Brains, Persons, and Society *** ABSTRACTS    Cervelli, Persone e Società ***ABSTRACTS

Stefano Predelli

The Sound of Music

This essay criticizes the dominant account of the relationship between a musical work and its properties of sound, that is, the dominant account of the work-performance relation. According to the current invariantist view, musical works are associated with metaphysically fixed constraints on the properties of sound for their correct performances. I argue that invariantism is at odds with certain important intuitions on the role of performances, and I defend a contextualist alternative.