What constitutes a 'work'?

[Hofrat]

There was once a lump of granite in Florence, Italy. Then a little guy named Michelangelo came a long and chipped away at it with a hammer and chisel to show the world that this lump of granite was really a statue of David.

Amongst the blood, sweat, and tears that went into David was an enormous amount of creative effort. Of course a sculpture is a work in any system you notate it.

[Sorrano]

This returns us in effect to the question "what constitutes a work". Is an aleatoric 'realization' a "work"? Is a "work" necessarily written down in score form and always reproducible? At play is an idea developed by Lydia Goehr (yes, daughter of the composer Goehr) in her book "The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works" (Oxford, 2007), wherein she posits the "work concept" that crystallized around circa 1800. The question equally applies to improvisationary genres such as jazz and even film music.

I think you are confusing the representation/interpretation with the actual concept of a work. The work consists of a set or sets of instructions that have been devised by the composer/artist. In terms of sculpture, the work is the end result and the interpretation falls on those who view/experience the end result. In ballet there are choreographers, composers, etc. who create the instructions which the dancers and musicians, then interpret to present their view on the work that was created.

What exactly, then, is an aleatoric realization? Is it pure improvisation? Is it based on randomization of events? I do not see a realization being designated a "work" of itself (speaking strictly in music) but rather an interpretation of the work. With respect to Cage's 4'3", I would designate that as a "work" (on the surface) as there was effort made to create a set of instructions to a performer or to groups of performers.

You referred to an architect and a building that results from the blueprint the architect creates. The building is not the architect's "work", but what is on the blueprint is his work. The building is the interpretation of the set of instructions on the blueprint, or of the work itself.

[Sorrano]

There was once a lump of granite in Florence, Italy. Then a little guy named Michelangelo came a long and chipped away at it with a hammer and chisel to show the world that this lump of granite was really a statue of David.

Amongst the blood, sweat, and tears that went into David was an enormous amount of creative effort. Of course a sculpture is a work in any system you notate it.

The "set of instructions", that I continue to obstinately refer to, comes within the sculpture himself (or herself). The interpretation of the work that is physically created falls upon the shoulders of those who view the sculpture and determine each's own reaction. There is no doubt that David is a work that came with much preparation and thought.

[Hofrat]

From the same book that gave you the definition of WORK gives us the definition of the following:

ALEATORY: From the Latin "aleatorius" of the gambler, from the French "aleator" a gambler, and "alea" a dice game 1. depending on an uncertain event or contingency as to both profit and loss. 2. relating to good or especially bad luck.

Is someone suggesting that works--be they literature, art, or music--are merely the result of a toss of the dice?

[Sorrano]

From the same book that gave you the definition of WORK gives us the definition of the following:

ALEATORY: From the Latin "aleatorius" of the gambler, from the French "aleator" a gambler, and "alea" a dice game 1. depending on an uncertain event or contingency as to both profit and loss. 2. relating to good or especially bad luck.

Is someone suggesting that works--be they literature, art, or music--are merely the result of a toss of the dice?

That goes right back to your definition, Hofrat. Is it produced by an expenditure of creative effort? If not, then I cannot view it as a work.

[Quijote]

It seems, to quote Michael elsewhere on this forum, that we are doing this subject "to death". Allow me to try and resuscitate it. In summary so far then, it seems that there are conflicting opinions as to what constitutes “a work of music”. The original question (as I tried to formulate it) was really about music’s ontological status compared to more “physically real” art objects such as painting, sculpture and so on, and emphatically not about any aesthetic judgement. You will recall that I was (and still am) somewhat puzzled as to where the musical “work” exists : in score, in our collective memories, on CD or other medium, in some sort of ideal Platonic meta-space, or just simply in its performance.

Partly, of course, the ‘semantics’ of these sorts of questions don’t help. Would it help to consider the words “art” and “work” as process and verb? Should we consider the “work of music” as an object or more as an action?

To illustrate the latter, a little (true) anecdote : two modernist art critics (Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg) were arguing this very point. Greenberg asserted that a work of art should be understood as an act, to which Rosenberg replied by asking how an act could be hung on a wall.

Giggles aside, music is different, for surely a musical work “is not reducible to a representative object – score, recording or other. A musical work remains a function of performance […]" (Michael P. Steinberg, Listening to Reason : Culture, Subjectivity, and Nineteenth-Century Music, Princeton University Press, 2004)

[Peter]

I think the matter is being made unduly complicated! How can you perform a work unless it already exists? And it exists as a published score just as a book.

[Sorrano]

However, a performance is based upon instructions that are contained in a score. A composer may never have a work performed during his lifetime. Does that nullify the composition being a work? I do not see the performance, recording, etc. being a "work", rather being an interpretation of a work. It is similar with a play; instructions are being adhered to or adapted according to circumstance. But it is all based upon an existing document that represents someone else's creative labor.

[Quijote]

I think the matter is being made unduly complicated! How can you perform a work unless it already exists? And it exists as a published score just as a book.

Not so fast, Peter. We're not going to settle nearly 200 years' of philosophical debate quite yet! The "work-concept" that I have been alluding to above is crucial to this debate, especially as it became regulative around 1800, together with the rise of the Romantic notion of music's aesthetic autonomy that allowed it to become reconceived as a fine art. And the impact of that conceptual shift resonates to this day, in how it (classical music and modern classical music of today) is theorized, taught, practiced, produced, diffused, received, consumed and so on. It strikes me as paradoxical how music had to be reconceived not as an activity (as it was in Bach's day, for example) but as a body of "works" that "exist" in some sort of 'imaginary museum', even though in the Steinberg quote above we feel intuitively that a 'work of music' is first and foremost a function of performance. That we conceptualize a performance art as a sort of 'ideal object' of course reflects our own particular Western approach. It does not address musics that are essentially non-notated, based on improvisation, or musical practices from other cultures. It seems, in short, that we are quick to label certain music as "works", and not others, without really understanding the ideologies that underpin the term.

[Peter]

Not so fast, Peter. We're not going to settle nearly 200 years' of philosophical debate quite yet! The "work-concept" that I have been alluding to above is crucial to this debate, especially as it became regulative around 1800, together with the rise of the Romantic notion of music's aesthetic autonomy that allowed it to become reconceived as a fine art. And the impact of that conceptual shift resonates to this day, in how it (classical music and modern classical music of today) is theorized, taught, practiced, produced, diffused, received, consumed and so on. It strikes me as paradoxical how music had to be reconceived not as an activity (as it was in Bach's day, for example) but as a body of "works" that "exist" in some sort of 'imaginary museum', even though in the Steinberg quote above we feel intuitively that a 'work of music' is first and foremost a function of performance. That we conceptualize a performance art as a sort of 'ideal object' of course reflects our own particular Western approach. It does not address musics that are essentially non-notated, based on improvisation, or musical practices from other cultures. It seems, in short, that we are quick to label certain music as "works", and not others, without really understanding the ideologies that underpin the term.

Notation allows the recreation of a composer's thoughts which are fully realised during performance - it exists as a text if you like from which succeeding generations can perform, providing the notation is fully understood. Beethoven would have no difficulty in recognising his music from today's performances though of course he would disagree with some interpretations! Had he not notated his thoughts we could not begin to recreate his music today - it would no longer exist - so it is the written score that exists as a work and enables reproduction.
Improvisation is by its very nature different with every performance and exists only during performance - it is not intended to be recreated and is not therefore 'a work', but a performance.