Essay - Authorship and Intention in Musical Aesthetics
Introduction
Imagine you hear a piece of music that stops you in your tracks. It feels both ancient and new — unpredictable yet inevitable. Critics call it transcendent, comparing it to the late works of Coltrane or Ligeti. Listeners cry during performances. Musicians study its harmonic subtleties. Then, you discover the truth: the piece was composed entirely by an artificial intelligence. No human intervention. No emotional experience. No intention. Just lines of code optimized to produce novel jazz sequences based on a deep-learning model trained on 10,000 compositions.
You feel conflicted. Was the experience you had real? Is the music any less meaningful now? Can a piece of music possess depth and artistry if the “composer” had no inner world — no purpose or feeling to communicate?
This is the heart of The Auto-Composer thought experiment. It forces us to interrogate the concepts of authorship and intention in music — two ideas that have long defined how we understand artistic value.
What Is Authorship?
In traditional accounts of musical creation, the composer is central. A musical work is seen as an act of expression — a transmission from the composer’s mind or heart to the audience’s ears. From this perspective, music is intentional: someone means something, and we, the listeners, try to receive it.
The idea of authorship is not just a matter of credit. It implies ownership of meaning. When we say, “This is a Beethoven symphony,” we are not just identifying its historical origin — we are invoking a set of expectations: emotional gravity, formal rigor, structural development. We listen through Beethoven.
But what happens when there is no human author — or no author in any conventional sense? The Auto-Composer raises the unsettling possibility that meaningful music can emerge without any conscious intent, without a self behind the sound.
Philosophical Foundations: Intention and Aesthetic Value
Philosophers of art have long debated the role of intention in evaluating artworks. The intentionalist camp argues that an artist’s aims, emotions, and background are key to understanding and appreciating a work. If a composer writes a requiem to mourn a personal loss, knowing this may deepen our experience of the music.
On the other hand, anti-intentionalists (or formalists) claim that a work should be judged on its own merits — its structure, style, and emotional effect — independent of the artist’s mind. As literary critic W.K. Wimsatt argued in his famous 1946 essay The Intentional Fallacy, an artwork should be assessed “not by the author’s intention, but by what is actually present in the work itself.”
The Auto-Composer collapses this debate into crisis. If there is no intention at all — not even the possibility of it — does the artwork still stand? If so, must we admit that intention is unnecessary for meaning?
Music as a Medium of Expression
Music is often described as a language of emotion. We say that a piece is “joyful,” “melancholic,” or “triumphant.” But unlike spoken or written language, music rarely expresses specific propositions — it doesn’t say what happened, but rather how it feels. This vagueness is part of its power, but it also opens the door to ambiguity.
When we listen to emotionally charged music composed by a human, we assume that a real emotional state gave rise to it. The violin trembles because the composer felt grief. The syncopated drum rhythm suggests excitement because the drummer intended it that way. These assumptions shape our experience.
But if an AI assembles these same elements — the tremble, the syncopation — without any experience of emotion, are we still moved?
Many people report that they are. This raises a critical point: perhaps our response does not depend on whether the composer felt something — only that the music evokes something. If so, the importance of intention may be overrated in aesthetic theory.
The Problem of Deception
The Auto-Composer also presents an ethical wrinkle. Suppose the AI-generated piece was released under a human pseudonym. It wins awards. Later, the truth is revealed. Some listeners feel betrayed.
Why?
The answer lies not just in the music, but in the narrative surrounding it. Human composers are not just note-arrangers — they are agents in a cultural story. We listen differently when we believe the music comes from someone overcoming adversity, channeling spiritual revelation, or experimenting on the edges of possibility.
This storytelling lens gives us more than sound — it gives us meaning. The music becomes part of a biography, a movement, a context. Deception breaks the frame. But is the music itself changed?
This brings us to the haunting question: is our musical experience an illusion we willingly accept?
Historical Parallels
The challenge posed by the Auto-Composer is not entirely new. Consider:
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Mozart’s Requiem, left unfinished and completed by Franz Xaver Süssmayr — yet it remains canonized under Mozart’s name.
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Jazz standards, often reinvented by players with little concern for original authorship.
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Sampling in hip-hop, where fragments of unknown records are given new aesthetic life.
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Aleatoric music, like John Cage’s Music of Changes, in which elements are determined by chance, not intention.
Each case chips away at the centrality of authorial intention. What matters is what reaches the listener. The creator’s intent may be important, but it’s not always decisive. This trend finds its apex in AI: music without a self, yet still capable of aesthetic effect.
Intention and Innovation
Still, there’s something about knowing a piece was composed by a living mind that seems to matter — especially when we admire innovation. When Coltrane released Ascension, its chaotic density baffled some listeners. But knowing it was Coltrane — a boundary-breaking jazz icon — invited others to hear it as visionary.
Would we have listened so generously if it had come from an unknown? Would we consider AI-generated dissonance "innovative," or just "weird"?
Intentions guide not only meaning but expectation. They create a frame for risk, for evolution, for narrative. Without intention, we may have sound — but can we have artistic vision?
Beyond Human: New Models of Creativity
One might argue that intention doesn’t have to be human. If an AI is designed to respond to feedback, evolve stylistically, or mimic learning, is that not a kind of intentionality? Maybe not conscious — but functional.
In this light, the Auto-Composer becomes a mirror of our own cognitive mystery. We often compose without knowing why — improvising, following instinct, trusting intuition. Are we so different from an AI model trained to do the same?
Perhaps intention is not a binary — either present or absent — but a spectrum. The Auto-Composer occupies one end; the Romantic genius occupies the other. Most of us live somewhere in between.
Authorship in a Collaborative Age
Today’s music culture is already undermining traditional authorship. Songs are co-written by teams. Producers, vocalists, programmers, and mixers all contribute. In genres like electronic music, the line between performer and software is blurred.
Listeners are increasingly comfortable with the idea that music is made, not “written.” The idea of the solitary genius — the Beethoven figure — is fading. The Auto-Composer just accelerates the trend.
If intention still matters, it may need to be redefined — not as individual agency, but as networked creativity. In this model, human and machine collaborate. The composer curates, prompts, or refines. The AI proposes ideas. Together, they co-create.
Aesthetic Experience Without Authorship?
Returning to the original question: Can music be meaningful without intention?
The answer seems to be yes — but differently. The meaning may no longer lie in the emotional intent behind the music, but in the interaction between the music and the listener. The music becomes a mirror, reflecting back whatever the listener projects.
This is not new. Abstract art, ambient music, or chance-based poetry have long operated this way. What changes with AI is the radical absence of selfhood behind the mirror. There is no "artist" to meet us halfway.
For some, this diminishes the experience. For others, it opens a frontier — music as emergent phenomena, freed from the constraints of ego and emotion.
Conclusion: Rethinking Intention
The Auto-Composer forces us to reconsider what gives music its aesthetic power. Is it the mind behind the notes — or the ear that hears them?
Intention, it turns out, is neither irrelevant nor sufficient. It matters when we want to understand music — its cultural context, its symbolic gestures, its technical ambition. But when we want to simply feel music, intention may fade into the background.
As AI-generated music becomes more common, we may need new criteria for musical value — ones less obsessed with origin and more attuned to effect, novelty, and listener response.
Perhaps the deepest insight of the thought experiment is this: music, like consciousness, may be interpreted as intentional even when it is not. And maybe that’s enough.