Music: a product or a process? music education answers it

Abstract

The attempt to understand the nature of the experience with music has led to the polarization between two positions, each one of them emphasizing the character of music, either as a product or as a process. This text attempts to clarify the origins of the unproductiveness of such a polarization, from the concept of musical work of art (GOEHR, 1992). Thus, the nature of the work of art has not been analyzed as an object, nor a detailed description of its history has been made. Instead, we have retrieved the moments that have produced historical effectiveness for the constitution of the concept of musical work of art, from the eighteenth century, and the influence it has exerted up to the present time. Therefore, the question “What is a musical work of art?” has been converted into “How has the concept of musical work of art been historically constituted from determining moments?” We have kept in mind the appropriations of answers given to those questions by both Philosophy of Music Education and New Philosophy of Music Education.