The ontology of musical versions: introducing the hypothesis of nested types

This paper explores the ontological nature of musical versions. I assume the widespread view that type/token ontologies offer the best explanation of the repeatable nature of works of music. However, I show that traditional type/token theories, which only distinguish between two levels of objects, f...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: García Carril Puy, Nemesio
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
Repositorio:Docta Complutense
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:docta.ucm.es:20.500.14352/108629
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/108629
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:7.01
Ontology of music
Musical works
Nested types
Versiones musicales
Tipos anidados
Estética (Filosofía)
7202.01 Estética
Descripción
Sumario:This paper explores the ontological nature of musical versions. I assume the widespread view that type/token ontologies offer the best explanation of the repeatable nature of works of music. However, I show that traditional type/token theories, which only distinguish between two levels of objects, face two problems when applied to the phenomenon of musical versions. Firstly, they are not able to accommodate the familiar intuition of our musical practices that the work versioned is repeated in its versions’ performances. Secondly, they are not able to distinguish between two different phenomena of our practices: the phenomenon of a work’s versions and the phenomenon of works inspired by, or derived from, other works. These undesirable consequences are entailed, under traditional two-level type/token theories, by the nature of types as ontologically thin entities. I defend that the hypothesis of nested types, a multiple-level type/token theory, can avoid these two problems while preserving the theoretical virtues of traditional two-level type/token theories and structural monism –the most widely shared view about the individuation of musical works, according to which musical works are individuated by one, and only one, sound structure.