This is a most engaging discussion and can be reversed: what is it to "play" Van Gogh, or Klee, or Chagall, or ??? As a musician, I have composed and performed to imagery, such a telling inspiration. The difference between music and visual art..in whatever form...is that music exists only in time,held onto by memory and transformed by perception and mean; visual art, as an offering, exists in space, also held onto by memory and lives objectively in space. One can revisit a painting and see it "again." However, music is, in truth, never revisited, but is experienced again in a changing sense of time and space...so very subjective.
This phenomenological question regarding experiences of art and the distinction, if any exists, between the art and the viewer/listener, is seductive if only that it puts into question issues of social constructivism vs objective reality. Most artists would say that their art is re-constructed by each view; most musicians would say somewhat the same thing with the caveat that the perform takes responsibility for molding the exprience through performance. A recording is similar to a print in that it is representative...and comes to reality in the listener rather that in its simplied existance as a digital file.
So much to think about. However, personally, art is better experienced than analyzed and music is better heard than remembered...hmm..
Music as time-art as distinct from space-arts. Great post Ms. Smith!
