What We Do When We Ask What Music Is

This essay states the differences between possible approaches to the ontology of music and definitions of music. I start by characterising the most important approaches in current philosophy of music as relying on a concept of “sound structure” and on a certain idea of how we come to know about them, that is, by hearing them (1.). This empiricist and realist conception has been criticised by drawing attention to the fact that music is not simply there, but has been made. It is a culturally constituted entity, and an ontological approach to it must take this fact into account: We have to know certain things about music which we cannot hear (2.). These criticisms point into the right direction, but they are not radical enough. I sketch a fresh approach to the ontology of music in order to point out that it can rely neither on hearing / listening nor on knowing alone, but has to accommodate a concept of interpretation (3.).