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Representation in Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
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Extract

Music may be used to express emotion, to heighten a drama, to emphasize the meaning of a ceremony; but it is nevertheless an abstract art, with no power to represent the world. Representation, as I understand it, is a property that does not belong to music.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 51 , Issue 197 , July 1976 , pp. 273 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976

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References

1 Cooke, Deryck, The Language of Music (Oxford, 1959)Google Scholar.

2 See, for example, Wollheim, R., Art and its Objects (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Goodman, N., Languages of Art (London, 1969)Google Scholar; and, in relation to the present subject: Urmson, J. O., ‘Representation in Music’, in Philosophy and the Arts, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures, Vol. 6, 1971–1972 (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

3 Cf. Frege's strictly comparable idea that only in the context of a sentence do words have ‘Bedeutung’, and the holistic view of language which springs from that insight: see Dummett, M., Frege: Philosophy of Language (London, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 Many considerations relevant to the logical status of sounds are raised by Strawson, in Individuals, chs. 1 and 2 (London, 1959).

5 On the question what might be meant by a ‘strictly visual property’ see the admirable discussion in Grice, H. P., ‘Some Remarks about the Senses’ in Butler, R. J. (ed.), Analytical Philosophy, First Series (Oxford, 1966)Google Scholar.

6 It is precisely such a model of musical understanding that is implicit in Howard's, V. A. attempt to apply Goodman's theory of representation to music: see ‘On Representational Music’, Noûs, 1972Google Scholar.

7 For further remarks on ‘understanding music’ see my Art and Imagination, ch. 12 (London, 1974).