ABSTRACT
Music is one of the performing arts, and so of course musical works are made to be performed and heard. The dominant view of musical ontology is Platonism, which holds that musical works are abstract objects. Since it’s part of the definition of an abstract object that it is causally inert—that it doesn’t enter into causal relations with the material world—it’s usually thought to follow that musical works cannot come into or pass out of existence, and that people cannot hear the work itself. One alternative to Platonism is idealism: the view that musical works are mental entities. Idealism can explain unperformables as completed ideas which are meant to be treated the same way people normally treat musical works; whether they are ever performed, or can be heard, is entirely irrelevant to their musical status. Another option is to think of musical works as concrete entities.
