In the book The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity Roman Ingarden presented multi‑sided conception of the work of music. The crucial problems of this book are of ontological character and they concern the ontic category and the essence of the music composition. In the present article, Ingarden’s conception is criticized internally and externally. At first, Ingarden’s conception is analyzed from the point of view of his own assumptions. Then, the very assumptions are revised. Ingarden bases his investigation on the elitist analytic corpus (he considers only outstanding works of Western Music) and employs liberal ontological assumptions (he allows many different categories of objects). With these assumptions in place, Ingarden reaches his solution, namely that the work of music is a schematic, purely intentional object. This seems optimal. The perspective changes, if we go beyond the elitist corpus or accept more restrictive ontological assumptions.

The author reflects on the issues raised in R. Ingarden’s article The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity. He considers them and presents them in a new light. This author believes that the musical works exist as special relations between special objects. At the same time, he refuses to consider musical creativity a product of human consciousness. In his opinion, consciousness only accepts or rejects musical phrases that present themselves as a product of unconscious brain activity.