Structural universals, types and musical works

Abstract

The view of musical works as structural universals has been recently presented as a plausible candidate to explain the nature of works of Western classical music. According to A. R. J. Fisher (2023), this view explains five basic intuitions about musical works’ nature: manifestation, repeatability, creatability, destructibility and persistence after the composer’s death. Fisher argues that the structural universalist view is superior to type/token theories insofar as the latter fail to explain destructibility and offer complicated explanations of creatability. And, in case they explain the same phenomena alike, the structural universalist view should be preferred to type/token theories because it is more parsimonious. This paper questions the appeal of the structural universalist view over type/token theories. First, we shall see that the structural universalist view cannot explain musical works’ destructibility without denying other basic intuitions about the persistence of musical works. Second, the structural universalist view will be revealed as unable to explain the creatability intuition properly, even in a complicated way as type/token theories do. And third, the simple way in which type/token theories explain how a musical work is the intentional object of performances, interpretations and appreciation will be contrasted with the difficulties faced by the structural universalist view. These three points will support the idea that the structural universalist view has less explanatory power than type/token theories in musical ontology, which in turn undermines the argument from parsimony against type/token theories.