Gadamer’s Play as a Criterion for Musical Representation
Abstract
This article explores Gadamer's notion of play as a hermeneutic criterion for understanding subjectivity in musical practice. Based on a distinction between three modes of representation of the work—faithful performance, version, and interpretation—it shows how each of them articulates the relationship between fidelity, creativity, and normativity in different ways. Faithful performance privileges the neutrality and transparency of the performer in favour of the objectivity of the work; version emphasises creative transformation as an unfolding of subjectivity; and interpretation, situated at an intermediate threshold, reveals itself as the space in which music plays itself, opening up a field of lived duration. Thus, it is argued that Gadamer's category of play allows us to think of musical interpretation not as mere reproduction or expressive self-affirmation, but as a sound event in which freedom and fidelity are intertwined.
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