The intuitive conception of musical composition holds that composers are creators: Beethoven brought his Fifth Symphony into existence just as a sculptor brings a statue into existence. This view, often termed "musical creationism," aligns seamlessly with our everyday practices of praising composers for their originality and enforcing copyrights over their works. However, when we consider the nature of a musical work as something that can be repeatedly performed in vastly different times and places, creationism encounters severe ontological difficulties. If the Fifth Symphony is a physically created artifact, it must be localized in time and space, yet no single performance or printed score constitutes the work itself; rather, the work is something instantiated by these various performances.
In response to this ontological problem, some philosophers endorse musical Platonism, the counterintuitive theory that musical works are eternal, abstract types. On this view, composers do not create works; they discover them. Critics of Platonism frequently dismiss the theory by arguing that it strips the composer of artistic agency. If the symphony already existed eternally, these critics argue, Beethoven merely stumbled upon it, rendering our aesthetic appreciation of his creative genius fundamentally misguided.
This criticism, however, rests on a profound misunderstanding of both abstract objects and the nature of artistic discovery. The overarching central thesis to be drawn here is that musical Platonism, despite its initial clash with common sense, provides the only philosophically coherent account of a musical work's repeatability, and it accomplishes this without diminishing the composer's genius once we recognize that the "discovery" of an abstract type requires profound aesthetic imagination. When a mathematician formulates a complex proof, we do not deny their brilliance simply because the mathematical truths existed prior to their articulation. Similarly, the composer's genius lies in navigating an infinite space of eternal sound-structures and selecting, through immense creative effort, the exact structure that perfectly realizes their aesthetic intentions.
Which one of the following most accurately expresses the central thesis of the passage?
- Although it contradicts intuitive views of composition, musical Platonism offers the only coherent explanation for the repeatability of musical works and successfully preserves the composer's creative agency by defining discovery as an active, imaginative process.Answer
- BThe critics of musical Platonism fundamentally misunderstand the nature of abstract objects by failing to recognize that discovering an eternal sound-structure requires just as much aesthetic brilliance as formulating a mathematical proof.
- CBecause artworks are not localized in time and cannot be identified with any single physical instantiation, all artistic creation must be understood as the imaginative discovery of eternally existing abstract structures.
- DMusical Platonism is a counterintuitive theory which posits that because musical works can be repeatedly performed, composers do not truly create their works but merely stumble upon pre-existing eternal types.
- EA composer's genius lies in their ability to bring a musical work into existence through an immense creative effort, rather than engaging in the mere passive observation of pre-existing abstract objects.