Transcript Seven desiderata for an adequate theory of musical expressiveness

Desiderata for a satisfactory theory
of musical expressiveness
1. Analogy requirement
2. Extendability requirement
3. Externality requirement
4. Immediacy requirement
5. Generality requirement
6. Affectivity requirement
7. Valuability requirement
Jerrold Levinson, “Musical expressiveness”, 1996.
1. Analogy requirement

Musical expressiveness should be seen
as parallel or closely analogous to
expression in its most literal sense, that
is, the manifesting of psychological states
through outward signs, most notably,
behavior. (p. 91).
2. Extendability requirement

Musical expressiveness should be seen
to be related to expressiveness in other
arts, either by being transparently a
species of expressiveness in art
generally, according to some plausible
account of that, or else a close relative
of expressiveness as exhibited in other
arts, where the divergence is explicable
in terms of salient differences in the
media involved. (p. 91).
3. Externality requirement

Musical expressiveness should be seen
to belong unequivocally to the music—to
be a property or aspect thereof—and not
to the listener or performer or composer.
(p. 91).
4. Immediacy requirement

Musical expressiveness should be
something an attuned listener
experiences or perceives immediately,
rahter than arrives at intellectually,
through reasoning or weighing of
evidence, at least in basic cases, i.e. ones
of simple expression. (p. 92-2).
5. Generality requirement

Musical expressiveness may conceivably
be of states too specific for words, but it
must also comprise, and centrally, familiar
psychological states of a general sort. (p.
92).
6. Affectivity requirement

Musical expressiveness should be such
that, when perceived or registered by a
listener, evocxation of feeling or affect, or
the imagination of feeling, naturally, if not
inevitably, ensues. (p. 92).
7. Valuability requirement

Musical expressiveness should be such
that experience of it is or can be valuable,
and something that contributes, at least
normally, to the valueof pieces that
possess it. (p. 92).