Abstract

The problem concerning the ‘individuation conditions of musical works’ is pressing and actual in the metaphysical discussion, in the philosophy of music. In this essay we address two entirely different perspectives: ‘timbric sonicism’, as formulated by Julian Dodd and ‘instrumentalism’, as sketched by Stephen Davies. We attempt to show that there are strong reasons to consider that the objections to anti-instrumentalism and anti-contextualism, derived from the sonicist formalism, support ‘instrumentalism’ as a plausible answer to the set of conditions, requisites or essential properties in the determination of the entities that are well-formed musical works.