Abstract
In the article, the author reflects on the problem of musical identity and notes that the structure of writing, like any writing, excludes any idea of a written text as unchangeable and eternal, because the signification, representation and replacement of one meaning or context by another occur in it endlessly and without closure. By analogy with the "textual strategies" characteristic of Jacques Derrida's approach to literary theory, criticism, and philosophy of language, the article proposes to consider the problem of musical identity. The author rightly speaks about the differences in interpretation and performance, which results in an immeasurable richness of colors of a musical work, its refusal to be exhausted, and its differences from other works. Consequently, performance ethics should no longer focus solely on defining and implementing compositional intent, for this is not the only origin of what is written. A musical work is a creative process of the composer, embodied in a live sound through interpretation by performers, which must take into account what goes beyond the intention and context, the meaning of which cannot be discovered by referring to the original and lost context, but must be created in the present, which is always another present of the inscription.
Highlights
The issue of musical identity—of what defines works of music, gives each its unique character and distinguishes them from one another—is one of the central issues in the philosophy of music
Precludes any notion of the written text as fixed and eternal, because signification, representation, and the substitution of one meaning or context for another all occur indefinitely within it and without closure. Writing works in such a way that it engages signified meaning “in its own economy so that it always signifies again and differs... [That] which is written is never identical to itself.”1 The centre that would enclose this economy, that could cause the chain of signification to close itself by linking the origin and the end and boiling all substitutions down to a single, cohesive interpretation, would transgress this structure of writing
3 Derrida, ‘An Interview with Jacques Derrida,’ in Acts of Literature, p. 64. Order to accommodate this insight clearly does not require that concern for compositional intention and authenticity be abandoned—it sets in motion a process of critical thought that opens the field of musical interpretation beyond its traditional boundaries, making room for an ethics inclusive of practices and performances otherwise discouraged by traditional philosophies of music, and intensifying rather than obscuring the issue of musical identity
Summary
The issue of musical identity—of what defines works of music, gives each its unique character and distinguishes them from one another—is one of the central issues in the philosophy of music. The difference between the traditional approach and an approach issuing from a Derridean concept of writing is that while for the former the transparent representation of the work in performance is a practical impossibility, for the latter both transparent representation and the-work-in-itself are a structural impossibility.
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