TY - JOUR
AU - Kraut, Robert
AB - Footnotes 1 Ted Gioia, The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). 2 Hear, for example, Lonnie Plaxico, Melange (Blue Note Records compact disc, 32355, 2001); Lonnie Plaxico, Live at the 5:01 Jazz Bar (Plax Music compact disc, 2002). 3 Hear, for example, Miles Davis, “Time After Time,”Time After Time (Sony compact disc, 5113982, 2003) and John Coltrane, Meditations (Impulse! compact disc, 199, recorded 1966). 4 See, for example, Hilary Putnam, “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” in Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers, vol. II (Cambridge University Press, 1979), pp. 215–271. 5 Rudolf Carnap, “Empiricism, Semantics, and Ontology,” reprinted in Rudolf Carnap, Meaning and Necessity (The University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 205–221. 6 Clive Bell, Art (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958), p. 17. 7 Bell, Art, p. 27. 8 Here lurks a familiar controversy. One view is that music can be appreciated for itself without any contextual information: music somehow wears its aesthetic significance on its surface. Thus, aesthetically relevant features are somehow given in the auditory experience of a musical performance, independent of collateral information about genre, performer psychology, and so forth. A clear statement of this sentiment is provided by Bill E. Lawson in “Jazz and the African‐American Experience: The Expressiveness of African‐American Music” in Language, Mind and Art: Essays in Appreciation and Analysis, in Honor of Paul Ziff, ed. Dale Jamieson (Dordrecht, Holland: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), pp. 131–142. The opposing sentiment, of course, is that proper experience of music requires substantial familiarity with the relevant genre (and perhaps other factors), which in turn demands substantial background information and experience. A comprehending jazz listener must, for example, hear melodic choices against the backdrop of the harmonic structure (he or she must be able to “hear the chord changes”); a comprehending listener must discern thematic understatement, which in turn requires familiarity with the tendency of other players in the genre to fill up space with gratuitous arpeggios. And so on. Hearing a musical performance is thus analogous to hearing a linguistic utterance: without appropriate knowledge of the genre, or of the language, relevant aesthetic features are not discernible. For further discussion of this theme, see my “Perceiving the Music Correctly” in The Interpretation of Music, ed. Michael Krausz (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 103–116. 9 Wes Montgomery, The Montgomery Brothers (Fantasy LP, 3308, 1960); rereleased on Wes Montgomery, Groove Brothers (Milestone compact disc, MCD‐47076‐2, 1998). 10 See Arthur Danto, “The Artworld,” Journal of Philosophy 61 (1964) : 571 – 584 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 11 I attribute this “institutional” theory to Danto solely on the basis of his 1964 essay, “The Artworld,” but the attribution is controversial. Both Robert Stecker and Richard Eldridge have impressed upon me (in private communications) that later Danto moves away from such a theory, and occasionally denies having ever endorsed it. David Carrier observes that the central claim of the Institutional Theory (viz., “what defined art depended upon the decisions made by authorities within the art world”) is more aptly attributed to George Dickie, and has “nothing to do with Danto's views” ( David Carrier, “Introduction: Danto and His Critics: Art History, Historiography and After the End of Art,” History and Theory 37 1998 : 12) . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close See Arthur Danto, The Transfiguration of the Commonplace (Harvard University Press, 1981), and especially “Responses and Replies” in Danto and His Critics, ed. Mark Rollins (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1993), pp. 193–216. For present purposes, it suffices that some time‐slice of Danto is plausibly described here. 12 Deeper analysis reveals that Bell's theory might harbor similar observer‐dependence. On one reading, his notion of significant form—that property in terms of which art is defined—is constituted by the responses of sensitive observers. For an object or event to have significant form just is for it to be disposed to induce the “aesthetic emotion” among sensitive perceivers. Thus construed, significant form has the status of a Lockean secondary property: a property constituted by dispositions to induce certain responses among observers. If this is right, then Bell's definition of ‘art’ in terms of significant form rests essentially on the perceptual/emotional reactions among those within some relevant population. Such an interpretation would enable him to avoid the charge of circularity: for the interdependence of significant form and the aesthetic emotion would emerge as yet another instance of conceptual holism. The key point here is that the contrast between Bell's theory—which highlights properties possessed by certain objects and events—and Danto's theory—which highlights social‐institutional reactions within certain populations to certain objects and events—might not be such an extreme metaphysical contrast after all. 13 I have not been able to locate the source of this remark; I suspect it is attributable to either Nat Hentoff or Leonard Feather. 14 Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come (Atlantic LP, SD 1317, 1959). 15 Hear, for example, Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity (ESP LP, Disc No. 1002; recorded 1964). 16 Gioia, The Imperfect Art, p. 66. 17 Lee B. Brown, “‘Feeling My Way’: Jazz Improvisation and Its Vicissitudes—A Plea for Imperfection,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58 (2000) : 113 – 123 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 18 Gioia, The Imperfect Art, p. 66. 19 Ibid. 20 On Return To Forever, Hymn of The Seventh Galaxy (Polydor compact disc, 825 336–2, recorded 1973). 21 A notable exception is the work of John Dewey; see his Art As Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1934). A helpful discussion of the process/product distinction in the improvisational arts is R. Keith Sawyer, “Improvisation and the Creative Process: Dewey, Collingwood, and the Aesthetics of Spontaneity,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism , 58 (2000) : 149 – 161 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 22 Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?, trans. Aylmer Maude (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1960). 23 See, for example, Denis Dutton, “Artistic Crimes” in The Forger's Art: Forgery and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Denis Dutton (University of California Press, 1983). 24 Quoted in Julie Coryell and Laura Friedman, Jazz‐Rock Fusion (Milwaukee: Hal Leonard, 1978), p. 171. 25 Cited in Europe Jazz Network Musicians: Jim Hall, http://www.E_J_N_‐JIMHALL.mht>. 26 Quoted in Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz (The University of Chicago Press, 1994), p. 192. 27 Liner notes for Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come. 28 Caution is required here: “knowledge by acquaintance” and reports of “the phenomenologically given” must be treated with epistemological care. Observation reports are notoriously theory‐laden. Despite the theist's claims to direct experiential knowledge of God's existence, introspection is insufficient to verify that God, rather than some other phenomenon, stands at the originating causal node of the experiential event. Similarly, despite the musician's claims to direct experiential knowledge that jazz is a linguistic form, introspection is insufficient: perhaps music is not a language, despite contrary appearances to (some) performers. Nevertheless, an adequate aesthetic theory must explain such appearances; it should, moreover, explain the connection between the way music is experienced by performers such as Martino, and the way it is experienced by listeners with a variety of other backgrounds (thanks to Geoffrey Hellman for raising the latter issue in this form). 29 See, for example, Donald Davidson, “Truth and Meaning” in Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 17–36. 30 Thus, aesthetic properties depend essentially on the artistic category to which an artwork belongs. The idea was advocated by Kendall Walton years ago, independent of any art‐as‐language thesis. But note that the category relativity of aesthetic properties emerges as a corollary of the art‐as‐language thesis, by the following argument: (1) artistic genres are languages; (2) semantic properties depend essentially on the language to which an utterance or inscription belongs; (3) aesthetic properties are a species of semantic properties; therefore, aesthetic properties depend essentially on the genre and/or style to which an artwork belongs (suppressed premises should be provided by the reader as an exercise). See Kendal Walton, “Categories of Art,” Philosophical Review 79 (1970) : 334 – 367 . Google Scholar OpenURL Placeholder Text WorldCat Close 31 These questions are explored in my “On Pluralism and Indeterminacy,” in Midwest Studies in Philosophy XVI, ed. P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein (University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), pp. 209–225. 32 See Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion (Princeton University Press, 1956). 33 R. G. Collingwood, The Principles of Art (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 317. 34 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), p. 167. 35 For a perceptive exploration of the forces behind Collingwood's claim that “art must be language,” see Garry Hagberg, Art As Language (Cornell University Press, 1995), chap. 2. 36 Ethnomusicologist Paul Berliner offers the following: “bassist Chuck Israels says ‘playing with musicians is like a conversation. If when I speak, you interject some comment of your own, that keeps me going.’ This chapter is an attempt to expand on this metaphor, frequently repeated by jazz musicians. The chapter raises such questions as: What does it mean to call musical interaction a ‘conversation’? How is it like a conversation?” These are precisely the right questions; unfortunately, Berliner makes little theoretical progress toward answering them. See Paul Berliner, “Give and Take: The Collective Conversation of Jazz Performance,” in Creativity in Performance, ed. R. Keith Sawyer (Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997), pp. 9–41. 37 See, for example, the theory of innate pattern languages provided by Christopher Alexander in The Timeless Way of Building (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979). 38 This paper originated as a talk given to the Departments of Philosophy and Music at Illinois State University, in conjunction with performance in their “Music Under the Stars” concert series (January 2003). The primary goal was to articulate the current perspective of a working musician, rather than to provide a comprehensive, scholarly inventory of the literature. Thus there are points in the argument (for example, my rejection of expressionist theories of musical significance) at which relevant work of other writers is unexplored. Thanks to Jim Swindler for his gracious hospitality, and to Bruce Hartung, Henry Pratt, Julian Cole, Lee Brown, Daniel Farrell, Ted Gioia, Bill Lycan, Geoffrey Hellman, Eddy Zemach, Ken Walton, Jerrold Levinson, Pedro Amaral, Mark Lance, Robert Stecker, Richard Eldridge, and Philip Alperson for helpful discussion and comments on earlier drafts. Special gratitude to Tony Monaco and Louis Tsamous—my interlocutors in the “seamless groove machine”—for ongoing stimulation and support. Article PDF first page preview Close PDF This content is only available as a PDF. © The Author(s) 2020 This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model) © The Author(s) 2020
TI - Why Does Jazz Matter to Aesthetic Theory?
JF - The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
DO - 10.1111/j.0021-8529.2005.00176.x
DA - 2005-01-19
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/why-does-jazz-matter-to-aesthetic-theory-cuS1BXHS7j
SP - 3
EP - 15
VL - 63
IS - 1
DP - DeepDyve
ER -