Goehr — The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works

Author: Lydia Goehr
Title: The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music
Year: 1992
Type: Academic book (Clarendon Press/Oxford; second edition 2007)

The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music is a book by the philosopher Lydia Goehr, published by Clarendon Press in Oxford in 1992, with a revised edition in 2007. Its central claim is that the work-concept became regulative in musical practice around 1800, when there emerged what Goehr calls “the imaginary museum of musical works,” a practice that for the first time understood its activities as the making and interpreting of works of fine art. Central to its historical thesis is the claim that “Bach did not intend to compose musical works.” Its evidence is the history of musical practice before 1800, when, Goehr argues, a performance was judged by whether it affected its audience in a manner appropriate to the occasion, and after it. Gavin Steingo wrote in 2014 that the book had provoked a long series of modifications and rebuttals, with scholars of earlier periods, among them several Baroque specialists, pushing its date back. Reinhard Strohm argued that no such date can be demonstrated because historical change is gradual. Goehr had written in the book that a rough date suffices, and she replied to Strohm that his reasoning would place the work-concept at the first day of musical practice. The 2007 edition carries a new introduction in which she answers misreadings of the book.

Goehr is a professor of philosophy at Columbia University. Clarendon Press published the book in 1992, and Oxford University Press issued a revised edition in 2007 with a foreword by Richard Taruskin.¹

In Steingo’s summary, the book’s central claim is that the work-concept became regulative around 1800, and for Goehr musical works are those that belong in an “imaginary museum,” a term Goehr borrows loosely from André Malraux’s “Museum without Walls.”² Goehr describes that museum as a musical institution and practice that viewed its activities and goals “for the first time” in terms of “the production and interpretation of musical works of fine art.” She writes: “Central to the historical thesis is the claim that Bach did not intend to compose musical works.”³

Before 1800, in Goehr’s account, the success of a performance rested mainly on whether it had affected its audience in a manner appropriate to the occasion. As long as composers provided incomplete or inaccurate scores, the extemporized performance could not acquire “its distinct opposite, namely, the fully compliant performance of a work,” a contrast that in her account emerged fully around 1800.³ Regulative concepts, she writes, function stably “because they are treated as if they were givens and not ‘merely’ as concepts that have artificially emerged and crystallized within a practice.” Goehr also sets out the familiar philosophical view that works have an obscure mode of existence, as “ontological mutants,” a term Steingo traces to the philosopher Alan Tormey.⁴

Steingo wrote in 2014 that the book “has provoked an endless litany of modifications and outright rebuttals,” and that many scholars kept the gist of its argument while pushing the date back, often to the period of their own specialization; several scholars of Baroque music argued that musical works existed earlier.⁵ At a symposium on the book at the University of Liverpool in 1998, published in 2000 as The Musical Work: Reality or Invention?, edited by Michael Talbot, Reinhard Strohm argued that phrases such as “for the first time” rely on “a demonstration that these things had never happened before,” a demonstration he called “manifestly impossible” because historical change is gradual.⁵ Harry White, in Acta Musicologica in 1997, granted that Bach’s cantatas served social function more directly than Beethoven’s keyboard works, but argued that Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme is no less emancipated in musical terms than the “Waldstein” sonata, and that to suggest otherwise “is to mistake the social function of music for its meaning.”⁵

Goehr writes in the book that a “rough” date is satisfactory because conceptual change, like change in practices, has no sharply defined beginning or end.⁵ Replying to Strohm in the Liverpool volume, she argued that his reasoning would lead to the conclusion “that the work–concept existed from the first day of musical practice (whenever that was).”⁵ In the introduction to the 2007 edition she wrote that she “did not say Bach did not compose musical works, only that he had not intended to compose them,” and that if works existed in 1450 “and were named as such” she would be wrong as a matter of fact, though the work-concept still should not be assumed “naturalistically or essentially” to exist in all musical practices.⁶ The listing for the 2007 edition carries Susan McClary’s judgment that it is “the most important book on music aesthetics to appear in the last several decades.”⁷

Key contributions

• The work-concept as a regulative concept that took hold in Western musical practice around 1800.
• The imaginary museum of musical works, a practice organized for the first time around the production and interpretation of works of fine art.
• The claim that Bach did not intend to compose musical works, in a practice where performances were judged by their effect on an occasion.

See also

• Oxford History of Western Music — a history of Western music by the author of the 2007 edition’s foreword
• Classical music — the tradition whose repertory the book calls an imaginary museum