On the Phenomenological-Ontological Status of Musical Performance

It is commonly believed that the performer performs the musical work, but in this article, I argue that the performer performs not so much the work, but rather only its performance. To conduct my argument, I first analyse the object-related and event-related aspects of the musical work, taking into account Puy’s ontological theory of nested-types. Next, I examine the main artistic and philosophical intuitions regarding musical performance. In the subsequent part of the article, drawing upon Husserl’s concept of “appresentation”, I assert that musical performance is not only a phenomenalization of the musical work but also its ontologization. Finally, I restate the phenomenological perspective in light of the established findings and current ontological debates, especially concerning the concepts of type/token, Platonism, work-as-performance, and nested-types theory. In the summary, I point out potential problems with the proposed thesis and present further research perspectives in the philosophy of music on musical performance.