Zofia Lissa vs Roman Ingarden. The Case of the Musical Work Identity

Abstract

The aim of this article is to juxtapose two attitudes towards music ontology – the original theory of Roman Ingarden (1893–1970),  Polish philosopher and student of Edmund Husserl, and the polemic of Zofia Lissa (1908–1980), Polish musicologist and founder of the Institute of Musicology at the University of Warsaw. Although they belonged to different generations, they had common experiences while living in Lviv before WW2. The outlooks of both scholars are recapitulated with particular regard to the differences between their musical backgrounds. While Ingarden tends to build universal theory, abstracting from particular cases in musical repertoire, Lissa finds counterexamples which cannot be embraced by his concept. The case of electroacoustic music demonstrates how difficult it was for Lissa and Ingarden to find common ground in their discussion. The article points out that the main problem was the rift between their methodologies. The last part of the article summarizes the critical reception of the Ingarden–Lissa polemic in Polish music scholarship.