Hostname: page-component-74656f9884-npj9w Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-11-09T05:20:51.649Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representation in Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, London
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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.

Information

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

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).