Thinking About Music
courtesy Token Creek Chamber Music
A close-up of Phil Mack.
Phil Mack
The Token Creek Chamber Music series is hosting Madison-based philosopher Phil Mack for a three-part lecture series considering music. If a symphony is played by different orchestras, is it the “same?” What about “Danny Boy” when interpreted by Conway Twitty rather than Dennis Day? And what about bird calls, or silence? Each presentation by Mack will be followed by time for discussion. Find info on weekly topics below and tickets at tokencreekchambermusic.org.
media release: Anyone who takes music seriously has run into questions that turn out to be stranger than they first appear:
• What exactly is a piece of music, if it’s identical to no single performance and isn’t the score on the stand?
• Where is the line between music and mere sound—and why are we so sure a ticking clock isn’t music?
• How far can a performance depart from what the composer wrote before it stops being the same piece at all?
These are questions that philosophers and musicians have argued about for decades. But they aren’t abstract puzzles—they come straight out of the experience of listening: every time you compare two recordings of the same work, argue about an arrangement, or feel that a technically flawless performance somehow fell flat, you are already standing inside them.
Over three Tuesday evenings this September, philosopher Phil Mack takes up three of these questions—one per night. No background in philosophy is assumed; the only prerequisites are curiosity and a love of music.
Each evening pairs sixty minutes of talk and musical examples with thirty minutes of open discussion. Refreshments follow. Attend just one, or join us for all three.
Three Tuesdays at 7:00pm, September 8, 15, 22.
Individual lectures: $20 / students $10
Series of all three: $50 / students $25.
Lecture 1 (Sept. 8): What Kind of Thing is Piece of Music? The problem of what a musical work is
Lecture 2 (Sept. 15): What Counts as Music?The problem of musical definition
Lecture 3 (Sept. 22): When Is It Still the Same Piece?The problem of musical identity and authentic performance
Phil Mack is a philosopher based in Madison. He holds a PhD in philosophy from Marquette University and has taught for over a decade at UW–Madison, Marquette, and UW–Milwaukee, earning two teaching awards along the way. Though his academic research centers on ethics and the philosophy of race, he has had an abiding interest in aesthetics and the philosophy of art for the better part of twenty years—an interest rooted in a background in music performance and art history. He now builds public philosophy programming for general audiences across the Madison area, including courses in aesthetics and the philosophy of art at Depot Hill Creative in Stoughton and Arts + Literature Laboratory in Madison. He also works with the chamber ensemble Samtalä | Musicians in Dialogue, with whom he has given a lecture on what makes music profound, and is preparing a lecture-concert that pairs philosophical questions in music with live performance. He is drawn to the questions people already argue about, and to making the philosophical stakes of those questions vivid without watering them down.
