Alibis, and why performers don t have them

Abstract

Musical performers confront, deal with, and participate in musical "events". These musical events present the performer with a number of obligations to uphold. One particular kind of obligation precedes and overrides the other kinds of (aesthetic) obligation compositional, historical, critical-interpretative, physiological, for example and lies at the root of the "contingencies", "illusions", and "anxieties" of which performers and commentators often speak. In this essay I illustrate the nature of this non-foundational obligation through a meditation on a concept of Bakhtin's: the "alibi".