What Gets Lost in Music Analysis? Insights from Wittgenstein

Idealism concerns a vision of minds as central to reality (broad idealism), or, more narrowly, human minds as central to reality (strong idealism). Idealist solutions to philosophical problems are rarely pursued in philosophy departments today, and philosophers who do retain a commitment to idealism, such as Thomas Hofweber, have recognized that such thinking is ‘nowadays almost universally considered a non-starter’ (2019). Hofweber’s key strategy for defending idealism rests on an account of language that largely avoids Wittgensteinian thought and its impact on the philosophical landscape. In music analysis, I would suggest, a similar avoidance of Wittgenstein helps to explain the retention of idealist thought, especially with regard to notions of deep structure and an assumed homology between a musical ‘logic’ and a music-external domain of entities. This paper considers how insights into the practice of analysis in the Philosophical Investigations might help us to think afresh about music analysis. Wittgenstein begins by explaining that in analytical domains of discourse something gets lost. This paper considers what is lost, but rather than suggest a means of regaining or rediscovering things missing, it follows Wittgenstein in asking us to refocus our attention on what is actually going on when we do music analysis.