Abstract

The ontological status of musical artworks, or compositions, is a perplexing and perennial philosophical problem. Numerous proposals for characterizing just what sort of things compositions are have been offered from far-ranging perspectives by various thinkers on the matter. One sort of approach which seemed to me to be missing, was a detailed and explicit attempt to regard musical works nominalistically; that is, to construe them solely as individuals. This dissertation is just such an attempt. ;The present proposal seeks to go further than a description in terms of ontological individuality; but additionally investigates the possibility of describing musical compositions as concrete particulars. This thesis is admittedly somewhat radical and even counter-intuitive to some minds; thus, I offer what follows as primarily a hypothetical thought experiment aimed at providing an example of what I shall call a limiting theory. Such a theory is one that contributes to the larger project of staking out the range of options in some given theoretical territory. Other theories of compositions have cast them in terms of such things as universals, abstract entities, objects of imagination, types, kinds, and so forth. My theory tries to cast them in terms of physical objects in order to fill out the array of possible, and I would hope, plausible theoretical proposals. ;A relatively large portion of this dissertation will be given over to comparing and contrasting my theory with three significant alternatives. These proposals are provided by R. G. Collingwood, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and William Webster. I shall present these three theories plus mine as effectively indicating four principal directions that ontological theories may take. Though I do believe that my approach is generally adequate, I do not take it to be necessarily superior to the others on all counts. I make the suggestion that one should select the theoretical construal of musical compositions according to one's preferred overall ontological perspective. My proposal is intended to be particularly appealing to the nominalistically minded