The Primacy of Practice in the Ontology of Art

Abstract

structureless, eternally existent typesthen there would seem to be a serious question as to the intelligibility of attributing properties such as Liszt-influenced and original to of music Here, perhaps, we have a case in which mature philosophical theory should prompt us to revisit assumptions that we have hitherto accepted unreflectively. (pp. 257-258) The sentences in which we seem to commit ourselves to such properties being genuine properties of must be seen as misrepresenting their logical formthey are really about the acts of composers, not about their works, since works of music are types, and types, we have noted, are modally inflexible lows that their natures cannot be influenced by the actions of composers. It was Brahms who was so influenced in his composition of his Second Piano Sonata, not the sonata itself (p. 258). (3) Dodd affirms that the thesis that understanding a work of music as music requires the listener to hear it against a background of knowledge of the musico-historical context in which it was composed conflicts head on with the doctrine of moderate empiricism that we