期刊名称：Action, Criticism and Theory for Music Education
印刷版ISSN：1545-4517
出版年度：2009
卷号：8
期号：1
出版社：Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, MayDay Group
摘要：“Music” is a general “category of cognition”2 (Durkheim 1963); a socially-created generative
idea where sound is assigned a status function in connection with a personal or social praxis.3
It is, thus, a socially-created reality. Such a reality is not physical reality but, following
philosopher John Searle, it is a social reality—a reality in terms of criteria of social use and
meaning (Searle 1995). Thus Searle distinguishes between physical or intrinsic properties,
and observer relative properties. Physical properties are ontologically objective because they
do not depend on a perceiver or perception: they exist independently of either. Observer
relative properties, however, are ontologically subjective because their mode of existence is
relative to an observer (or observers) and thus vary according to the social group in question
and its needs and practices. Thus, a certain piece of paper has objective physical properties;
but that it is regarded—valued—as “money” is an observer relative function added as a result
of the various practices involved with its use.
The difference between “sound” and “music” is also ontologically social and
subjective. Sound is given the status of music according to certain observer relative features
or qualities assigned to it in terms of the personal or social functions that it is created to serve
or is ‘good for’. Thus, that “sound” is “music” is a socially-constructed reality that presumes
observer relative values conditioned by a particular society—what Searle calls “Background.”
Musical value and meaning, then, do not reside ‘in’ the physical features of constellations of
ordered sound; they are a status function assigned to such configurations according to what
such ordered sounds are socially understood to be ‘good for’.4
