Lunch Chat (3/29): Philosophy of Music

For our next lunch chat, I thought it'd be appropriate to think philosophically about music at little in "preparation" for the Departmental Colloquium on Friday afternoon by Tiger Roholt, an expert in this area. Personally, I don't know much about the philosophy of music. Nor do I know much about Professor Roholt's lecture topic of music subtlety — one of whose manifestations he calls 'groove' in his forthcoming book — much less phenomenology. But I have inchoate questions and, as an amateur musician and professional philosopher, some nascent opinions. . . .

Here's one question that interests me: what is the relation between a piece of music and its performance? Perhaps the most straightforward view would be to think of the relation as analogous to the relation between a word and a particular printing of the word. For example, how many words are printed in the following three lines?

Music
Music
Music

The answer depends on whether we are counting word type and a word token — a particular instance of a word. There are three instances of one type above. Perhaps performances of musical pieces are simply instances of the piece of music; their differences could be likened to different font sizes and styles for words. It's still the same word: simply gets presented in different ways.

This analogy might be helpful, but it also raises some trick questions. We know more or less what a word type is — a sequence of letters (I suppose) — but what is a musical type? Is it just a sequence of notes? A sequence of notes with their associated timings? Can it be defined by a printed score? When we think about the variation between performances that (apparently) count as the same song, this latter proposal looks pretty difficult to maintain. One example that comes to mind is the difference between the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and a cover of the song that was featured in the movie "Across the Universe". They have pretty dramatically different tones and effects, I'd say. I imagine that there are other nice examples out there (feel free to use the comments to post some).





And don't the issues get even trickier with jazz?!

Anyway, my plan is to lead some clumsy stumbling through this and other philosophical questions you might have about music. For a little more adept discussion, you might check out the entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on the "Philosophy of Music". Professor Roholt also has a number of papers available on his website. In particular, you might check out this blog post he wrote about music and "scientism".

Hope to see you on Thursday at noon in 62 Coleman (the Philosophy Lounge)! Pizza and friendly discussion provided as usual.

Colloquium: Tiger Roholt

The Bucknell Philosophy Department is pleased to present a talk by Tiger Roholt, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Montclair State University on

"A Phenomenological Approach to Musical Subtlety"

Friday, March 30th: 3:30–5PM

Walls Lounge (213 Elaine Langone Center)

Abstract: How can we understanding the experiential richness of a guitar tone? — or the effect of a note performed slightly high by a violinist? — or the effect of a vocalist singing a certain word slightly late? By drawing upon Maurice Merleau-Ponty's account of subtle visual perceptions, Roholt takes issue with analytic accounts of subtle music perception put forward by philosophers such as Diana Raffman and Daniel Dennett.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Choose Your Own Adventure: Free Will

So I guess it doesn't matter whether we agree?

Lunch Chat (3/22): Love & Death

Something about this post seems oddly familiar. . . .

This column from "The Stone" on "Love and Death" caught my eye — partly because it looks to the 1993 film "Groundhog Day" (one of my favorites) for examples to consider. I've never really thought about these issues before but now that we have some safe distance from Valentines Day, perhaps it'd make for some interesting conversation.

So stop on by the Philosophy Lounge on Thursday at noon for pizza and the last lunch chat before Spring Break. Hope to see you then. If we somehow get stuck in a Groundhog Day loop, let's hope for some good company and weather, at least.