Is Moruzzi's Musical Stage Theory Advantaged?

In a recent article, Caterina Moruzzi (2018) develops and defends her musical stage theory. This discussion response supposes that Moruzzi's development and defense of her stage theory are satisfactory, but it disputes her case for thinking that it has advantages over key rivals—the traditional type/token theory and musical perdurantism.

In Section i, I contrast the three competitors by their differing explanations of musical work multiplicity. In Section ii.a, I dispute Moruzzi's claim that her stage theory's putative ability to explain our direct epistemological access to musical works advantages it over the type/token theory or musical perdurantism. In Section ii.b, I reject Moruzzi's argument for thinking that her musical stage theory better handles score-departing performances than does the normative type/token theory. In Section ii.c, I reject Moruzzi's argument for claiming that her musical stage theory handles improvisations better than the type/token theory. In Section iii, I conclude and hint at an alternative motivation for musical stage theory.

Dominant explanations are instantiablist. They say that multiple musical works are instantiable or generic entities—kinds, types, or properties—that can be instantiated by several occurrences (see Wolterstorff 1980; Dodd 2007; Letts 2018).

One instantiablist view is the traditional type-token theory, henceforth the “type-token” theory. This theory identifies each multiple musical work with a type, where these are construed as abstracta—entities lacking spatial location—that are instantiated, or “tokened,” by concrete—spatially located—performance-events (Dodd 2007, 42).

Concerns about construing musical works as abstracta have led some to seek alternatives to the type-token theory (Caplan and Matheson 2006, 59–60; Tillman 2011, 14). One alternative is performance perdurantism, henceforth “perdurantism.” On this view, each multiple musical work is a mereological fusion of its performances, themselves concrete events made up of momentary stages united by an I-relation appropriate to musical works (Caplan and Matheson 2006, 61–62, 65; 2008, 80; see also Lewis 1976). Perdurantism explains (M) by claiming that a single musical work, qua mereological fusion, has several performances as its proper parts (Caplan and Matheson 2006, 64–65; 2008, 84–85).

Moruzzi's performance stage theory, henceforth “stage theory,” is a concretist view fundamentally similar to perdurantism, but it departs in key ways. First, Moruzzi's stages—her I-related concreta—are whole performances, rather than momentary performance-slices.¹ Second, stage theory does not identify musical works with fusions of performances. Rather, on stage theory, “the musical work is a stage/performance connected by a privileged relationship [the I-relation for musical works] to other stages/performances” (2018, 342).

That is, for Moruzzi, each typical occurrence of a musical work name has some referentially focal performance as its semantic value—the works we ordinarily talk about are performances (345, see also Sider 2001, 191–192).² This distinctive thesis precludes stage theory from explaining (M) in whole-part terms. Instead, stage theory explains the multiplicity of a work (qua performance) by appeal to the multiplicity of its I-related performances (Moruzzi 2018, 345).

Moruzzi presents a compact case for thinking that her view is advantaged over rivals (348–349). This article develops and disputes her arguments.

As interpreted here, Moruzzi's arguments for claiming that stage theory is advantaged over rival views appear unpersuasive. Hopefully, this article helps sharpen focus on alternative motivations for musical stage theory. One influential argument for stage theory about continuants is that it better explains how they undergo intrinsic change than do rival perdurantist and endurantist accounts (Sider 2000 and 2001, 92–98). If musical works undergo intrinsic change (Rohrbaugh 2003, 188–189), a parallel argument favoring musical stage theory over perdurantism and the popular endurantist conception of the type-token theory might provide a more persuasive argument for musical stage theory.¹⁰