SACRED HEART MAJOR SEMINARY

Opera dilettantes will forever argue over the relative importance of words and music in the creation and performance of their beloved art form. For philosophers brave enough to enter the fray, the issue raises a number of interesting ontological and phenomenological questions. In what does the work of opera primarily exist? What is distinctive of opera as a mode of dramatic presentation? More recent philosophical treatments of opera have approached these questions through a critical analysis of the commonly accepted terminology in the field of aesthetics. Among these terms, ‘representation ’ and ‘expression ’ have been at the center of a lively debate both in terms of their definition and of their usefulness in understanding music in general, and more particularly music for the theatre. Benedetto Croce (1902) attempted to delineate a distinction between representation and expression that might have furthered the work of aestheticians, but a great many of them found his entire idealistic project too heady to be of much use. Roger Scruton candidly confesses a need to start from scratch in developing a meaningful framework to understand the representation/expression distinction as it pertains to music. Scruton argues that, although there may be instances in which it ‘represents ’ something beyond itself, music must ultimately be understood as a type of expression. Even in cases where a composer intends to draw attention to the sounds of a chirping bird or a stormy sea through mimetic effects in his 6