Roman Ingarden's ontology of music

This thesis aims to reconstruct Roman Ingarden’s ontology of music and to defend this theory by "modernizing" it and by responding to some criticisms. To achieve this goal, the first chapter examines several theses from Ingarden’s magnum opus, "The Controversy over the Existence of the World", which are essential to better understanding his philosophy of music. In the second chapter, I provide a commentary on "The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity", highlighting both its relation to Ingarden’s ontological treatise and some of its shortcomings, particularly those deriving from the exclusion of certain kinds of music and modern recording devices. In the third chapter, I extend Ingarden’s theory by applying his own fundamental notions to recordings and works that contain literary elements, such as songs and operas, and finally, in the fourth chapter, I assess some counter-arguments against Ingarden’s theory, especially those regarding its supposed inability to capture some forms of music such as eastern music, folk songs, jazz, and avant-garde music.