Abstract
One of the central debates in the philosophy of music concerns the relationship between works of Western classical music (WCM) and their performances. In a recent influential account, Julian Dodd (2020) proposes a framework aimed at capturing the normative structure of WCM performance practice. He identifies five key features: (1) score compliance has come to have final value under the condition of its instrumentality in securing the communication of the work’s meaning; (2) departures from the score are justified only when they illuminate a work’s deeper meaning, not when they merely enhance general aesthetic qualities; (3) score prescriptions should be interpreted in light of contemporary performance practices rather than historical conventions, allowing their meaning to evolve over time, contra Davies (1987); (4) musical meaning is not fixed by the composer but emerges through the musical medium, making it possible for composers to misidentify a work’s proper meaning or the best means of conveying it; and (5) a performer’s personal authenticity does not significantly affect aesthetic evaluation, contra Kivy (1995). On this basis, Dodd argues that interpretive authenticity – the attempt to communicate a work’s deeper meaning – is the constitutive value of WCM performance, rather than score-compliance authenticity, historical authenticity or personal authenticity.
Because Dodd’s account is intended to be descriptive and relies on intuitions about performance practice, we used experimental philosophy to test whether classical music listeners share these intuitions. We recruited 400 subscribers to the Philharmonie de Paris and conducted five vignette-based studies corresponding to Dodd’s core claims. Participants assessed the aesthetic significance of score deviations under varying conditions (i.e., whether the deviation is audible or not and whether the deviation concerns constitutive markings or non-constitutive markings); the acceptability of such deviations under different justificatory grounds (epistemic vs. aesthetic); the role of historical versus contemporary conventions in interpreting different types of score prescriptions; the permissibility of interpretive divergence from the composer, distinguishing between purely musical and extra-musical meaning; and the impact of personal authenticity on judgments of beauty and originality across different musical contexts.
The results are largely consistent with Dodd’s view. Participants endorsed a pluralist approach to both score prescriptions and musical meaning (at least when understood as purely musical meaning), and clearly rejected personal authenticity as a performance value. Score deviations were also judged more acceptable when justified by interpretive authenticity rather than purely aesthetic considerations. However, the findings also indicate that score compliance carries substantial normative weight, independent of whether deviations produce an audible difference. Participants were generally reluctant to disregard score compliance, even when performances were motivated by interpretive authenticity. Overall, the results support the view that performance is understood as a hermeneutical activity, while suggesting that, for typical classical music listeners, such interpretation remains constrained by an overriding commitment to fidelity to the score.
References
Davies, S. (1987). Authenticity in Musical Performance. British Journal of Aesthetics, 27: 39–50.
Dodd, J. (2020). Being true to works of music. Oxford University Press.
Kivy, P. (1995). Authenticities: Philosophical reflections on musical performance. Cornell University Press.
Bio
Clément Canonne is a senior CNRS researcher and the head of the Analysis of Musical Practices team at IRCAM. He has published on topics such as collective improvisation, musical listening, joint action, desynchronization, musical humor, sound games, and empirical aesthetics.