via the definition of regulative concepts. (Goehr 1992, 102)
Goehr, Imaginary Museum, 76.
The author carefully distinguished “a new way to express art” from”a new expression of a way” (Goehr 1992, 141)
The author brings our focus to the “general-via-particular view of imitation’ (Goehr 1992, 151).
William Hogarth’s Music History is cited in Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 145.
“Art” here refers to art broadly understood in a common-sense way, which included functional art and productive art up to the point of the separability principle.
Immanuel Kant’s ideas on aesthetics judgment are discussed by Lydia Goehr in The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 168-170.
Immanuel Kant, Kritik of Judgment, trans. J. H. Bernard (London: Macmillan and Co., 1892), 55.
The author explains that this criterion is the main embodiment of the artwork’s relationship with nature which stemmed from the separability principle (Goehr 1992, 169).
Goehr, Imaginary Museum, 176-204.
Samuel Wesley, The Wesley Bach Letters: A Facsimile Reprint of the First Printed Edition, ed. P. Williams (London, 1988), 9–10, quoted in Lydia Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 185.
Although the conventions around deciphering incomplete notations were sufficiently established (Goehr 1992, 187).
In an unstandardized fashion as well (Goehr 1992, 195).
Goehr used what Haydn recorded in his London Notebooks as evidence for the evolved significance of rehearsals (Goehr 1992, 193).
The derivative of a work could be understood as anything not composed from scratch.
The author was careful to premise the discouragement of extemporization with the emergence of extemporation as a now separate concept of performance (Goehr 1992, 232).
The conception of the ideal creates room for interpretation, but the room would be significantly limited by work’s exact conveying made possible by perfect notations (Goehr 1992, 232).
such as cancellation of long pauses between movements.
Non-explicit usage generates “derivative examples” which are retrospectively regulated by the concept, which often has a corresponding original example. Derivative examples may affect the understanding of its original example, and vice versa. Both the derivative and original has the possibility to expand an open concept. An example fails to be a derivative example when we cannot successfully designate missing characteristics to the example for it to fit the concept.
The author assessed possible challenges in two categories, formal and material. The author argued for why challenges (such as Cage claiming that his Music of Changes was fully composed work) do not shake the concept in either category. (Goehr 1992, 260-265)
defined as freed from past sets of associations such as that of the romantic.
Goehr considers two case studies to demonstrate this point: formalism and mechanical reproduction. Formalism, for example, enhanced rather than undermined the work-concept, since it holds on to the romantic aesthetics even though it also emphasizes the unity of a work. (Goehr 1992, 266-268)