International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music - December 2015 [antikvár]

U. Volgsten: Work, form and phonogram. On the significance of the concept of communication for the modern Western concept of music IRASM 45 (2015) 2: 213-242 Work, Form and Phonogram. On the Significance of the Concept of Communication for the iVIodern Western Concept of Music JTiat's one thing that's always been a difference between the performing arts and being a painter, you know. A painter does a painting, and he paints it, and that's it. He has the joy of creating it, it hangs on a wall, and somebody buys it, and maybe somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in a loft somewhere until he dies. But nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint the Starry Night again, man!' He painted it and that was it! (Joni Mitchell, musician, composer and painter) In the above quote, Joni Mitchell banters about a crucial difference between the performing arts, such as music, and painting. Whereas the latter involves the production of enduring objects, the former presumably don't. But is that really true? Isn't composing and song writing as much about producing enduring objects as is painting? For sure, the song Mitchell introduced by the above commen- Ulrik Volgsten Orebro University Fakultetsgatan 1, 702 81 OREBRO Sweden E-mail: [email protected] UDC: 78.01 Original Scholarly Paper Izvorni znanstveni rad Received: April 2, 2015 Primljeno: 2. travnja 2015. Accepted: August 5, 2015 Prihvaceno: 5. kolovoza 2015. Abstract - Résumé According to a well-established view among music historians and other scholars, in the western world a certain understanding of music was established around the year 1800. According to this understanding (still widely embraced today), individual musical works are created by composers and exist thereafter as abstract entities beyond time and space. This well-established view about how music has been understood is here questioned. It is argued that the particular understanding of music according to which individual musical works are created by composers and exist as abstract entities beyond time and space was not established until about a hundred years later, i.e. around the turn of the 20"" century. More specifically it is argued that the concept in question required (i) a theoretically elaborated concept of individual worl< form, and (ii) a particular figure of thought according to which acquaintance with the abstract individual work requires that it be communicated from composer to listener along a »communication chain«. Whereas (i) is necessary to identify what a musical work is, (ii) explains how this work is involved in an exchange between sender and receiver. Not only did the electronic telegraphy contribute significantly to the latter, so did also the phonogram. Keywords: Musical Work Concept • Concept of Music • Copyright History • Reification • Communication • Phonogram 213