A piece of music in the dynamics of the relationship between artefact and fact

Abstract

In this paper, I shall consider the ontological duality and functional interchangeability of artefact and fact in the field of music, proceeding from the assumption that every artefact is at the same time a fact, yet every fact is not necessarily an artefact. Thereby, I understand the fact in the sense of everything that exists in reality, and bears an enduring identity as an object, phenomenon or information. By artefact, I understand a material product of human activity. Such a starting point, enables, in each piece of music, the multifaceted consideration of the dynamics in the relationship between artefact and fact. On this occasion, I shall exemplify this relationship on Svetlana Savić's compositions The Sonnets for female voice, violoncello, piano and electronics (2012), from three characteristic aspects: 1) their ontology in the score and at the phenomenal level; 2) the ensemble, presenting a specific ontological unity of artefact and fact, the unity for which the compositions are created; and 3) environmental sounds as a fact in the shaping of compositions as artefact. All three aspects of consideration are expected to point to the complexity of the relationship between artefact and fact, to their particular, individual profiling, but also their mutual resignification in a piece of music, owing to the nature and the kind of the piece's relevant 'protagonists'.