As part of our SACS reaccreditation, Texas Tech has instituted a "Campus Conversation on Ethics." I confess to knowing very little about the finer points of this enterprise, but it's gotten me thinking a bit about what ethics has to do with music and how I can bring this into the classroom. Sure, there are the obvious admonitions--turn in your own work, don't look at other people's papers, etc.--but that to me is academic ethics, not musical ethics.
First of all, we should define "ethics," at least provisionally. For most people, I think, ethics deals with the moral choices one makes. From the academic perspective: is it wrong to pass off someone else's work as my own? More importantly, *why* is it wrong to pass off someone else's work as my own? A different example: is capital punishment wrong? Why is it wrong? Others have summarized ethics as "that which we do when no one is looking."*
By its very nature, then, ethics seems to set up binary oppositions (again, I'm thinking in undergraduate intro-to-philosophy terms, not in any kind of Ph.D. in Philosophy terms). Marcel Cobussen, drawing on French thinkers, defines ethics in music as "hospitality towards the singular or immanent 'other' or 'otherness'." Ethics, then, is the space where we negotiate the boundaries between the known and the other.** Cobussen has published his dissertation on music, ethics, and deconstruction here (it's worth it for the very cool interface). Cobussen's idea appears to lay the groundwork for the ethical practice of music theory, musicology and ethnomusicology--the "music academics."
But what of an ethical performance? If ethics has to do with moral choices, binary oppositions, and the immanent 'other,' how could we give an ethical performance of a piece of music? The decision is not about "good" or "bad" performances--I don't sit down to prepare a composition and think "Do I want to give a good or bad performance of this piece?" The obvious moral choice here has to be the extent to which we value a composer's intent. Numerous questions spring from that statement: is there such a thing as the composer's intent? Assuming there is one, to what extent is it important? Are there occasions when I can subvert the composer's intent? If there is no composer's intent (put another way, if I am anti-intentionalist), how am I to behave?
A more concrete example of ethics in music is suggested by a recent post by Jonathan Bellman at Dial M for Musicology. The last two paragraphs are of particular interest to me: it seems to me to be musically ethical, as Prof. Bellman says, "we must keep our relationship with musical works as up-close and personal as possible." I think therein lies the key to an ethical performance (and, I think as Peter Kivy would argue, an authentic performance). One must first decide on the presence or absence of composer intention and then make decisions based on this. It is possible that a performance of a work is ethical (and/or authentic) despite flying in the face of previous performances/recordings of it, and it is possible for a performance of a work to be unethical (and/or inauthentic) while allegedly conforming to previous performances and the "composer's intention."
*"Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking."
H. Jackson Browne
**These ideas are presented in the abstract to an article by Cobussen that appeared in the Dutch Journal for Music Theory (Volume 7, no. 3. Amsterdam, November 2002)
First of all, we should define "ethics," at least provisionally. For most people, I think, ethics deals with the moral choices one makes. From the academic perspective: is it wrong to pass off someone else's work as my own? More importantly, *why* is it wrong to pass off someone else's work as my own? A different example: is capital punishment wrong? Why is it wrong? Others have summarized ethics as "that which we do when no one is looking."*
By its very nature, then, ethics seems to set up binary oppositions (again, I'm thinking in undergraduate intro-to-philosophy terms, not in any kind of Ph.D. in Philosophy terms). Marcel Cobussen, drawing on French thinkers, defines ethics in music as "hospitality towards the singular or immanent 'other' or 'otherness'." Ethics, then, is the space where we negotiate the boundaries between the known and the other.** Cobussen has published his dissertation on music, ethics, and deconstruction here (it's worth it for the very cool interface). Cobussen's idea appears to lay the groundwork for the ethical practice of music theory, musicology and ethnomusicology--the "music academics."
But what of an ethical performance? If ethics has to do with moral choices, binary oppositions, and the immanent 'other,' how could we give an ethical performance of a piece of music? The decision is not about "good" or "bad" performances--I don't sit down to prepare a composition and think "Do I want to give a good or bad performance of this piece?" The obvious moral choice here has to be the extent to which we value a composer's intent. Numerous questions spring from that statement: is there such a thing as the composer's intent? Assuming there is one, to what extent is it important? Are there occasions when I can subvert the composer's intent? If there is no composer's intent (put another way, if I am anti-intentionalist), how am I to behave?
A more concrete example of ethics in music is suggested by a recent post by Jonathan Bellman at Dial M for Musicology. The last two paragraphs are of particular interest to me: it seems to me to be musically ethical, as Prof. Bellman says, "we must keep our relationship with musical works as up-close and personal as possible." I think therein lies the key to an ethical performance (and, I think as Peter Kivy would argue, an authentic performance). One must first decide on the presence or absence of composer intention and then make decisions based on this. It is possible that a performance of a work is ethical (and/or authentic) despite flying in the face of previous performances/recordings of it, and it is possible for a performance of a work to be unethical (and/or inauthentic) while allegedly conforming to previous performances and the "composer's intention."
*"Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking."
H. Jackson Browne
**These ideas are presented in the abstract to an article by Cobussen that appeared in the Dutch Journal for Music Theory (Volume 7, no. 3. Amsterdam, November 2002)