Good description, I think.
Partly.
I have unsuccessfully argued here in the past that the fidelity/transparency ideal is doomed and I'm grateful that he easily dismissed that nonsense.
It's in the last 3 minutes, from about 18:00 on that it gets interesting. The punchline, that it all leads up to, is:
The transmission theory of music, the one which aims at a neutral, transparent conveyance of the original reality, sees each element in this sequence atomically, connected contingently, but on a model premised on continuity elements in sequences have heuristic reality only. They are more profitably understood as interdependent and co-constitutive.
Do you have any idea what this means? I do not.
Also, the quote from Adorno, "Mediation is in the object itself, not something between the object and that to which it is brought."
Uh duh! What kind of dunce would think otherwise. When you listen to a Glenn Gould, or Beatles, or Queen studio recording, what sort of object do you imagine you are listening to? Academic philosophy often seems to be a game of stating what we all know using words that seem clever. (The Malcolm Gladwell effect.)
Idk.
The professor claims that taking ontology seriously in this context is key. I disagree. I can't think of a domain in which ontology is less relevant.
And I am amazed that he avoids the moral dimension. If you pay attention, even here on ASR, you'll see people saying that such and such should be sued or criminally prosecuted for selling some magick for lots of money. It fascinates me that ASR participants care so much about the consumer rights of wealthy people with expensive hobbies being swindled out of a few dollars while (choose your serious injustice) is happening in the real world.
And I can't imagine evening approaching this topic as a hard-nosed American philosopher without first defining terms: wtf
is music?
Sorry. He kinda pissed me off when he at the end asked for comments and then closed youtube comments.