colloquium

Wednesday March 17. 5:15 in room 1L04

John Dyck will present his paper: How Musicologists Ground Musical Properties.

Abstract:
The Musicological Age Debate is a recent debate over the age of “classical” musical works. Some musicologists—call them “Newists”—claim that there were no musical works until the nineteenth century. Other musicologists—call them “Oldists”—claim that musical works have existed for much longer, usually since the fifteenth or sixteenth century. In this paper, I show that the Age Debate (and the truth of Newism and Oldism) often hinges on an interesting philosophical question: are musical properties grounded in folk conceptions, or experts’ conceptions? I then go on to give the question the philosophical treatment it deserves: I consider how the question relates to some philosophical accounts of art generally, and seek possible foundation for both folk and expert grounding in the philosophical literature on art and social practice.