RT Journal Article
T1 Ethical Issues on Musical Appropriation
A1 García-Carril Puy, Nemesio
AB This paper aims to shed light on the question of whether musical appropriation is ethi- cally unobjectionable. James Young (2021) has recently advanced a position on this topic, according to which, whereas the appropriation of a whole work is uncontroversially non- permissible, the appropriation of parts of a work is usually permissible. He grounds this view in ontological matters and in a criterion of fair use in terms of economic harm to the source work’s composer. I argue that, pace Young, we cannot make general ethical claims about musical appropriation because their truth is sensitive to the musical genres that the involved works belong to. First, I clarify the scope of musical appropriation by means of considerations on musical practices and ontology. This will reveal that versions and covers are not genuine cases of musical appropriation. In a second step, I consider a specific kind of musical appropriation: using the first measures of a source work as the first measures of a secondary work. I show that, even if we assume Young’s ontological framework and his criterion on fair use, the instances of this kind of musical appropriation count as fair or unfair depending on the musical genres of the involved works due to their normative implications for the composition and appreciation of those works.
YR 2021
FD 2021
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/97020
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/97020
LA eng
NO Puy, Nemesio G. C. (2021). “Ethical Issues on Musical Appropriation”. Disputatio 62, 329–354.
DS Docta Complutense
RD 6 abr 2025