Artist or Crafts(wo)man?

Abstract

Are orchestral musicians artists or crafts(wo)men? This article offers a principaldiscussion of the concepts of artist and crafts(wo)man, as well as the relation betweenthese concepts, from a philosophical point of view. We discuss the concept of ‘the crafts(wo)man’ based on Richard Sennett’s discussionsof this concept, in which Hannah Arendt’s thinking plays an important role. Then, weturn our attention to Aristotle’s distinction between poiesis and praxis, as well as hisconcept of techné, as discussed by Martin Heidegger, and Plato’s discussion of inspir-ation as a basic fundament for artistic performance. Next, we address WalterBenjamin’s discussion on artwork in an age of technological reproducibility, and wedraw lines between characteristic aspects in Sennett’s argument and the tensionbetween professional thinking and the philosophy of art. This article is part of the ongoing project, Discourses of Academization and the MusicProfession in Higher Music Education (DAPHME), conducted by a team of senior researchers in Sweden, Norway and Germany and founded by the Swedish Riksbank.The overall purpose of DAPHME is to investigate how processes of academisation affect students at institutes of higher music education in Europe, especially the education of orchestral musicians of the Western classical tradition.

Artist or Crafts(wo)man?