This chapter focuses on the view that works of music are not types, but continuants or (as they are sometimes called) historical individuals. Two versions of the continuant view are discussed: musical perdurantism (which has been defended by Ben Caplan and Carl Matheson), and which takes a work of music to have its performances, playings, and other ‘embodiments’ as temporal parts; and the kind of view defended by Rohrbaugh, which takes a musical work to be a higher-level object, ontologically dependent upon, but not constituted by, its embodiments. The chapter outlines compelling objections to both versions of the continuant view, and argues that neither version can adequately explain what the repeatability of a work of music consists in.
Keywords: Ben Caplan, embodiment, Carl Matheson, musical perdurantism, ontological dependence, repeatability, Rohrbaugh, temporal parts