The Paradox of Musical Analysis Mark DeBellis Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Spring, 1999), 83-99. Stable URL htp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=( 122-2909% 28199921 %2943%3A 1% 3C83%3ATPOMA% 3E2.0,CO%3B2-R Jounal of Music Theory is currently published by Yale University Department of Music, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.orgyjoumnals/yudm html. ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Tue Oct 25 11:32:20 2005THE PARADOX OF MUSICAL ANALYSIS Mark DeBellis ‘Amanda sa music analyst. Writing an analysis of apiece for this jour- nal, she details aspects ofits musical organization: its phrase structure and larger desig, its voice leading on several hierarchical levels, which ofits elements are structural and which ornamental on a given level, and 80 0n. She confirms, “Thats the way I hea the piece.” Roger isan avid reader of this journal. He reads Amanda's analysis and remarks, “That's the way I hear the piece” (Or, for that matter, he might say he doesn’t hear the piece that way, but in some other way—the same set of issues will arse.) ‘What is going on here? What is it for an analysis to capture a way in Which someone hears a piece? What relationship must hold between analysis and hearing for this to come about? What precisely is being asserted when Amanda, or Roger, says, “That's the way I hear it"? And hhow does she, or anyone, know this? What sort of knowledge i it, and hat makes it knowledge? ‘As the story of Amanda and Roger suggests, musical analysis raises challenging questions at the intersection ofthe philosophy of mind, the philosophy of language, and epistemology. My purpose inthis article is to point out some of those questions and to discuss their implications. I ‘rite not ina revisionary spirit to suggest that musical analysis should 83be done differently or that itis in some way deficient because of the philo- sophical problems it engenders, but rather to illuminate the music-ana- lytic enterprise through an appreciation of those issues at its core. It is worth emphasizing at the outset that I am not writing about all kinds of musical analysis. What Iam interested in are instances in which the analyst is apt to say, “That's the way I hear the piece”—or, what is ‘equivalent for my purposes, instances in which the reader of the analysis, apt to experience a flash of recognition and report that the analysis cap- tures, corresponds to, or illuminates the way he hears the piece. In par- ticular, what am interested in are cases in which the analysis is said to ‘capture a way of hearing that was enjoyed prior to the production of, or encounter with, the analysis (a hearing which the analysis then articu- lates). To be sure, musical analysis commonly has other functions, such as that of suggesting new ways of hearing and thereby changing the ways wwe hear or soit is usually asserted; but in such cases the issues I propose to address do not arise, or at least do not arise inthe same way or withthe same implications. Thus, the topic here is restricted to musical analysis answerable to pre-analytic hearing. Given the question, what i the relationship between an analysis and a hearing to which it (allegedly) corresponds, one might reply: why is this philosophically interesting question—orarelevant methodological ques- tion for a music theorist? The analysis—the response might go—simply presents the hearing tous: it faithfully transmits that hearing, puts it on paper. But on this account, the analysis is simply transparent to the heat- ing, and it would be naive to maintain that. An analysis isa representa- tion, a symbolic entity, that is being used to convey something about another, quite different thing, namely, what is in the head or mind of the analyst (or the reader). It isa canonical philosophical question—if there ever was one—what relationship is being said to hold between words, ‘raph, and other symbols on the one hand, and mental states on the other, Let me suggest the following way of understanding the matter. The analysis andthe hearing are both representations. The analysis represents the piece as being a certain way, i., as having certain properties, includ- ing relationships between its parts (where such properties might include, for example, ones of formal design or being an elaboration of certain ‘middleground or background structures). ‘A hearing, likewise, is a representation, inthis case a mental, percep- tual representation. It represents sounds that one hears! as having certain properties and bearing certain relationships to one another. ‘The use of an analysis to convey a hearing is an instance of a wider phenomenon: the use of one representation to characterize another, that is, tocharacterize the latter’ representational powers. This may be termed “giving the content” and itis what goes on, for example, in belief attri- bution, When Tsay that Pato believed that bad music corupts, I use the 84‘words in the that-clause ‘that bad music corrupts’) to characterize one of Plato's belief states. A representation in words is used to characterize, 0 ive the content of, a mental representation (much as with analysis and hearing). Plato's belief makes things out to be a certain way, and the that- clause says how it makes things out to be. The that-clause characterizes Piato’s belief qua representation: it renders how the belief represents things as being.” Belief attribution has received considerable philosoph- ial attention in recent years (see essays in Woodfield 1982). ‘Another example of giving the content is indirect quotation: “Plato said that bad music corrupts.” Pato did not, of course, use the words “bad music corrupts” since he didn't speak Engiish; but he did say something we can characterize and attribute to him using those words (and inthis way we characterize some utterance of his). More generally: whenever we give the meaning of one expression via another, or say what a picture represents, or draw a picture to convey What we are thinking or feeling, that isthe use of one representation to give the content of another. It is worth noting that the use of one repre- sentation to characterize another in this way is a “secondary” use, in con- trast with the primary use of representations to represent things, rather than other representations of those things. (Contrast using an analysis to characterize music with using itto characterize a way of hearing music.) ‘As I have urged, we should adopt a similar picture ofthe relation be- ‘ween analysis and hearing. The analysis gives the content of a hearing: it tells us how the hearing represents the piece to be. But to note resem- blance to other cases is only to suggest affinities, not to give a positive characterization ofthe matter. To reiterate the main question, then, what is the relationship between analysis and hearing that we call “capturing” ‘or “correspondence”? The following, I submit, seems intuitively com- pelling. An analysis and a hearing, we have said, are both representations, the former symbolic and/or linguistic, the latter perceptual. Each, let us say, is a bearer of information about sounds or patterns of sounds. What itis for the analysis to correspond to the hearing, then, is for the same information o be borne by each. What the analysis says about the piece — the information the analysis bears—is to be the same as what the hearing ‘says"—the information the hearing bears. That is what correspondence ‘or “capturing” consists in ‘The formulation just given seems unexceptionable in outline, although some refinements are necessary. First, we need not suppose that the analy sis tells us everything about what someone hears in a piece (indeed, no ‘one has ever claimed that it does). To take the most obvious example, most analyses say litle if anything about timbral qualities, yet we all hear them; indeed, perhaps some perceived qualities are ineffable, totally resistant to being conveyed through analysis. But tis is no objection tothe idea that analysis conveys some of the things we hear. Soa first step in refining the 85formulation would be to require only thatthe information inthe analysis be included in the hearing, not vice versa. Second, an analysis might well incorporate information about a piece that does not correspond to anything heard, and indeed is not meant to be included inthe attribution (or in the “that” of “That’s how I hear it”) For ‘example, the analysis might identify pitches by their absolute pitch loca tions via music notation, even though the analyst (or reader) isnot claim ing to have absolute pitch in avowing to hear the piece “that way.” There is contextual understanding that absolute pitch locations are not in- ‘cluded in what, in the analysis, is being aid to correspond to one’s hear- ing. (Their function isto “fix the reference” of what is being attributed.)* Thus—to refine the formulation once again—what is required here is only that the information in the analysis understood to be relevant to the attribution be contained in the hearing. In what follows I shall assume these refinements but not always spell them out. This brings me tothe first ofthe main suggestions of this article. There is a paradox, I maintain, in the very conception ofthe project of musical analysis (that is, analysis that purports to capture hearing, as sketched here). The paradox, I shall go on to argue, can be resolved, but nonethe- less recognition of the paradox and the means necessary to resolve it helps to illuminate the analytical enterprise. The paradox is this. On the ‘one hand, a criterion for success in (this sor of) musical analysis is that the analysis convey just the information bore by the corresponding hear- ing. The analysis must be true to the hearing: it must convey how the piece appears from the point of view of the listener who enjoys that hear- ing. And to capture that means capturing the information bome by that hearing. (On the other hand, we want an analysis tobe illuminating, interesting, revealing: in short, informative. (And successful analyses do meet this criterion: to read an analysis that captures one’s hearing, and to recognize that it does, is a genuinely enlightening experience. The same can be argued forthe activity of producing an analysis.) But for something to be informative is for it to bear new information, information one did not al- ready have. Yet by hypothesis, someone whose hearing is successfully captured by an analysis already possesses the information it bears, since thatinformation is already carried by his perceptual representation. Hence iff an analysis is correct (qua capturer of someone's hearing) itis bound to be uninteresting because itis uninformative; conversely, if an analysis, is informative to the listener itis ipso facto incorrect. The paradox is ‘summed up by the observation that we want to say (and inthe case of suc~ cessful analyses we do say), “Aha! Thats it exactly.” “That's it exactly” ‘means the analysis is true fo what came before; “Aha!” means it goes beyond it, Nothing, it seems, could do both.* That is the paradox of musi- cal analysis 86‘The predicament is that musical analysis, qua description of the mind, lies ata peculiar halfway point between the inaccessible and the evident. ‘Some mentalistic descriptions, while presumably true, are not open to in- trospective access: presented with a presumably correct formulation of the syntactic rules I follow (according to Chomskian grammar, say), Iam virtually certain to have no “Aha!” experience, no sense of recognition.” On the other hand, some mentalistic descriptions are immediately recog- nizable to me—such as, “I believe that Bill Clinton is a Demoerat”—yet, ordinarily in such cases, the recognition that the description applies to ‘me carries with it no interest, no sense of illumination or enlightenment. ‘Whereas there are jourmals that exist partly because readers find in them analyses that articulate their musical intuitions—and because itis illumi- nating for readers to recognize thar they articulate those intuitions —ordi- nary beliefs do not generally carry with them this kind of interest * Musi- cal analysis, then, lands on “Aha!” while skirting both the “Huh?” of the remote and the “Ho-hum” of the obvious. It is familiar enough to recog- nize, yet sufficiently strange to be interesting. Shortly I shall go on to suggest a way of resolving the paradox. But first I want to consider some attempts to dismiss the paradox as illusory, ‘as somehow confused or arising through some trivial sort of equivoca- tion. In my view these responses to the paradox al fil, although itis in- structive to consider each. ‘To restate, the paradox depends on both of the following being true: Thesis. A successful analysis contains only the information borne by a corresponding hearing. ‘Antithesis. A successful analysis is informative to a listener who en- joys a corresponding hearing, and therefore contains information not borne by that hearing. A first attempt to dissolve the paradox stars by noting an assumption identified earlier: that there is a hearing, an informational state already in place prior to one’s encountering (or producing) the analysis, to which the analysis is answerable. The response rejects that assumption. Rather, ‘what happens when someone reads an analysis and judges it to corre- spond to his hearing is, invariably, this: the analysis causes him to hear in a new way, to mentally represent new information about the piece (for example, to represent its structure differently). The antithesis does not apply, then—and its conclusion is false—because it assumes that the hearing precedes the encounter with the analysis; but what actually takes place, on the present suggestion, is thatthe informativeness of the analy- sis coincides with, is part and parcel of, the arrival of a new way of hear- ing. No paradox there. And if intuition has it thatthe corresponding hear- ing was enjoyed prior to the analysis, that is just an illusion. 87This attempt to dissolve the paradox strikes me as implausible. To be sure, as noted already, musical analysis sometimes brings about new ‘ways of hearing. But I doubt that, where it seems to us that an analysis captures, codifies, and illuminates a way we have heard a piece all along, ‘we are always mistaken in thinking that there is such a pre-existent way of hearing. No doubt you can think of your own examples, but it seems to me that Lerdahl and Jackendoft’s grouping analysis of Beethoven's Piano Sonata, op. 2, no. 2 (1983, 15) describes a structure that had been present in my hearing of the piece before I encountered the analysis. I find it hard to believe that such intuition is simply mistaken, or that all such intuitions are. ‘A second response is a variant of the firs. This response takes it that the listener receives certain information when hearing a piece, but does rot retain that information in active memory. Hence when that same information is presented again by the analysis, itis information the lis- tener does not at that moment have to hand. The listener must retain this information somewhere, of course, ifhe isto be able to recognize that the analysis corresponds to his hearing, but it has to be retrieved from cold storage, soto speak. Thus, the response goes, the analysis seems illumi- nating because it provides information not ready to hand, though for all that it is the same information as that bore by the hearing. But that can’t be all there is to it. Once the reader makes the relevant recognition—by thar point having summoned up the stored informa- tion—then, if the objection is correct, the equivalence should be unre ‘markable and unilluminating. But itis not. According to the response, an analysis is informative insofar as it reminds one of what one has heard; but it is implausible that that exhausts its interest. {A third response to the paradox goes as follows. There isa part of the analysis that captures the hearing, this response goes, and a part that goes beyond it. An analysis might, for example, specify the absolute pitch locations of the notes in a passage, though such locations are not within the scope of the attribution to the listener. The listener need not have per- fect pitch, that is, in order to hear a passage in the way ascribed by the ince those pitch locations are not part of what the analysis pur- xy about the listener, According to this objection, the part that ‘captures the hearing simply replicates the information contained in it; the part that goes beyond is what accounts for our impression of infor- ‘mativeness and insight. There is no paradox, or so the response goes, This objection, I say, fails to do justice to the intuition that itis pre- cisely insofar as the analysis captures the hearing that it is interestingly informative, What gives us the feeling of insight is that we understand better how our hearing represents the passage: itis not simply that we are given new information about the piece, information not previously 88represented in our hearing. This attempt to cast the paradox as illusory then fails. ‘A fourth attempt to dismiss the paradox, te last to be considered here, is the following. There isa difference between the information contained inthe analysis, which says thatthe piece is such-and-such, and the infor- ‘mation contained in the statement that one hears the passage as such- and-such. That is, there is a difference between the information content of (1) Passage P is such-and-such (where (1) is, essentially, the analysis) and the information content of| (2) Thear P as such-and-such. (We may call (1) a first-order statement, (2) second-order: (1) is astate- ‘ment about the passage, (2) a statement about the way one hears the pas- sage.) The apparent informativeness of the analysis, the response goes, derives not from any difference of information between the analysis ‘nd the hearing, but from the difference between the information content of the analysis—(I)—and that of the second-order statement (2). The source ofthe feeling of insight and having gained information i the self- conscious realization that one hears the passage in such-and-such a way—or so the challenge goes. It should be granted that the ascent from first-order to second-order beliefs can be genuinely informative. Itis one thing to believe something, another to realize that you do, and the later can have implications and significance thatthe former does not (as when one sees the absurdity in “and no one was left to tel the tale”), Be tha ast may, I do not think that this phenomenon accounts forall (if anything) in what is distinctive about the musical-analysis case. Consider these statements (3) Bill Clinton is a Democrat, (4) I believe that Bill Clinton is a Democrat, (3), itis plausible to say, expresses the exact content of one of my beliefs: the information (3) expresses, and what I grasp in my belief, are identi- cal. Now itis true that the mental transition from believing (3) to believ- ing (4)—from believing that Clinton is a Democrat to the self-conscious belief that 1 believe that he is a Democrat—is nontrivial. But atthe same time, the modicum of insight gained here is nothing like that in music analysis. The transition from hearing to analysis is more richly informa tive than the transition from believing 3) to believing (4). What gives one a feeling of insight in the musical case cannot only be the second-order ascent—realizing that hear such-and-such. There is, as well, a change in information content concerning the music. In other words, the distinc tive insight pertaining to musical analysis does not inhere exclusively (if at all) inthe transition from hearing such-and-such to realizing that one ‘hears such-and-such (where the information values of each ‘‘such-and- 89such” are unproblematically the same); that distinctive insight depends rather on there being some distance between how the musi is repre- sented in the hearing, onthe one hand, and how it is represented in the analysis, on the other. Sil, the analysis captures the hearing: that isthe paradox.) All of these atempts to cast the paradox a illusory, then ai ‘The paradox of musical analysis bears an affinity to, or is arguably a special case of, a philosophical problem generally raised inthe context of conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis isa philosophical project that g0es at least as far back as Socrates’ demand to know “What is justice?” or “What is knowledge?" Consider such conceptual analyses as (6) bachelor = eligible unmarried male and (6) knowledg It would seem, the arzument for the paradox goes, that such an analysis is correct just in case the analysans (on the left side) and the analysan- ‘dum (on the right) are the same concept. But, i they are, then statements such as (5) and (6) cannot be informative. Indeed, they must be equiva- lent to (S') bachelor = bachelor and (6) knowledge = knowledge. On the other hand, if (5) and (6) are informative, then analysans and ‘analysandum must be different concepts, and hence the purported analy- sis must be incorrect (sce Langford 1942 and Ackerman 1992), Having noted the analogy to the paradox of conceptual analysis, we will not dwell on it for the risk of being drawn too far afield but shall come back to it later. Instead, let us concentrate on the musical case. Hav- ing looked at unsatisfactory attempts to deal with the musical paradox, ‘we might ask: what, if anything, would count as a satisfactory response? Does it make sense to speak of resolving the paradox, and, if so, how might it be resolved? I want to suggest that a resolution is possible; more- over, [ want to suggest what form such a resolution would take, though I shall not try to specify such a resolution in detail. The sort of resolution envisioned here depends on distinguishing two levels of meaning (or con- tent, or information). The story goes as follows. On one level, analysis and hearing have the same content; that is what itis for them to corre- spond, and that is what we recognize when we judge them to correspond. ‘What the analysis captures about the hearing is its content on this level (This level of content is shared by a hearing and an analysis that corre spond, but not by ones that do not correspond.) On another, more fine grained level, analysis and hearing differ in content. This second level of ‘meaning serves to capture the sense in which the analysis is informative: there is new information on this level, though not onthe first level. Call, these level I and level Il contents, respectively” The idea of distinguishing different levels of meaning isa familiar one inthe philosophical literature. Probably the canonical example is Gottlob 90’ famous distinction between sense and reference. Consider the ex- pressions ‘The Evening Star’ and “The Morning Star’. They have the same referent (the planet Venus). But observe that sentences (7) and (8) (7) The Evening Star = The Evening Star (8) The Evening Star = The Moming Star differ in information value: (8) is informative, whereas (7) isnot. Frege accounted for this in the following way: though “The Evening Star’ and “The Morning Star’ coincide in their referents, he argued, they differ in sense, o cognitive value. That is, though they agree in referent, they dif- fer with respect tothe mode under which that referent is presented (Frege 1980 [1892], 56-57). ‘The analogy between the musical case and Frege's is clear enough, as, faras it goes: hearing and analysis coincide on level I but diverge on level Il; “The Evening Star’ and ‘The Morning Star’ coincide in referent but diverge in sense. That said, I would be cautious about identifying level I or level II outright with Fregean notions. In particular, Frege made all sorts of assumptions about senses and their semantic properties that | am not sure have to be imported into the notion of level II content employed here." At the same time, level II contents are meant to answer to con- straints of cognitive significance, soto that extent they are like Fregean senses, ‘As I say, my intention here is simply to indicate the direction in which 4 resolution tothe paradox should go; it remains for another occasion to work out such a resolution in detail. That would involve, among other things, giving an account of what level I and level II contents are, how they are related to one another, and what it isin virtue ofthat a given rep- resentation has a given content on either level ‘Some observations about level I content are in order, however. (Again, {evel is what analysis and hearing have in common justin case they cor- respond. They both point to this common meaning, but they do so in dif- ferent ways—that’s level TL) Its philosophically interesting to note how finely individuated level I meanings have to be, granted that they are not as finely individuated as level Il, One might have supposed that exten- sions could serve for level I meanings, where the extension of a term (or ‘other representation) is the set of (actual) things of which iti true. (For ‘example, the extension of the term ‘blue’ isthe setof all blue things; in the musical case, the extension of a hearing or analytic description would be a set of sound-events). Not so, because a given sound-event can sat isfy different structural descriptions, or—what is more tothe point—dif- ferent descriptions can be true of exactly the same set of sound-events. It «doesn’t help, moreover, to bring in possible but non-actual sound-events. That is, intensions, or sets of possible sound-events, won't do the job either, for much the same reason: different descriptions can be true of ‘exactly the same set of possible sound-events."” To do justice to the way a1‘earings and analyses distinguish between different structures, we need «notion of structured content, one on which content is built up out of properties and relations that belong to the constituents of a passage. (There are different technical ways of specifying such contents; itis not necessary for our purposes t0 choose among them.) What is philosophi- cally interesting here is that perception, like thought, must be understood as having a content that distinguishes between necessarily equivalent sates of affairs. That is not obvious, for although there is a difference in ‘thought between the cup’s being half empty and being half ful, is there ‘difference in the way it looks? Music is arealm in which it becomes evi- dent that perception can make such fine-grained distinctions—and in which its capacity to do so is all-important. ‘To tum now to epistemological matters. Amanda, we have said, ex- presses her hearing ofa piece through an analysis. What knowledge sup- ports, or is expressed in, this activity? What isthe character of the infer- ences she makes in the course of producing the analysis and asserting that she hears the piece in that way? What, if anything, makes those infer- ences justified? It is useful to distinguish several mental states that Amanda has (or possibly has), as well as inferences or mental transitions between those states. First of all, she hears the piece in the relevant way (call that hear- ing H). (For example, she may hear a certain note as omamental.) Sec- fond, she may think of the piece along the lines set forth in the corre- sponding analysis (eg, she may think of that note as omamental). This thought (call it 7) consists, [take it, in grasping the level II content that belongs tothe analysis.” Third, she thinks of herself as hearing the piece along said lines, ie, along the lines specified in the analysis; call this thought TA (“I hear that note as omamental”; in what follows I call this a ‘self-analytical thought”). This self-conscious way of thinking is t0 be contrasted with her thoughts about the piece. Fourth, she may atribute Ho herself notin any way that involves the analysis, but justin terms of the way the piece sounds: she may, for example, play back the sound of the piece in memory and say to herself, “That is the kind of hearing of the piece I have.” She may, in other words, think of her hearing H under « perceptual rather than analytical mode of presentation. Call that self attribution 7H. Fifth and finally, Amanda may recognize that her analy- sis and hearing correspond; cal that recognition R. A satisfactory epistemological account of Amanda's analytical activ- ity will have to do two things. First, it will have to trace out the mental transitions, or inferences, that take place between the above-mentioned (or other) states that Amanda enjoys. Itis evident that Amanda gets from 9her hearing HY to her self-analytical thought TA—from hearing a note as ‘ornamental othe thought, “T hear that note as omamental"—but what are the intermediate steps in that inference? Does she rely on 7 (the thought thatthe note is omamental), or TH (“I hear the note in that (perceptually presented] way”), or R (recognizing that analysis and hearing match)? If so, what roles do they play in the inference? A satisfactory account must answer these questions. ‘The second thing a satisfactory epistemic account must dois tell us about the relevant mental transitions or inferences themselves, what sort ‘of transitions they are and what makes them justified. Here is where things ‘get very interesting, because the story has o explain how we get from one evel II content to another while preserving content at level I. So the story ‘might go: we are in possession of an inference rule that allows us to g0 from hearing to self-analytical thought, a rule that preserves content on level L. Bur where did we get that rule? Itis doubtful that we derived it 4 posteriori, or though empirical means, say by amassing data that would show a correlation between one level II content and another. It is not as if we have to (or that we do) go about checking to make sure that a given hearing of a note is a hearing of that note as omamental through some further empirical observation or testing. Rather, the relevant mental tran- sition seems to be a priori not derived or justified empirically; we are in possession of an a prior rule that allows us to move between a structure ‘ven in perception and an identical structure specified in analytical con- ‘cepts (and, what is morte, to work out that they are identical, to recognize the equivalence of perception and analysis). But what sort of rule is that, and how is it possible that we are in possession of it?’ What does it tell us about the mind that we have such a rule? The problem of justification is, moreover, paramount: what makes the application of such arule know!- cedge-conferring? What makes the analyst's thought, “I hear that note as ‘omamental”—or, for that matter, the thought that shat hearing is a hear- ing ofthe note as omamental—knowledge? ‘This way of formulating the questions is, to be sure, tentative and pro- visional. But however the issues play out, the crux of the mater is that ‘musical analysis raises a deep problem for epistemology: how do we bridge the epistemic gap between hearing and analysis? That there is such «gap is shown by the fact that analyses can be informative to those whose hearing they describe (that is, after all, demanded by our expectations about successful, interesting analysis). But then, given that it exists, we want to know the nature of this gap and how we bridge it. Itis worthwhile to contrast the kind of correspondence between hear- ing and analysis discussed so far with another kind, in order to see com- 93rmonalites and differences. There are instances of music theory and music psychology) which provide intentionalistc descriptions of a listener's hhearing—content ascriptions—on which itis not a requirement for the truth of those ascriptions that the listener have any access whatever tothe rmusic-theoretic concepts or terminology in which those ascriptions are ‘couched (call such a listener, otherwise experienced and competent, an ‘ordinary listener). And even ifthe listener is familiar with and understands that vocabulary, she may not know which ascriptions apply to her (call her an intermediate listener). The relative chroma hypothesis, for exam- ple, states that a listener hears and remembers atonal melody in terms of its pitches’ scale degrees (Dowling and Harwood 1986, 128). But an ear- training student, of whom the relative chroma hypothesis is presumably true, may be unable to identify the scale degrees of a melody she hears (though, by hypothesis, she mentally represents those scale degrees). Inthe case ofthe intermediate (and, a fortiori, ordinary) listener there is nonidentty of level II content between hearing and analysis, because it can be informative to such a listener to be told, “You are hearing that note as the fifth scale degree.” At one time I thought that something that distinguishes the intermediate listener from the music analyst who can «describe what she hears, and from the comprehending reader, is that iden- tity of level II content between analysis and hearing holds forthe analyst (and reader) but not forthe intermediate listener.'® However, bythe argu- ‘ments presented here, that cannot be right, since identity of level II con- tent does not hold for the analyst (or reader) either. I would now try to ‘draw the contrast between the different kinds of listeners in this way: the analyst (or reader) can make certain inferences the intermediate listener cannot, inferences from hearings to sef-characterizations via analyses. ‘The question, for psychology, is “Why isit (psychologically) possible for the analyst (or reader) to make the relevant inference when the ordinary and intermediate listeners cannot?” The questions, for philosophy, are "How is it thatthe analyst (or reader) can make a justified inference of this sort, when the others cannot?” and “How do these cases contrast with ‘one another in terms of their content?” I do not have answers to these ‘questions, except to note that the epistemological status ofthe case of the analyst (or reader) is quite different from that ofthe ordinary or interme- diate listener: the process of ear training by which one typically learns to identify scale degree is straightforwardly empirical, in contrast with the ‘apriori character ofthe analyst's knowledge Earlier, I raised the question of whether musical analysis is just anal- ‘ogous to conceptual analysis, or whether itis indeed a special case of the latter. In order to investigate this further, I should like to tur to the topic 94‘of how perception and concepts are related and of where music analysis lies with respect to this question. An entry into the issues may be pro- vided by a well-known philosophical example, posed in the seventeenth century by William Molyneux. As John Locke recounted it, Suppose a Man bor blind, and now adult, and taught by his touch to dis- tinguish between a cube, and a Sphere of the same metal, and nighly of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he felt one and t’other, which isthe Cube, which the Sphere. Suppose then the Cube and Sphere placed on a ‘Table, and the Blind Man be made to see. Quaere, Whether by his sight, ‘before he touch'd them, he could now distinguish, and tell, which isthe Globe, which the Cube (Locke 1975 {1700}, IL.x.8, 146, italics omitted), ‘There are various interpretations of what is at stake in Molyneux’s Ques- tion, Gareth Evans has argued that the question is really about whether sight and touch are parts of a“unitary conceptual ability” for shape (1985, 373). A negative outcome—feilure to recognize the shapes—would be explained by the subjects lacking a unitary conceptual ability embracing sight and touch; a positive outcome would be consistent with the subject’s having such an ability. (However, a positive outcome would also be con- sistent with the subjects being able to draw the right sorts of inference from visual shape to tactile shape, while lacking a unitary conceptual abil- ity in Evans's sense.) I am not sure I fully understand what Evans means ‘by a unitary conceptual ability and how such abilities are to be individu- ated, but I take it that concepts and conceptual abilities satisfy a Fregean informativeness constrain; hence, one way to construe the issue is as whether tactile shape information (read: level II content) is the same as visual shape information (dito). ‘The intermediate listener bears a direct analogy to Molyneux’s man, con the outcome in which he cannot recognize the shapes: hearing is to seeing as scale degree identification is to shape identification by touch. ‘The intermediate listener cannot integrate her hearing and theoretical knowledge, much as Molyneux’s man cannot integrate touch and sight. ‘What, if anything, isthe counterpart of the analyst (or reader)? That case, arguably, is analogous to sighted people's integrated use of shape con- cepts, which they easily and unselfconsciously use to describe what they see and how they se it, easily making the transitions between visual shape, tactile shape, and language. Music analysis might then furnish a window (on certain more general aspects of perception. would agree with those philosophers who are hesitant to draw much, in the way of conclusions from the Molyneux case to ordinary cases of perception. Nevertheless, the Molyneux problem leads us naturally tothe ‘more general question of how (in ordinary, non-Molyneux cases) per- ception and concepts are related: whether concepts are, asi were, already contained in the perception, or are superadded ata later stage (that of be- 95Figure 1 lief, say). What, for example, isthe relationship between the ordinary see- ing of a square, and the concept square? The question of whether, and how, seeing can be “theory-laden,” to use Norwood Russell Hanson's term, is very much a live issue."” ‘What, in particular, shall we say about the case of the music analyst (or reader) with respect tothe role of concepts in perception? What isthe relationship between a hearing and the concepts (such as those of group- ing, stricture, hierarchy, etc.) contained in an analysis that corresponds to the hearing? One suggestion would be this: the concepts contained in the analysis are employed, by the listener, in the very act of hearing. A ‘music analysis, on this conception, functions much like a classical con- ‘ceptual analysis such as (9) bachelor = eligible unmarried mate ‘The concepts contained in the music analysis, on this conception, bear much the same relationship to the hearing as the concepts contained in the analysans of (9) bear to the analysandum.* ‘There is a second possibility, however, in line with @ recent proposal made by Christopher Peacocke, He argues that perception can have @ ‘nonconceptual content, ofa sort that may be illustrated inthe following example. What is the difference between seeing a figure as a diamond and as a square tilted by 45 degrees? According to Peacocke, its a mat- ter of seeing the figure as symmetrical along certain axes in one case, as symmetrical along certain other axes in the other case. But this sense of which one sees the figure as symmetrical along certain ‘axes is one that does not require the perceiver to possess, or employ, the concept symmetrical (Peacocke 1992, 77). Here Peacocke postulates a nonconceptual layer of content to which the property of symmetry, but ‘not the concept, belongs. ‘The sense in which the ordinary or intermediate listener hears pitches in terms of their scale degrees is, plausibly, a nonconceptual kind of hear- ing in Peacocke’s sense."” But is the analyst's (or reader's) hearing of ‘grouping also nonconceptual in this sense? Perhaps itis, and then we should understand what a music analysis accomplishes in this way: it pro- vides an analysis, in conceptual terms, ofthe nonconceptual content of a 96listener's experience. Butif this isthe cas, the epistemological problem of explaining the « priori status of the analysts (or reader's) knowledge cof how he hears, now becomes: what isthe epistemic connection between nonconceptual content (in Peacocke’s sense), and the conceptual? I do not know if this isa harder problem than that of how one knows a priori connections of a conceptual sort (like (9)), but both strike me as being difficult problems ‘What I have tried to do in this article isto point out interesting philo- sophical issues that lie atthe very heart of music analysis. If an analysis is to capture a hearing, then we need an adequate conception of what the correspondence relation between analysis and hearing consists in, what level of meaning or content is captured thereby. The intuitive view that analysis and hearing must simply coincide in information content falls prey to the paradox of analysis: we must distinguish different levels of content, where analysis and hearing share content on one level and diverge ‘on another. The question of how an analyst (or reader) knows she hears a piece inthe way described by an analysis is an important, and think here- tofore underappreciated, problem for epistemology. Finally, music analy- sis isa fertile ground for investigating the age-old problem of the relation ‘between perception and concepts. Perhaps music analysis should be re- garded as a species of conceptual analysis, or perhaps it should be seen as describing alink between some level of nonconceptual content and the- ‘retical concepts; but, either way, it must be intelligible, on our under- standing ofthe matter, how one knows that one hears a piece in the way ‘an analysis specifies.” ”NOTES 1.05 in some cases, silently imagines oneself to her. “Sound” should nt be taken too atomisially here: what is represented may be ageregates of sounds, such as phrases, passages, movements, pieces, et 2. Not every characterization ofa belief o other representation gives its content, ob viously: “That is a belief I acquired in 1987"; “That sentence has five words”; “That picture weighs 17 pounds.” 3 Indirect quotation is tobe contrasted with direct, in which someone's exact words are presented. Direct: She sai, "I hed!” Indirect: She sai that she lied 4.Ee. by tering ita man-picture (Goodman 1976, 28). '.On fixing the reference, see Kripke 1980, 15. 6, Remarks relevant othe paradox are tobe found in Seruton (1987, 170) and Wal- ‘ton (1993, 264-68), although Ido not know if either would accept the formulation ‘resented hee. 17. Lam indebied to Martin Daves fora discussion ofthe example. 8A transcendental argument fom the existence of jourals. (Ther ae no journals. ‘that, with comparable purpose, state “political intuitions” onthe order of “BillClin- tonsa Democrat” though itis another thing to tate moral and political views that we tacitly hold, and for whichis illuminating to recognize that we do.) 9. The strategy of postulating two levels of meaning is adopted in connection with the paradox of conceptual analysis by among others, Carap 1956, 63-64, 10. In invoking a criterion of informatveness, level Il content sled with the char acterization of concepts in Peacocke 1992, 2. 1. For flr discussion, see DeBells 1995, $0-S1. For more onthe semantic notions ‘of extension, intension, ec, see Lewis 1983, 12, Again, H and T are the same i level I content—are about te same musical stv. ‘ture—but differ in level II content or cognitive significance, since, to someone ‘who hears a cerain note as omamental, dhe thought thatthe note is oamental can nonetheless be informative. 13,0, what is not importantly different for our purposes: whereas isthe thought that certain note is omamental, A isthe thought that one’s hearing, His hea ‘ng of the note as omimental. Tati, 7A can be thought ofa either being about ‘oneself, or about one’s hearing; the distinction is not important for present pur- poses. 14. By an inference rule 1 mean a principle we employ in easoning to get from premises to conclusion, One example of an inference rule would be modus ponens, which ets us from (A, if then Bw B. Notall inference rules are deduc- tive (Le, such thatthe premises logically imply the conclusion), however: there are rules of inductive inference as well 15. Such rule might have an analogy in, though ts more fine-grained tha, the more ‘sual rah. preserving rules of logic. I is more fine-grained in that preserving [evel I content—which it does ina sense—is a stronger restrition than preserving, nut 16.1 ook this line (using somewhat diferent terminology), though already with eer ‘vations, n DeBelis 1995, 76 17-Hanson 1958, 19. For discussion ofa recent controversy over this issue in con- ‘nection with musi, see DeBells 1995, cha 9818. Such an analysis canbe informative to the listener, ofcourse, as can a conceptual analysis. 19.1 argue this in DeBells 1995, ch, 2 20,1 would lke to thank the participants in my seminar “Explaining Music: Meaning, ‘Theory, and Understanding” at Columbia University, Spring 1998, for helpful ‘coments onan earlier draft ofthis article. 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