Abstract

In the first chapter, two questions are considered: is listening to music necessary for apprehended musical aesthetic qualities? and is listening to music sufficient for apprehending musical aesthetic qualities? I conclude that the answer to the first question is yes by arguing that musical aesthetic qualities are necessarily at least in part perceptual properties. And my answer to the second question is no, since not all of the features of musical aesthetic qualities are perceivable. ;The ontological status of musical works is the topic of the second chapter. My argument is that scored musical works cannot be entities which completely exist independently of being performed, since many of a musical work's essential properties are at least partially determined by the character of its performance. These essential properties include both sonic properties and aesthetic qualities--both expressive and representational ones. Therefore, I conclude that musical works are collaborative entities, where both the composer and the performer are responsible for the existence of scored musical works. ;The final chapter explains what musical expressiveness and representation actually involve. I argue that we are culturally trained to hear music as expressive of emotions and thus trained to imagine certain configurations of sonic properties in music have emotional features. In this way, the physical properties of performed musical works do not determine its expressiveness; rather, the convention in which one has been trained how to make sense of music determines the aesthetic qualities of a performance