Ben Caplan and Carl Matheson defend a view they call musical perdurantism. According to musical perdurantism, musical works are mereological fusions of performances.

Here’s a possible objection – works of music can exist prior to performances. Suppose Beethoven wrote a symphony and then crumbled up the paper and threw it away so that it was never performed. If Beethoven were to do that, then it seems that there is a work of music that has never been performed. However, if there is a work of music that has never been performed, then works of music are not fusions of performances. So, works of music are not fusions of performances.

In a footnote, Caplan and Matheson refer to an earlier paper. In that paper, they say that there is a broader version of musical perdurantism that holds that works of music are fusions of copies of scores, recordings (and performances). But I think the musical perdurantist may have to broaden the view even more.

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Suppose Beethoven doesn’t actually write down the composition, but instead composes the entire piece of music in his head. It seems like there is a work of music that Beethoven composed but did not write down. This looks like a work of music that has no copies of scores, recordings, or performances as parts.

The solution would have to broaden the range of things that can count as parts of works of music to include some mental events (or states?) of the composer. I have some thoughts about that, but they are too half-baked (even for a blog post) – so I’ll wait.