The Hermeneutics of Performance and the Performance of Hermeneutics: Music as a Paradigm for Gadamer’s Conception of Art

In this essay, I will highlight the role of music in the Gadamerian reflection. I claim that music helps show that Gadamer’s consideration of art is based on the paradigm of performance (as opposed to the misleading reduction of hermeneutics to a form of textualism). In particular, I will show how music emblematically represents such performative paradigm in three main aspects: (1) the concept of play as self-presentation and movements peculiarly fits the essence of music, which is such only insofar as it is performed; (2) music perfectly manifests the temporality of art, as explained by the paradigm of the festival as what is both unique and repeatable; (3) music manifests a specific kind of interaction between the work of art and the audience. Having no permanent material medium as its essence, music can best show the reassessment of art as a social activity conceived in a horizontal direction rather than a mere product or object created by the artist and given to the audience. On this basis, it will be possible to show the performative character underlying hermeneutic itself, which unfolds in the continuous movement and actualization of hermeneutic dialogue and in the democratic openness it entails.