Third-Party Uses of Music and Musical Pragmatics

Abstract

Noël Carroll begins his essay on “Art, Intention, and Conversation” with the following observation: In the normal course of affairs, when confronted with an utterance, our standard cognitive goal is to figure out what the speaker intends to say. And, on one very plausible theory of language, the meaning of an utterance is explicated in terms of the speaker's intention to reveal to an auditor that the speaker intends the auditor to respond in a certain way. That is, the meaning of a particular language token is explained by means of certain of a speaker's intentions. Likewise, in interpreting or explaining nonverbal behavior, we typically advert to the agent's intentions.1 Carroll stakes out the normative discursive context in order to argue against anti‐intentionalism in the interpretation of literature, painting, film, and other fine arts, anti‐intentionalism of the sort proposed and defended by Roland Barthes and Monroe Beardsley (and subsequently by George Dickie and W. Kent Wilson).2 While Carroll notes that “arguments of many sorts have been advanced for nearly fifty years to deny the relevance of authorial intention to the interpretation of works of art,” the crux of the matter for anti‐intentionalists is the belief that “the realm of art and literature …[is] sufficiently different from other domains of human intercourse so that the difference mandates a different form of interpretation, one in which authorial intent is irrelevant.”3 Sometimes, however, the domains of art and ordinary discourse coincide. In this article, I will document several instances of when musical works are embedded in the context of ordinary words and actions, what I will call (for want of a better term) “third‐party uses” of music. First‐party uses occur when the composer is also the performer who addresses his or her audience directly; second‐party uses of a piece of music involve a performer acting as an agent for the composer (that is, our normative concert hall setting). A third‐party use of a piece of music or a musical performance occurs when someone takes a piece written or performed by another person or group and presents it to a listener (or listeners) for their own communicative purposes. In so doing, they usurp the composer's original discursive intentions. More precisely, a third‐party use of music involves the presentation of a work in a nonnormative musical context and with a discernable intention separate from simply that of listening to the music for its own sake. That is, if the normative musical context is the concert hall presentation of a piece or the living‐room listening to a recording or radio station, a third‐party use involves music performed or presented “somewhere else.”4 To be sure, the boundaries between second‐ and third‐party uses of music may be less clear than this. A concert performer may have his or her own distinct discursive aims in performing a piece in a certain way, which could range from the willful flouting of historically normative performance conventions to using music (and the act of making music) to comment on nonmusical events and situations. Isaac Stern's performance of Bach's unaccompanied violin music in Israel, in the midst of a SCUD missile attack during the first Gulf War, would be an example of the latter.5 Third‐party uses of musical performances are often an example of what Stephen Davies has called “tertiary expressions” of emotional expression, [expressions] that, through their use of conventions and rituals … permit the audience to become aware of the agent's [that is, the third party's] intentions through its experience of the work, rather than via independent sources. That is, the conventional nature of the actions [performance] or of their product is such as to make the intentions of the agent clear as regards the expressiveness of his or her actions or their products.6 As we will see, in the case of third‐party uses the “conventional nature of the actions” in the music interacts with the intentions of the third‐party “agent.” Note that Davies presumes that the “conventional nature of the actions” has its own raison d'etre, and one reason to examine third‐party uses is that they may help us uncover the composer's intentions vis à vis the expressive properties of his or her work. Third‐party uses typically involve recordings, though it is possible to imagine hiring a string quartet to present a musical valentine, for example. Examples of third‐party uses include lullabies, musical valentines, and other musical tokens of friendship. I will start, however, with a rather different third‐party use of music, that of “Mozart in the parking lot.” Next I explore the parallels between third‐party musical presentations and linguistic speech acts, and argue that in a number of cases both the expressive properties of the music and their ability to elicit an affective response in the listener are crucial for the realization of the third party's pragmatic aims. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of third‐party uses of music for our understanding of musical expression and affect more generally. While a third party's discursive intentions overshadow those of the composer, the composer's original intentions often are relevant; in such cases the third party's intentions supervene upon those of the composer. An examination of third‐party uses can clarify the expressive potential of a piece of music by embedding it in a relatively thick discursive context. This, in turn, may help clarify the composer's intentions when the work is returned to the thinner context of the concert hall. Even in the concert hall some conversational aspects of the relationship between composer and listener remain. Thus I will posit that the “discursive difference” between ordinary and artistic communicative contexts is not one of kind (as claimed by anti‐intentionalists) but mainly one of degree. As the LA Times recently reported, a new use for classical music has been found, as a kind of auditory “thug repellant”: Opera and classical music have been piped into Canadian parks, Australian railway stations, 7‐Eleven parking lots and, most recently, London Underground stops. According to most reports, it works. Figures from the British capital released in January showed robberies in the subway down by 33%, assaults on staff by 25% and vandalism of trains and stations by 37%. Sources in other locales have reported fewer muggings and drug deals. London authorities now plan to expand the playing of Mozart, Vivaldi, Handel and opera (sung by Pavarotti) from three tube stations to an additional 35.7 Most of the time when someone presents or performs a piece of music, their intent is not to drive away their In a parking however, it that to the of some the is what is While in a cases this may be to to be on and music, and not on the or though one to that the music of the would also the of classical music in this is the it us this particular third‐party use works. A parking presents a recording to some is however, that the intent of the parking is not for the to have an experience and the the parking to the with the and his intention is, of for to the parking as the this often the the recording is the of a with a this with a concert hall presentation of the we that the of a performance is, the very to the audience an with that (and as as the of an is if and when the audience have the I not that they to the work or but also that they its its expressive and so for it is that the of in is not expressive of rather we can with that not the piece to be expressive of if the in the of his in and a listener that this work expressive of the performance for that would to have in a way. 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