Volume 1 -- Unit 1: Tragedy as an independent art of musical drama. Chapter 1: Plato's well-educated men, the dancers: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" -- Chapter 2: Tragedy as a necessarily performed "musical" art in the Poetics -- Chapter 3: The irreducibility of tragedy to literature -- Chapter 4: Harmonia kai rhuthmos as "music and dance" in Politics VIII.

Following his celebrated book The Aesthetics of Music, Scruton explores the fundamental elements that constitute a great piece of music.

Au cours du XIXe siècle les compositeurs d'opéra prennent conscience que le théâtre peut être pensé en tant qu'espace expressif susceptible de s'intégrer à l'écriture musicale afin de véhiculer du sens. Au XXe siècle, cette idée se développe aussi à l'aide de croisements avec les expériences des avant-gardes théâtrales, et contribue à transformer la conception même de la scène du théâtre musical (qui devient aussi multimédia). L'idée d'espace "sensible" ouvre ainsi une perspective originale pour aborder l'étude des processus qui porte (...) vers les formes de théâtre musical d'aujourd'hui."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Introduction -- Prelude: a paradox of the ineffable. Schopenhauer's deep copy ; The Platonic solutions ; Four dialectical responses (after Nietzsche) -- Bloch's tone. The tone ; The natural klang ; The expressive tone ; Bloch's magic rattle ; The tone's inner ineffability ; The event-forms ; A dialectical account of music history ; Utopian musical speech -- Adorno's musical fracture. Adorno's tone ; Adorno's conception of history ; The tendenz des materials ; Music's language-like ineffability ; The (...) immanent critique ; The paradox of Mahler's vernacular ; The curve of inconsistency -- Interlude: Wittgenstein's silence -- Jankelevitch's inconsistency. Bergson and the inconsistency of time ; The aporetic source of fidelity ; Charm ; Cosmic silence ; Unwoven dialectics -- Deleuze and Guattari's rhythm. Deleuze's rhythm ; The rhythm of sense ; A structuralist quadrivium ; The rhythm of life ; Sonorous co-extensions -- Conclusion: a paradox of the vernacular. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Rethinking Music Education and Social Change by Alexandra Kertz-WelzelGraça MotaAlexandra Kertz-Welzel, Rethinking Music Education and Social Change (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022)I began to read this book shortly after the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian troops. Amidst this most terrible and brutal context, reading and re-reading the book that Alexandra Kertz-Welzel offers was both a blessing and an intense exercise of food for thought. A (...) blessing as it drives our minds through a complex but nonetheless rewarding journey into the meanders of critical and ideal visions. An exercise of food for thought as she turns to the arts, philosophy, sociology, and political theory to construct an interdisciplinary, sustained story. While rethinking “the goals of music education in view of social change,”1 the introduction describes the purpose of the study and presents the author’s chosen theoretical pillars: Levitas’s concept of utopia, Georgina Born’s four planes of music’s sociality, David Hesmondalgh’s defense of aesthetic experience, and Martha Nussbaum’s concept of human flourishing. Furthermore, Kertz-Welzel aims to answer the question of what social change is in general but also, concerning music education, to critically consider the contribution that music education can make to social change. She proposes to redefine “the general goals of music education regarding its social and musical intentions, reuniting two dimensions which have been defined as opposite, but are in fact complementary regarding [End Page 99] politically and socially responsive music education and esthetic music education.”2 I will get back later to this last intention in the context of the author’s approach to the redefinition of music education. For now, I will begin with her proposed definition of music education as utopian theory and practice, in the context of the chosen title for this book.Rethinking Music Education and Social Change is a very appealing title not only because rethinking music education is a most pressing issue within the community of music educators but also because social change, in relationship with music, has been the object of research in numerous projects, claiming the transformative power of music. This is a theme I have been very much involved with, being the co-founder of the research platform, Social Impact of Making Music (SIMM),3 that aims to systematically investigate the possible social impacts of learning and playing music. Having said that, I found myself confronted with a book that sets in the middle of its focus to thoroughly investigate the concept of utopia in its multiple facets based on a complete discussion of its theoretical basis. In that context, the fact that the title of the book does not include utopia seemed to me rather puzzling, and I intend to come back to this at the end of this review.The author presents a comprehensive and updated review of the literature, its complexities and ambivalences in the relationship between the arts and social change as it appears and has evolved across time. This approach connects social change with activism, not forgetting the issue of dramatic social change that she exemplifies with the COVID-19 pandemic, and to which we can now sadly add the present state of war. Quoting Roxane de la Sablonniére (2017) and her four typologies of social change, Kertz-Welzel highlights the fact that in the last hundred years the pace of change has increased enormously, and “dramatic social change is a threat to cultural identity.”4The notion of the arts as a political instrument is thoroughly developed, and it should be acknowledged that the author takes here, as well as in other parts of the book, a courageous standpoint. She does not avoid critical or uncomfortable issues, one of them being the ambiguity of the arts. In her discussion on social distinction and identity construction, she cites Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and Pierre Bourdieu and argues that culture has indeed been used as a way of discrimination among people. She also points out the supposedly refined taste of higher social classes cultivated through access to various arts experiences, while others would be denied these experiences and therefore unable to develop their full artistic potential... (shrink)

Modern philosophers generally assume that music is a problem to which philosophy ought to offer an answer. Andrew Bowie’s Music, Philosophy, and Modernity suggests, in contrast, that music might offer ways of responding to some central questions in modern philosophy. Bowie looks at key philosophical approaches to music ranging from Kant, through the German Romantics and Wagner, to Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Adorno. He uses music to re-examine many current ideas about language, subjectivity, (...) metaphysics, truth, and ethics, and he suggests that music can show how the predominant images of language, communication, and meaning in contemporary philosophy may be lacking in essential ways. His book will be of interest to philosophers, musicologists, and all who are interested in the relation between music and philosophy. (shrink)

Einleitung -- Opernmusik -- Theaterwissenschaft -- Schauspielmusik -- Filmmusik -- Funktionssystem für Musik in der Oper -- Analysen im Lichte der Funktionen.

In this chapter, I discuss the kinds of understanding expected of and evinced by skilled listeners, performers, analysts, and composers. I confine the discussion to Western, purely instrumental music, mainly with the classical tradition in mind.[1] And I refer primarily to the Anglophone literature of "analytic" philosophy of music. As will become apparent, my concern is with an analysis that maps what are meant to be familiar aspects of musical experience. I investigate the various understandings expected of (...) an accomplished listener, the performer, the music analyst, and the composer. (shrink)

This study develops a theory about the interaction between music cognition and affective response. The theory demonstrates how musical thinking, knowledge, and decision-making result in qualitative musical behaviour. It reports new findings about the cognitive representation of musical structures, imagery as an auditory-phenomenological descriptor of music, aesthetic response as an outcome of specific cognitive decisions, and the value of music in cross-cultural human development. Each of the seven essays identifies a problem in music psychology that is (...) relevant to an explanation of the musical process, reviews the literature relevant to that problem, and, through systematic philosophical analysis, offers a solution. This book should be of interest to music philosophers, and psychologists working in the areas of cognition, aesthetics, music theory, music education, and music therapy. (shrink)

The Topos of Music is the upgraded and vastly deepened English extension of the seminal German Geometrie der Töne. It reflects the dramatic progress of mathematical music theory and its operationalization by information technology since the publication of Geometrie der Töne in 1990. The conceptual basis has been vastly generalized to topos-theoretic foundations, including a corresponding thoroughly geometric musical logic. The theoretical models and results now include topologies for rhythm, melody, and harmony, as well as a classification (...) theory of musical objects that comprises the topos-theoretic concept framework. Classification also implies techniques of algebraic moduli theory. The classical models of modulation and counterpoint have been extended to exotic scales and counterpoint interval dichotomies. The probably most exciting new field of research deals with musical performance and its implementation on advanced object-oriented software environments. This subject not only uses extensively the existing mathematical music theory, it also opens the language to differential equations and tools of differential geometry, such as Lie derivatives. Mathematical performance theory is the key to inverse performance theory, an advanced new research field which deals with the calculation of varieties of parameters which give rise to a determined performance. This field uses techniques of algebraic geometry and statistics, approaches which have already produced significant results in the understanding of highest-ranked human performances. The book's formal language and models are currently being used by leading researchers in Europe and Northern America and have become a foundation of music software design. This is also testified by the book's nineteen collaborators and the included CD-ROM containing software and music examples. (shrink)

In this volume, Zangwill develops a view of the nature of music and our experience of music that foregrounds the aesthetic properties of music. He focuses on metaphysical issues about aesthetic properties of music, psychological issues about the nature of musical experience, and philosophy of language issues about the metaphorical nature of aesthetic descriptions of music. Among the innovations of this book, Zangwill addresses the limits of literal description, generally, and in the aesthetic case. (...) He also explores the social and political issues about musical listening, which tend to be addressed more in continental traditions. (shrink)

This paper provides a reading of the opera criticism of Bernard Williams in the light of his philosophical writings. Beginning with the observations that his philosophical writing lacks engagement with musical and aesthetic issues, and his operatic writing appears to present no particular philosophy of the subject, I try to draw together certain themes by mapping Williams's operatic concerns onto his philosophical project more generally. I argue that the 'excessive' nature of the artform—the idea that opera tends to exceed (...) its musico-dramatic functions—was of particular interest to Williams, partly because it resonated with his dislike of easy theoretical solutions to thorny practical issues. More specifically, Mozart's Cosi fan tutte is related, via the way the way its emotional register exceeds its dramatic context, to the issues examined by Williams in his work on moral luck. Similarly, I discuss the way Williams's essay on Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande seems to hint at an account of the emotions which is otherwise missing from Williams's oeuvre. (shrink)

Over the last few decades, the notion of improvisation has enriched and dynamized research on traditional philosophies of music, theatre, dance, poetry, and even visual art. This Handbook offers readers an authoritative collection of accessible articles on the philosophy of improvisation, synthesizing and explaining various subjects and issues from the growing wave of journal articles and monographs in the field. Its 48 chapters, written specifically for this volume by an international team of scholars, are accessible for students and (...) researchers alike. The volume is organized into four main sections: I. Art and Improvisation: Theoretical Perspectives II. Art and Improvisation: Aesthetic, Ethical, and Political Perspectives III. Improvisation in Musical Practices IV. Improvisation in the Visual, Narrative, Dramatic, and Interactive Arts Key Features: Treats improvisation not only as a stylistic feature, but also as an aesthetic property of artworks and performances as well as a core element of artistic creativity. Spells out multiple aspects of the concept of improvisation, emphasizing its relevance in understanding the nature of art. Covers improvisation in a wide spectrum of artistic domains, including unexpected ones such as literature, visual arts, games, and cooking. Addresses key questions, like: - How can improvisation be defined and what is its role in different art forms? - Can improvisation be perceived as such, and how can it be aesthetically evaluated? - What is the relationship between improvisation and notions such as action, composition, expressivity, and authenticity? - What is the ethical and political significance of improvisation? (shrink)

This is an abridged, paperback edition of Peter le Huray and James Day's invaluable anthology of writings concerned with the role of music in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century aesthetics. This volume retains all the most important and significant items from the original hardcover edition. Over fifty writers are represented here, including such major figures as Rousseau, Kant, Schlegel, Schopenhauer and Hegel, and the useful introductions and biographical details of the original are also retained. The aesthetic literature of the period is (...) profuse but this carefully edited volume offers a balanced selection which illuminates the ways people experienced music and how they came to an understanding in particular of the new music of their day. (shrink)

In philosophy of music, formalists argue that pure instrumental music is unable to represent any content without the help of lyrics, titles, or dramatic context. In particular, they deny that music’s use of convention counts as a genuine case of representation because only intrinsic means of representing counts and conventions are extrinsic to the sound structures making up music. In this paper, I argue that convention should count as a way for music to (...) genuinely represent content for two reasons. First, the view that only intrinsic ways of representing counts is too stringent. If use can ground meaning in language, then use might also ground meaning (and representation) in music, too. Second, even if we were to insist on intrinsic features, convention should count as a way for music to genuinely represent because convention is an intrinsic feature of music. Without knowledge of musical systems and encultured listening, music wouldn’t even be recognized as music, so convention is already baked into our listening practices. (shrink)

I. History. Mainwaring's Handel : its relation to British aesthetics -- Herbert Spencer and a musical dispute -- II. Opera and film. Handel's operas : the form of feeling and the problem of appreciation -- Anti-semitism in Meistersinger? -- Speech, song, and the transparency of medium : on operatic metaphysics -- III. Performance. On the historically informed performance -- Ars perfecta : toward perfection in musical performance? -- IV. Interpretation. Another go at the meaning of music : Koopman, Davies, (...) and the meaning of "meaning" -- Another go at musical profundity : Stephen Davies and the game of chess -- From ideology to music : Leonard Meyer's theory of style change -- Sibley's last paper -- In defense of musical representation : music, representation, and the hybrid arts -- Music, language, and cognition : which doesn't belong? (shrink)

_The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines _The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music_ is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.

We talk not only of enjoying music, but of understanding it. Music is often taken to have expressive import--and in that sense to have meaning. But what does music mean, and how does it mean? Stephen Davies addresses these questions in this sophisticated and knowledgeable overview of current theories in the philosophy of music. Reviewing and criticizing the aesthetic positions of recent years, he offers a spirited explanation of his own position. Davies considers and rejects (...) in turn the positions that music describes (like language), or depicts (like pictures), or symbolizes (in a distinctive fashion) emotions. Similarly, he resists the idea that music's expressiveness is to be explained solely as the composer's self-expression, or in terms of its power to evoke a response from the audience. Music's ability to describe emotions, he believes, is located within the music itself; it presents the aural appearance of what he calls emotion characteristics. The expressive power of music awakens emotions in the listener, and music is valued for this power although the responses are sometimes ones of sadness. Davies shows that appreciation and understanding may require more than recognition of and reaction to music's expressive character, but need not depend on formal musicological training. (shrink)

A musical experience is marked by the synthesis of passion and rationality, emotion and understanding, and body and mind. Ferrara demonstrates that each method of musical analysis confines musical significance to a single level. He devises an "eclectic method" that provides bridges for musical sound, form, and reference. In response to the multiplicity of levels of musical significance Ferrara's eclectic method draws upon a wide-ranging number of conventional and nonconventional approaches to musical analysis which results in a dialectic of methods.

Philosophy and Hip-Hop: Ruminations on Postmodern Cultural Form opens up the philosophical life force that informs the construction of Hip-hop by turning the gaze of the philosopher upon those blind spots that exist within existing scholarship. Traditional Departments of Philosophy will find this book a solid companion in Contemporary Philosophy or Aesthetic Theory. Inside these pages is a project that parallels the themes of existential angst, corporate elitism, social consciousness, male privilege and masculinity. This book illustrates the (...) abundance of philosophical meaning in the textual and graphic elements of Hip-hop, and thus places Hip-hop within the philosophical canon. (shrink)

For a century there has been a divergence between what music theorists say music is about and what the ordinary listener actually experiences. Music theory has insisted on a separation of musical experience from the experience of emotions, from the passions. Yet a passionate experience of music is just what most ordinary listeners have. Charting a new course through the minefield of contemporary philosophy of music, Aaron Ridley provides a coherent defense of the ordinary (...) listener's beliefs. Focusing on instrumental music in the classical Western canon, Ridley defends the commonsense position on music and attempts to return the experience of music to the ordinary listener. He argues that, through a sympathetic experience of certain musical gestures, the listener is able to grasp the passions of which the music is expressive. If the passions are properly understood, he contends, there is a place for passion in a philosophical understanding of music. Similarly, the expression of passion may properly be considered part of the value of the music we hear. (shrink)

Concentrating on the music, politics, and philosophy of Richard Wagner, Lydia Goehr addresses some fundamental questions of German Romanticism: Is all music musical? Is music made less musical by the presence of words? What is musical autonomy? How do composers avoid censorship? How are composers affected by exile? Can music articulate a 'politics for the future'? What is the relation between music and philosophy?

The basic aim of this research study is to describe the Applications of the fusion of aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television music production. This research study depends upon primary data analysis for measuring the research study to generate different questions related to the aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy to determine the research study used smart PLS and run different results related to the variables. Modern philosophy of art includes the (...) class='Hi'>philosophy of film as a well-established subfield. Although philosophers were among the first academics to write studies of the new art form in the early decades of the twentieth century, the area did not enjoy considerable development until the 1980s, when a resurgence began. The rapid expansion of this sector can be attributed to a wide variety of factors. Let it be enough to state that the evolution of philosophy as a discipline and the growing importance of cinema in popular culture has made it crucial for philosophers to view the film as an art form on par with literature, music, and the visual arts. The overall research study found that there are negative and some positive relations between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in music production. The result found that significant relationship between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television. (shrink)

What are musical works? Are they discovered or created? Can recordings substitute faithfully for live performances? This book considers these and other intriguing questions. It first outlines the nature of musical works, their relation to performances, and their notational specification; it then considers authenticity in performance, musical traditions, and recordings. Comprehensive and original, the volume discusses many kinds of music, applying its conclusions to issues as diverse as the authentic performance movement, the cultural integrity of ethnic music, and (...) the implications of the dominance of recorded over live music. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy of Music Education Review 11.2 (2003) 112-129 [Access article in PDF] Musical Aphorisms and Common Aesthetic Quandaries Yaroslav Senyshyn Simon Fraser University, Canada I have written in the style of aphorisms because their form is useful for both the sake of brevity and possible complexity. As well, they are historically significant as they have served many philosophers in the past and in our own time. Some (...) will argue that they do not say enough, but this is unfounded as in saying less there is often scope for more. Who knows perhaps academe will experiment with this mode of writing more frequently?For the sake of a sense of direction, I will borrow Russell Nieli's title to his thoughtful book on Wittgenstein's philosophy, From Mysticism to Ordinary Language, 1 to characterize the procedure of these aphorisms. Thus my initial aphorisms begin with music as a thing-in-itself, a striving toward a Kantian noumenon 2 and move toward the everyday practical concerns of music education. There are no determinate limits to a philosophy of music; unfortunately, this is also true of confusion. The following aphorisms (while hardly exhaustive of any possible gamut of music philosophy) strive to demystify some of the more common aesthetic quandaries and hopefully provide an opportunity for a wider field of discussion in music philosophy and education. [End Page 112] Music: External and Internal Inferences Sound and silence as potentiation of music precedes human existence.If music precedes existence then it can never be defined in absolute terms of thought. It remains thus even if nothingness were an all-pervasive, encompassing silence (that is, the silence of music or music as silence). 3 Silence as music in our culture may be perceived to be music by some and not necessarily by all cultures. As the sound and silence that preceded our being, it is indeed music in everlasting potentiation.In this sense sound can only be philosophically inferred as the "other," outside music, which the pre-Socratic philosophers referred to mystically and metaphorically as "the music of the spheres"; it is that music outside of us and finds its origins in sounds indirectly related to us. 4 It is what I prefer to call the Sound and Silence that define and are defined by each other in their potentiation for music. Thus this sound is music as potential or dynamis if intended to be music and perceived as such. It is also the possible music or sounds of the environment and non-humans such as whales, elephants, and monkeys. But the latter is our perception of their "music" and not necessarily their own appropriation. In the former we can use or intend the sounds of the environment to be music if these are perceived as such by at least one other person.Thus all sound is music in potentiation.The notion of a possible pre-existence of music, as stated in the first aphorism, is then defined by music as both a source and external entity.As an external inference (that is, the possibility of such) music does not communicate with us; rather, we utilize it through our own means and culture to communicate by it indirectly. It becomes our social construct and thus not an absolute notion.This source of music can be verified as it is implicit in our respective societies and world cultures.A music which possibly or inferentially precedes existence is, of necessity, part of that possible catalyst of sound waves identified by modern-day physics by which the universe may have been formed. For this reason, such notions usually appropriated by world mythologies have made it possible to worship music, perceive it as a supernatural force, or even view it is a possible cause in the big bang theory. 5Music is embodied in experience in that it is appropriated by members of extant cultures for its own particular use. We can speak of music from within our personal experiences of it. But this can only be appropriated or understood properly by others when our description of it accords with that cultural... (shrink)

This innovative study re-evaluates the philosophical significance of aesthetics in the context of contemporary debates on the nature of philosophy. Lewis's main argument is that contemporary conceptions of meaning and truth have been reified, and that aesthetics is able to articulate why this is the case, with important consequences for understanding the horizons and nature of philosophical inquiry. _Reification and the Aesthetics of Music_ challenges the most emphatic and problematic conceptions of meaning and truth in both analytic philosophy (...) and postmodern thought by acknowledging the ontological and logical primacy of our concrete, practice-based experiences with aesthetic phenomena. By engaging with a variety of aesthetic practices, including Beethoven's symphonies and string quartets, Wagner's music dramas, Richard Strauss's _Elektra_, the twentieth-century avant-garde, Jamaican soundsystem culture, and punk and contemporary noise, this book demonstrates the aesthetic relevance of reification as well as the concept's applicability to contemporary debates within philosophy. (shrink)

(Only begin) A descent -- Free bodies -- Collective subjectivities 1 -- Overture to dawn -- Collective subjectivities 2 -- Into the hot -- Solitary subjectivities -- Troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes -- Collective objectivities -- Imaginary birds said to live in paradise -- Postscript : The ballad of John and Yoko -- Rain falling down on old Gods.

Music and noise seem to be mutually exclusive. Music is generally considered as an ordered arrangement of sounds pleasing to the ear and noise as its opposite: chaotic, ugly, aggressive, sometimes even deafening. When presented in a musical context, noise can thus act as a tool to express resistance to predominant cultural values, to society, or to socioeconomic structures (including those of the music industry). The oppositional stance confirms current notions of noise as something which is destructive, (...) a belief not only cherished by hard-core rock bands but also shared by engineers and companies developing devices to suppress or reduce noise in our daily environment. In contrast to the common opinions on noise just described, this volume seeks to explore the constructive potential of noise in contemporary musical practices. Rather than viewing noise as a 'defect', this volume aims at studying its aesthetic and cultural potential. Within the noise music study field, most recent publications focus on subgenres such as psychedelic post-rock, industrial, hard-core punk, trash or rave, as they developed from rock and popular music. This book includes work on avant-garde music developed in the domain of classical music as well. In addition to already well-established (social) historical and aesthetical perspectives on noise and noise music, this volume also offers contributions by music analysts. (shrink)

The Music Instinct Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and what is still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity. --from publisher description.

This chapter contains sections titled: A Preliminary Distinction Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art Plato's Problem Aesthetic Properties More Plato and a Little Bit of History A Little More History Hearing with the Inner Ear.

The Orpheus Institute celebrates 20 years of artistic research in music Artistic research has come of age, and with it the Orpheus Institute. Founded twenty years ago, the Institute’s purpose from the start has been to pursue research through the practice of musicians. The Orpheus Institute is of the same generation as the field it was established to explore. Like many young adults, artistic research and its structures are still constructing their identity within a wider world. How have they (...) developed? How will they mature? How can they negotiate relationships with institutions, disciplines, and bodies of theory and yet retain the essence of their work—the critical perspective of the artist? In the last two decades there have been major changes in the dynamics and structures of culture, its institutions and constituencies. How can artistic research maintain a productive dialectic between its potential status as a discipline and its core as radical practice? These and related questions are the threads woven through this collection of essays and assessments by present and past members of the Orpheus community—researchers, scholars, administrators, advisors. Together and separately they weave a tapestry of past accomplishments, current research, and future perspectives. They celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Orpheus not with congratulations but with challenges and questions—a job for research, a job for the Institute, a job for the future. The wide range of contributors to this volume includes practitioner-researchers, theorists, and academic leaders from institutions at the forefront of artistic research in music. Contributors Tom Beghin (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Paulo de Assis (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Leonella Grasso Caprioli (Conservatorio di Vicenza), Jonathan Impett (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Esa Kirkkopelto (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Kari Kurkela (University of the Arts, Helsinki), Susan Melrose (Middlesex University, London), Stefan Östersjö (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Gertrud Sandqvist (Malmö Art Academy), Huib Schippers, Vanessa Tomlinson, Paul Draper (Queensland Conservatorium Research Centre, Griffith University), Luk Vaes (Orpheus Institute, Ghent), Janneke Wesseling/ Kitty Zijlmans (Leiden University). (shrink)

A new theory of aesthetics and music, grounded in the collision between language and the body. In this book, Tim Hodgkinson proposes a theory of aesthetics and music grounded in the boundary between nature and culture within the human being. His analysis discards the conventional idea of the human being as an integrated whole in favor of a rich and complex field in which incompatible kinds of information—biological and cultural—collide. It is only when we acknowledge the clash of (...) body and language within human identity that we can understand how art brings forth the special form of subjectivity potentially present in aesthetic experiences. As a young musician, Hodgkinson realized that music was, in some mysterious way, “of itself”—not isolated from life, but not entirely continuous with it, either. Drawing on his experiences as a musician, composer, and anthropologist, Hodgkinson shows how when we listen to music a new subjectivity comes to life in ourselves. The normal mode of agency is suspended, and the subjectivity inscribed in the music comes toward us as a formative “other” to engage with. But this is not our reproduction of the composer's own subjectivation; when we perform our listening of the music, we are sharing the formative risks taken by its maker. To examine this in practice, Hodgkinson looks at the work of three composers who have each claimed to stimulate a new way of listening: Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, and Helmut Lachenmann. (shrink)

Drawing on psychological and philosophical materials as well as the analysis of specific musical examples, Cook here defines the difference between music...

The Book Seeks To Weigh Some Basic Facts And Concepts Of Hindustani Sangeet (Music, Rhythm And Kathak Dance) Against The Art Theories Of Susanne K. Langer, An Eminent Aesthetician Of The Recent Past, Incorporating Numerous Illustrative References To Hindustani Sangeet.

Ranging chronologically from the twelfth to the fifteenth century and thematically from Latin to vernacular literary modes, this book challenges standard assumptions about the musical cultures and philosophies of the European Middle Ages. Engaging a wide range of premodern texts and contexts, from the musicality of sodomy in twelfth-century polyphony to Chaucer's representation of pedagogical violence in the Prioress's Tale, from early Christian writings on the music of the body to the plainchant and poetry of Hildegard of Bingen, the (...) author argues that medieval music was quintessentially a practice of the flesh. The book reveals a medieval world in which erotic desire, sexual practice, torture, flagellation, and even death itself resonated with musical significance and meaning. In its insistence on music as an integral part of the material cultures of the Middle Ages, the book presents a revisionist account of an important aspect of premodern European civilization. (shrink)

This is a long-awaited reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics. These highly influential essays are essential reading for debates on the definition of art, the ontology of art, emotional response to art, expression in art, and the nature of art forms.

Leonard B. Meyer has proposed that when musical tendencies or expectations are inhibited by musical ambiguity or the unexpected, those inhibitions and their subsequent resolutions are likely to be provocative or engaging. Music, Tendencies and Inhibitions will explore the relevance of this theory to music and various other disciplines, and to psychological and natural processes. Each chapter consists of two parts: a presentation and consideration of an aspect of Meyer's theory, and a more associative or rhapsodic section of (...) "Reflections" on this aspect. The book will focus on Meyer's aesthetic rather than his music-theoretical proclivities, and is intended for academics and students in various fields as well as educated non-academics. The music scene is fluctuating, Meyer suggests, in that new and original styles or techniques are continuously emerging or developing on a small scale; it is static in that many of these developments seem unrelated, and are not likely to be grasped or progress as a whole. It will be posited that this theory foreshadowed and reflects important ideologies of contemporary culture, including postmodernism. (shrink)

Shared Musical Lives makes the case for the epistemological and ethical significance of musical experience. Music can be a source of self-knowledge and self-expression, and hence reveal important dimensions of the self to others. This knowledge - of both self and of others - has a moral force as well. Shared musical experience can transform and establish new modes of being with others, cultivate virtues, and expand the moral imagination. The term sonification (which means translating data into non-verbal audible (...) tones) provides an organizing principle for the arguments in the book.Transposing the concept into a philosophical key, this book explores two forms of sonification: first, the process by which musical experience reveals dimensions of the self and relationships with others; and second, philosophical sonification, or the critical examination of philosophical concepts,arguments, and theories in view of what musical experience reveals. These two kinds of sonification are discussed specifically in the context of disability. In this book, author Licia Carlson brings the musical lives of people with cognitive and intellectual disabilities into the foreground in order to challenge and broaden existing conceptions of disability and music and provide new ways of thinking about the philosophies of music and disability. (shrink)

This book is a philosophical study of the relations between hearing and thinking about music. The central problem it addresses is as follows: how is it possible to talk about what a listener perceives in terms that the listener does not recognize? By applying the concepts and techniques of analytic philosophy the author explores the ways in which musical hearing may be described as nonconceptual, and how such mental representation contrasts with conceptual thought. The author is both philosopher (...) and musicologist and uniquely combines the perspectives of both disciplines. Exploring the philosophical questions of mental representation in the relatively neglected, nonverbal domain of music, this study is a major contribution to the philosophical understanding of music perception and cognitive theory. (shrink)

Concentrating on the music, politics, and philosophy of Richard Wagner, Lydia Goehr addresses some fundamental questions of German Romanticism: Is all music musical? Is music made less musical by the presence of words? What is musical autonomy? How do composers avoid censorship? How are composers affected by exile? Can music articulate a 'politics for the future'? What is the relation between music and philosophy?

First published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Music theory of almost all ages has relied on nature in its attempts to explain music. The understanding of what 'nature' is, however, is subject to cultural and historical differences. In exploring ways in which music theory has represented and employed natural order since the scientific revolution, this volume asks some fundamental questions not only about nature in music theory, but also the nature of music theory. In an array of different approaches, ranging from physical (...) acoustics to theology and Lacanian psychoanalysis, these essays examine how the multifarious conceptions of nature, located variously between scientific reason and divine power, are brought to bear on music theory. They probe the changing representations and functions of nature in the service of music theory and highlight the ever-changing configurations of nature and music, as mediated by the music-theoretical discourse. (shrink)

In its narrative, dramatic, and representational genres, art regularly depicts contexts for human emotions and their expressions. It is not surprising, then, that these artforms are often about emotional experiences and displays, and that they are also concerned with the expression of emotion. What is more interesting is that abstract art genres may also include examples that are highly expressive of human emotion. Pure music – that is, stand-alone music played on musical instruments excluding the human voice, (...) and without words, literary titles, or associated texts connected to it by its composer – is often characterized as the expressive art par excellence. Yet how could that be possible, given that such music lacks semantic or representational content? Pure music presents the hardest and most vivid philosophical challenge to any account of expressiveness in the arts, which is why it is crucial to consider the musical case for the light it sheds on the underlying principles and issues. In this chapter I consider two accounts of expressiveness in pure music. Both regard expressiveness as an objective property of such music. I argue for the position I call appearance emotionalism and against the alternative, which I label hypothetical emo- tionalism. But before I get to that, there is a different mode of musical expression to be acknowledged. Even instrumental music comes charged with associations. Some of these are private to the listener, but many are widely shared. The latter may be included in a piece by accident but are, more often, deliberately placed for their effects. For instance, when a song is quoted in an instrumental work, its title or words may be brought to mind. Certain melodies (e.g., “Ode to Joy”), styles (e.g., tarantella), idioms (e.g., fanfares), forms (e.g., minuet), modalities (e.g., church modes), and instruments (e.g., fifes and snare drums) recall particular social events, geocultural regions, historical periods, ideas, and sensibilities, and in this way can hook up with affective life-experiences. Though it is music’s associative ties that are likely to be referred to when most people are asked about music’s significance, philosophers say little about them.. (shrink)

While acknowledging that Pierre Boulez is not a philosopher, and that he is wary of the potential misuse of philosophy with regard to music, this study investigates a series of philosophically charged terms and concepts which he uses in discussion of his music. Campbell examines significant encounters which link Boulez to the work of a number of important philosophers and thinkers, including Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, Eco and Deleuze. Relating Boulez's music and ideas to broader currents of thought, (...) the book illuminates a number of affinities linking music and philosophy, and also literature and visual art. These connections facilitate enhanced understanding of post-war modernist music and Boulez's distinctive approach to composition. Drawing on a wide range of previously unpublished documentary sources and providing musical analysis of a number of key scores, the book traces the changing musical, philosophical and intellectual currents which inform Boulez's work. (shrink)