In the philosophy of music and in musicology, apart from ethnomusicology, there is a long tradition of focus on musical compositions as objects of inquiry. But in both disciplines, a body of recent work focuses on the place of performance in the making of music. Most of this work, however, still takes for granted that compositions, at least in Western art music, are the primary objects of aesthetic attention. In this paper I focus on aesthetic attention to the performing (...) activity itself. I begin by roughly characterizing what is involved in attending to the performing activity of musical performers. I then argue that such attention is essential to the full appreciation of the central compositions of the Western art music canon. Finally, I argue that, often enough, recordings provide a suitable vehicle for this sort of attention; listeners to recordings can use them to listen to musical performance. (shrink)

This article analyzes the treatment of music in Buddhist monastic life through the rules on music in Buddhist canon law within the six extant traditions, which are preserved in Chinese, Tibetan, Pāli, and fragmentary Sanskrit manuscripts. These texts distinguish and differentiate instrumental and vocal music, presenting song, dance, and instrumental music as a triad and further subdividing vocal music into reciting, chanting, and singing. The performance and consumption of singing is strictly prohibited. Regulations on chanting and recitation are mutually exclusive (...) and context dependent. Chanting is required on two occasions: when one praises the Buddha’s virtues and when one performs the Tridaṇḍaka ritual. Chanting is prohibited on three other occasions: when one recites the Prātimokṣasūtra and other ordinary Buddhist texts, and when one preaches Dharma. These regulations demonstrate that text and context are decisive in determining what forms of vocal music are appropriate in Buddhist practice. The use of embellished chanting is reserved for performing rituals whose primary goal is to please divine recipients but must be prohibited when clear articulation is expected for educating the audience. Given that making or consuming vocal music is not a criminal offense, yet is strictly regulated, I argue that the establishment of Buddhist canon law was compelled by a pressing demand to demarcate and maintain a social boundary between the Buddhist monastic order and the lay community of adherents. (shrink)

This book considers the intersection of music, politics and identity, focusing on music (genres) across the world as a form of political expression and protest, positive identity formations, but also how the criminalisation, censuring, policing and prosecution of musicians and fans can occur. All-encompassing in this book is analyses of the unique contribution of music to various aspects of human activity through an international, multi-disciplinary approach. The book will serve as a starting point for scholars in those areas where there (...) has been an uncertain approach to this subject, while those from disciplines with a more established canon of music analysis will be informed about what each perspective can offer. The approach is international and multi-disciplinary, with the contributing authors focusing on a range of countries and the differing social and cultural impact of music for both musicians and fans. Academic disciplines can provide some explanations, but the importance of the contribution of practitioners is vital for a fully rounded understanding of the impact of music. Therefore, this book takes the reader on a journey, beginning with theoretical and philosophical perspectives on music and society, proceeding to an analysis of laws and policies, and concluding with the use of music by educational practitioners and the people with whom they work. This book will appeal to students and scholars in subjects such as sociology, criminology, cultural studies, and across the wider social sciences. It will also be of interest to practitioners in youth justice or those with other involvement in the criminal justice system. (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)

Why are some popular musical forms and performers universally reviled by critics and ignored by scholars-despite enjoying large-scale popularity? How has the notion of what makes "good" or "bad" music changed over the years-and what does this tell us about the writers who have assigned these tags to different musical genres? Many composers that are today part of the classical "canon" were greeted initially by bad reviews. Similarly, jazz, country, and pop musics were all once rejected as "bad" (...) by the academy that now has courses on these and many other types of music. This book addresses why this is so through a series of essays on different musical forms and performers. It looks at alternate ways of judging musical performance beyond the critical/academic nexus, and suggests new paths to follow in understanding what makes some music "popular" even if it is judged to be "bad." For anyone who has ever secretly enjoyed ABBA, Kenny G, or disco, Bad Music will be a guilty pleasure! (shrink)

Postmodernity's Musical Pasts considers music after 1945 as a representation of concepts such as "historicity" and "temporality". The volume understands postmodernity as a period in which both modernism and postmodernism co-exist. It is attracted to a wider interpretation of "historicity" that focuses on the complex nexus of past-present-future. "Historicity" is understood as leaning closely on "temporality", generally thought of as the linear progression of past, present and future. The volume broadens the absolutist understanding of temporality to include processes which (...) can occur in circular, spiral, transcending and other formations. The book covers an extensive spectrum of topics from classical to popular and neo-traditional musics to concerns of the disciplines of musicology. Such a wide range of topics from both the centre and the periphery of the musicological canon mirrors the eclectic and diverse nature of the postwar era itself. The first section investigates how to understand manifestations of the past in musical composition with regard to time, on the one hand, and with regard to genre, style and idiom, on the other. A second section shows how time and history manifest themselves in art music. A third section takes the contrasts and transitional moments of post-1945 practices further by looking at the temporality of reception from different angles. A final part investigates questions of nostalgia and temporalities of belonging. TINA FR HAUF is Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia University, New York and serves on the faculty of The Graduate Center, CUNY. CONTRIBUTORS: Michael Arnold, Susana Asensio Llamas, Georg Burgstaller, Caitlin Carlos, Daniela Fugellie, Tina Fr hauf, John Koslovsky, Lawrence Kramer, Beate Kutschke, Laurenz L tteken, Max Noubel, Joshua S. Walden. (shrink)

The conversations generated by the chapters in Music's Immanent Future grapple with some of music's paradoxes: that music of the Western art canon is viewed as timeless and universal while other kinds of music are seen as transitory and ephemeral; that in order to make sense of music we need descriptive language; that to open up the new in music we need to revisit the old; that to arrive at a figuration of music itself we need to posit its starting (...) point in noise; that in order to justify our creative compositional works as research, we need to find critical languages and theoretical frameworks with which to discuss them; or that despite being an auditory system, we are compelled to resort to the visual metaphor as a way of thinking about musical sounds. Drawn to musical sound as a powerful form of non-verbal communication, the authors include musicologists, philosophers, music theorists, ethnomusicologists and composers. The chapters in this volume investigate and ask fundamental questions about how we think, converse, write about, compose, listen to and analyse music. The work is informed by the philosophy primarily of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and secondarily of Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva and Jean-Luc Nancy. The chapters cover a wide range of topics focused on twentieth and twenty-first century musics, covering popular musics, art music, acousmatic music and electro-acoustic musics, and including music analysis, music's ontology, the noise/music dichotomy, intertextuality and music, listening, ethnography and the current state of music studies. The authors discuss their philosophical perspectives and methodologies of practice-led research, including their own creative work as a form of research. Music's Immanent Future brings together empirical, cultural, philosophical and creative approaches that will be of interest to musicologists, composers, music analysts and music philosophers. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Gugliemo's Non‐Participation in the Canon Respecting and Transforming Conventional Operatic Structure Musical and Dramatic Structure in Così Fan Tutti.

Peter Kivy presents a fascinating critical examination of the two rival ways of understanding instrumental music. He argues against 'literary' interpretation in terms of representational or narrative content, and defends musical formalism. Along the way he discusses interpretations of a range of works in the canon of absolute music.

Building on Philip Tagg’s timely intervention (2011), I investigate four things in relation to three dominant Anglophone popular music studies journals (Popular Music and Society, Popular Music, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies): 1) what interdisciplinarity or multidisciplinarity means within popular music studies, with a particular focus on the sites of research and the place of ethnographic and/or anthropological approaches; 2) the extent to which popular music studies has developed canonic scholarship, and the citation tendencies present within scholarship on (...) both Western and non-Western popular musics; 3) the motivations for two scholarly groups, Dancecult and ASARP, to breakaway from popular music studies; 4) the forms of music analysis and the kinds of musical material commonly employed within popular music studies. I suggest that the field would greatly benefit from a true engagement with anthropological theories and methods, and that the “chaotic conceptualization” of musical structuration and the critical discourse would likewise benefit from an attention to recorded sound and production aesthetics. (shrink)

In classical music, the immediate canon is Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, and Mozart. With Bach and Beethoven it is hard to go wrong. But my short list there would be Bach's B Minor Mass and St. Matthew's Passion, The Art of the Fugue, Well-Tempered Klavier, some of the organ music, the Brandenburgs, the Partitas, the Goldberg Variations, and the solo violin works.

A paradigm shift occurred in musical culture in the early nineteenth century, whereby revered old works—newly called “classics”—began to rival contemporary ones as the guiding authority over taste. This article explores the less well-known composers found on programs in the period when classical repertories were becoming established. A kind of professional collegiality developed during this period on concert programs among pieces of diverse age and taste, reaching far beyond the iconic composers (now seen by most of us to have (...) been Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, and Mendelssohn). Many of the “other” composers came from Italy, France, or Britain and became famous for opera selections and songs, some termed “popular,” and a substantial number of their pieces were performed throughout the nineteenth century. The present-day narrative of music history has canonic blind spots for composers then widely performed—Louis Spohr, Thomas Arne, Giovanni Viotti, Etienne-Nicolas Méhul, George Onslow, Louise Farrenc, and Robert Franz, for example. To understand musical life of that time, it is necessary to rethink the language of canon and canonization. The concept of canonization and the concept of the masterpiece have narrowed musical thinking harmfully. We need to look back at the fruitful collegiality that existed between canonic and contemporary music in the early nineteenth century, involving as it did a wide array of composers and tastes not yet bound by rigid assumptions about supposed “levels” of taste. (shrink)

This book endeavours to pinpoint the relations between musical, and especially instrumental, practice and the evolving conceptions of pitch systems. It traces the development of ancient melodic notation from reconstructed origins, through various adaptations necessitated by changing musical styles and newly invented instruments, to its final canonical form. It thus emerges how closely ancient harmonic theory depended on the culturally dominant instruments, the lyre and the aulos. These threads are followed down to late antiquity, when details recorded by (...) Ptolemy permit an exceptionally clear view. Dr Hagel discusses the textual and pictorial evidence, introducing mathematical approaches wherever feasible, but also contributes to the interpretation of instruments in the archaeological record and occasionally is able to outline the general features of instruments not directly attested. The book will be indispensable to all those interested in Greek music, technology and performance culture and the general history of musicology. (shrink)

The situational context within which an activity takes place, as well as the personality characteristics of individuals shape the types of strategies people choose in order to regulate their emotions, especially when confronted with challenging or undesirable situations. Taking self-regulation as the framework to study emotions in relation to learning and performing chamber music canon repertoire, this quasi-experimental and intra-individual study focused on the self-rated emotional states of a professional classical cellist during long-term sustained practice across 100-weeks. This helped to (...) develop greater awareness of different emotions and how they vary over artistic events (9 profiled concerts and 1 commercially recorded album). Data analysis included traditional psychometric measurements to test the internal consistency of the time series data as well as the relationship between variables (artistic events). The study mapped the cellist’s flexible regulation of 17 different positive and negative emotions empirically linked to learning and achievement while practicing within the social context of performing music publicly at a high level. Findings arising from the study help with understandings of how to support musicians to maximize their artistic potential by reducing emotion dysregulation and strengthening the types of adaptive methods that enable them to manage their own emotions. (shrink)

The composer of vocal music writes as poet and scholiast. His message is autonomous but not wholly his own. He sets to work with a preexistent artwork before him—a poem or passage of prose, often written without thought of musical setting—and fashions his song under its constraints. He welcomes to his work a second, distinct language, one which corresponds to his own at most only partially in syntax and significance.The composer's unique act of accommodation, structuring his setting after certain (...) requisites of his text, may have far-reaching implications for his musical style—implications too often ignored in today's musical analysis and criticism. Which particular textual characteristics the composer chooses to emphasize will depend on much beyond the text itself: on his view of the nature and capabilities of musical discourse, shaped internally by musical procedures developed from the canon of his predecessors, externally by general expectations and aspirations of his culture; and on his equally rich conception of the tradition behind his text. The text-music interface is therefore a provocative area of exploration for critic and historian alike. It points to the expressive aims of a composer in a given work, and it elucidates broader cultural assumptions concerning the nature of musical and poetic discourse.Gary Tomlinson, assistant professor of music history at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of articles on Monteverdi, early opera, and Verdi. He is currently writing a book on Monteverdi and late-Renaissance culture. (shrink)

It has sometimes been held that instrumental music on its own, without text or program, is a kind of ‘pure’ or ‘absolute’ music, having no significant truck with extra-musical reality. While bird calls and canon shots might get countenanced, nothing in the vein of a philosophical worldview, a rich narrative, or a socio-political subtext is going to make the formalist’s strict cut. There has been considerable discussion in the analytic aesthetics of music about these issues and about closely-related ones (...) concerning musical expression and representation. But the discussion has focused almost exclusively on music’s *capacities* as a medium, or on our perceptual or imaginative capacities as listeners, in an effort to see how all of this might transpire. But as I will be arguing in this paper, this sort of approach, despite all its illuminating work, does not directly address one of the most important questions on the table between the partisans on different sides of the ‘pure’ music debate. And this question is the fundamentally normative one concerning *how this allegedly ‘pure’ instrumental music is to be appropriately appreciated.* When we appreciate this sort of instrumental music in content-involving ways, where our thoughts go beyond its basic and fairly uncontroversial expressive or representational features, is our mode of musical appreciation thereby deficient, or somehow ‘in the wrong,’ aesthetically-speaking? I argue that it needn’t be, and I further argue to the surprising conclusion that the answer to this normative question doesn’t crucially turn on whether music *possesses* the relevant content. Once we get this normative question in view, we should recognize a broader range of appropriate ways to engage with instrumental music, beyond the restrictive ideal of ‘pure’ listening that has thus far been championed by musical formalists. Then, in the final part of the paper, I shift gears to consider whether the sort of extra-musical content at issue is really as far-fetched as opponents can make it seem. I argue that it isn’t, and that this can be seen by looking to comparable sorts of content in the paradigmatically representational arts. (shrink)

This is a response to the debate between Peter Kivy and Noel Carroll over whether music qua music can induce emotions or moods. I critically examine Kivy’s arguments in light of work in the psychology and neuroscience of music and argue in support of Carroll that music can induce moods. I argue that Kivy’s notion of formalist ‘canonical listening’ is problematic, both as an argument against Carroll and as a claim about how we ought to listen to music, and that (...) Kivy may be begging the question against the arousalist both philosophically and neurologically. (shrink)

Roger Scruton's 530-page blockbuster The Aesthetics of Music was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A paperback edition followed two years later. Neither received more than a handful of notices, a few appreciative, but some grudging and some actually hostile. As its quality has come to be recognized, and as the resentments it provoked have either died down or found newer targets, the book has gradually achieved a certain canonical, even classic, status. Students of the subject now seem to (...) feel that, however unpalatable some of its conclusions may have been, it can no longer safely be ignored. The questions, it appears, are the right ones, even if we don't care for Scruton's answers. (shrink)

Introduction : normative aesthetics and artistic value -- Culture and artistic value -- Cultural exclusion and the definition of art -- Defining art, defending the canon, contesting culture -- The aesthetic and the artistic -- From beauty to art : developing Kant's aesthetics -- The scope and value of the artistic image -- Distinctive modes of imaging -- Twofoldness : pictorial art and the imagination -- Between language and perception : literary metaphor -- Musical meaning and value -- Eternalizing (...) the moment : artistic projections of time -- Conclusion : the status and future of art. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 368-370 [Access article in PDF] Book Review Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Poetry, by David Bromwich; xvii & 256 pp. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; $49.00 cloth, $16.00 paper. In his preface to this gathering of his essays and reviews on twentieth-century American and British poetry, David Bromwich regrets that it is "too late to suppress the (...) evidence of a critic educating himself in public" (p. xi). But even the earliest work reprinted in Skeptical Music--"The Making of the Auden Canon," published in the Times Literary Supplement in 1976, when the author was still a graduate student at Yale--hardly qualifies as juvenilia. Indeed, in Bromwich's case, evidence of a critic educating himself in public seems to have been suppressed from the start. No single explanation will account for an author's precocity, but the consistency of Bromwich's critical voice over the last quarter century is certainly related to his early preoccupation with William Hazlitt, the subject of his first book. In choosing Hazlitt as his model, Bromwich rejected what he took to be the legacy of systematic and professional literary theory extending from Coleridge to each new school of academic criticism. Bromwich's own development as a critic has therefore been subtler and more introspective than the critical retooling of so many of his colleagues. Although never far from the evaluative art of the reviewer, Bromwich has come to favor the more speculative dimension of his work. The more recent the piece, the more overt the attempt to imagine "what was in the poet's mind, or what was in the poem's mind, on the theory that certain thoughts and feelings are worth the trouble to characterize because of their strangeness and originality" (p. xi).Some of the most compelling chapters in Skeptical Music imagine what was in the poet's mind, or the poem's mind, by telling stories about complex relationships between poems by different poets--between the work of Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, or T. S. Eliot and Hart Crane. These are stories about literary influence, or deep temperamental affinity. As in Harold Bloom's work, the stories are grounded in close readings, usually of the passages the critic prizes for their aesthetic superiority.A related procedure is at work in "Stevens and the Idea of the Hero"--a long speculative piece on Wallace Stevens's transfer of allegiance, at a crucial moment in his career, from the pragmatism of Nietzsche to the pragmatism of William James. What Stevens found "most persistently attractive" in Nietzsche's pragmatism, Bromwich coolly explains, was "the suggestion that the good of existence is change" and that "our most vivid acknowledgment of that good comes from the ability to imagine a life wiped clear of ourselves" (p. 71). But the Nietzschean sublime proved insufficient for Stevens. During the Second World War, the poet was confronted by "the reality of American soldiers going off to fight... for a cause which, as Stevens saw it, they could only make true by their fighting" (p. 68). Stevens turned to James for "the less brutal idea of a [End Page 368] man or woman who is made great by an enterprise in which others have a part" (p. 78).Bromwich's argument that Stevens became a more valuable poet when he located heroism in human solidarity, not just Nietzschean contingency and self-creation, bears a family resemblance to the work of one of James's heirs, Richard Rorty. Like Rorty, Bromwich often feels the pressure to adjudicate between the claims of the individual artist and the claims of the community; and like Rorty, he makes his judgements on a case by case basis, without recourse to a set standard, rule, or theory. In the closing chapter of Skeptical Music--"Is Taste Moral?"--Bromwich directly addresses the tension between aestheticism and the social good, a subject that also surfaces at the close of his preface and at numerous moments throughout the book. But the claims of the community seem relatively muted... (shrink)

Exploring the universal appeal of music, a classical pianist shows the ways the great works of the classical canon can help us cope with grief, aid us in recovery from illness, inspire us to create, and give dimension to the mysteries of beauty and faith. Reprint.

The Eurocentric canon remains the predominant focus of music education often excluding the role of music and experiences of Black individuals and people of color. This singular perspective creates an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of the comprehensive nature of music and the humans who create, perform, and engage with it. In this article, the author shares her experience as a Black music educator and her aspirations for a music profession that incorporates the full range of human music engagement and expression. (...) The paper begins with a reflection on W.E.B. DuBois’s double consciousness followed by an exploration of the nuances, complexities, contradictions, and beauty of being a Black educator in a primarily white field. Subsequently, the essay presents four conceptual principles for a reimagined, inclusive music education approach, drawing inspiration from Sylvia Wynter’s “new science of the Word.” These principles advocate retelling the music education narrative to incorporate historically marginalized voices, reorienting music education to be human-centered, embracing interdisciplinary approaches to view music teaching and learning, and acknowledging the power of music in uplifting the human condition. Finally, this paper proposes a pathway for reconciling diverse identities prevalent in American culture with music education and academia. (shrink)

“Today, the first notes of a popular baroque piece like Pachelbel's Canon are automatically perceived as the accompaniment, so that we wait for the moment when the melody proper will emerge; since we get no melody but only a more and more intricate polyphonic variation of the melodic accompaniment, we somehow feel "deceived". Where does this horizon of expectation, which sustains our feeling that the melody proper is missing, come from?” An extract on music from Slavoj Žižek’s new book on (...) Hegel to be published in autumn 2017. (shrink)

Since the idea of a canon seems so closely bound up with the idea of history, there should be something to be learned from the persistent efforts that have been going on for nearly two hundred years to extend the musical repertory back in time. What is involved here is nothing less than a continuous effort to endow music with a history. From the workings of this process in the nineteenth century, we learn that where the ideology is right (...) the past can indeed yield up a canon of works and even a canon of performance. Bach, to take the most weighty example, would appear to have entered the canon—Hoffman’s canon—before entering the repertory. The history of the nineteenth-century Bach revival begins as a triumph of ideology over practice. Only after J. N. Forkel, in his famous biography, canonized Bach as the archetypal German master was The Well-tempered Clavier published for the first time—and if any one work of music deserved to be called canonic, it would have to be The Well-tempered Clavier.14 Gradually other Bach works, works which fitted better into nineteenth-century concert life, did enter various nineteenth-century repertories; Mendelssohn’s revival of the St. Matthew Passion is a famous landmark, and various piano transcriptions and orchestral arrangements, not to speak of Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” followed in due course. Bach was made to sound like a premature Romantic. There was as yet no call for historical “authenticity.” But I do not think it was Bach that Hood was thinking of when he complained of musical traditions of the past whose “real identities are gone.” The skeleton may not have been bodied out with authentic flesh and blood, but it was made into a handsome waxwork which was quite real enough for the nineteenth century. 14. This point is made by Crocker, “Is There Really a ‘Written Tradition’?” Joseph Kerman, professor of music at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author of Opera as Drama, The Beethoven Quartets, The Masses and Motets of William Byrd, and The New Grove Beethoven. He is also coeditor of Beethoven Studies and Nineteenth-Century Music and is presently working on a concise study of modern musical scholarship. “How We Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out,” his previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, appeared in the Winter 1980 issue. (shrink)

Cultivation of the musical canon and canonisation of truly original work can be identified as guiding principles of both Hugo Wolf’s artistic and his critical practice. The latter is shaped by classicist tropes; they may serve strategic functions as well, yet cannot be reduced to them. While he rejects the merely old-fashioned, Wolf also leads a striking attack on what he terms “modern music”. His endorsed aesthetics intertwine the old and the new.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Randall Allsup, “Music Teacher Quality and Expertise”Bennett ReimerI am delighted to have this opportunity to reflect on Randall Allsup’s excellent, incisive, and wise paper. The issues he raises reach to the core of who we have been, where we are now, and how we must adapt ourselves to new challenges that deeply question both our ideals and our practices.Allsup’s opening questions relate directly to the most pressing (...) matters our profession is now facing—questions philosophical in essence. What kind of music teachers do our students deserve? What is the purpose of public education? And how do we get beyond our continuing and understandable desire for better-trained music teachers to ask the more pertinent question of what constitutes effective music teaching and learning in what the musical world is swiftly becoming. He has the courage to address this level of complexity seriously, and to make significant progress toward clarification. That deserves my respect and, I am quite sure, the respect of all of us.Allsup approaches his central premise on the significant changes needed in our professional identity by reminding us that we have “a long and distinguished [End Page 108] commitment to teaching and teachers.” That commitment, however, is based on the established assumption that music education is founded on excellence of performance as its ultimate goal and its greatest value. To achieve this musical end, he points out, requires mastery, attained through prolonged, careful apprenticeship. This “long running pedagogy of mastery and excellence appears closed to, or at least hostile to, innovation and popular input.”In addition, he argues, this belief system embroils all of us, teachers and their students, in the dichotomy of, on the one hand, replication of existing excellence as our goal, and, on the other, the need for emancipation from what was and what is, toward what might be; the need, that is, for transformation. The past, he recognizes, cannot simply be ignored: it is too precious for that. The future, however, also cannot be excluded. Within this antinomy we must find our way, honoring the past while not allowing it to constrict our future.At this point in his exposition Allsup approaches the proposition he is harboring, a proposition I want to explore for its potential in both clarity and complication. The basis of his key proposal is our need for teachers who are able “to think openly and less certainly about the design and implementation of musical instruction. Our pluralistic society,” he continues, “makes it imperative that we multiply the methods employed in the pursuit and construction of knowledge.”To accomplish this, Allsup presents a foundational dichotomy. There are “open forms of music” relating to “new and evolving ways of aesthetic participation that break with our traditional processes and our established codes and standards.” Contrasting with open forms are “closed forms,” representing the authoritative, the certain, and the canonic. “Closed forms,” he says, “represent culturally-structured and norm-driven literacies, where valuations of goodness pre-exist any aesthetic encounters.” Closed forms, he argues, are based on culturally agreed-upon modes of participation that are rigid in nature, such as in the prescribed and proscribed sequence of musical events proceeding inexorably in the order of composer-conductor-performer-audience.Such past (and present) rigidities, he points out, have become increasingly irrelevant. In every dimension of our lives significant and fast-occurring changes have become dominant, even expected, leaving us, as citizens and as educators, in confusion and uncertainty, and therefore in distress. We encounter aesthetic forms that are open-sourced and de-authored, unconnected to shared standards of practice. Technologies of music making and taking, he points out, have overthrown tradition to a startling degree, erasing distinctions among expert and amateur, between master and apprentice, between process and product, specialist and generalist, the classical and the vernacular.All this, and much more, is argued cogently and, I think, persuasively. It leads us to a central conception influencing how we must act as professionals. Our [End Page 109] obligation is to not only incorporate openness of musical engagements into our present culture of musical “closedness,” but to recognize the advent of openness as being a... (shrink)

The article deals with various aspects of justifying music historically. In Matti Huttunen’s opinion Western music culture has been strongly historical since the nineteenth century. The article attempts to elucidate the historical nature of music, as well as the canon of music, the selective nature of music history, and the influence of aesthetic conceptions in our views on history. According to the article, the canon contains not only musical works but also other facts of music history. Aesthetic conceptions do (...) not affect only our evaluations and analyses of particular works of music but also our ways of organizing history, including our ideas on causal connections in music history. The only way of escaping prevailing conceptions of music is to go deeper into them; in other words, it requires proper self-reflection. (shrink)

The article dwells on the problem of Rakhmaninov’s art, style and poetics influence on the process of formation and development of national music cultures, national composer schools and some individual author’s styles of the former USSR. Three evolution stages of all national music cultures are determined: “preprofessional”, “professional” and the stage of “new music”. Two work concepts are introduced: a Rakhmaninov’s musical and style canon as an individual system including characteristic properties of the composer’s style and poetics, and a (...) national musical and style canon as a system of musical and expressive language principles typical for every musical culture and possessive of the national character. The signs representing the Rakhmaninov’s style are revealed and considered on the piano concerto genre. These two spheres outlined are disclosed in folklore and neofolklore conditions as the main evolution directions of the national musical thinking. The main principles of the Rakhmaninov’s and national canons interaction are singled out: adaptation corresponding to the early development stages of national music cultures (forlklore stage) and assimilation (by G. Golovinsky) characteristic for “new music” (neofollore stage). The problems are considered on the example of piano concertos by Z. Ismagilov, A. Khatchaturyan, A. Eshpay, R. Gazizov and some others. (shrink)

_This book features a CD of rarely performed music, including a specially commissioned rap by Erik Weiner of Walter Benjamin's "Thesis on the Philosophy of History." _ Theodor W. Adorno was the prototypical German Jewish non-Jew, Walter Benjamin vacillated between German Jew and Jewish German, Gershom Scholem was a committed Zionist, and Arnold Schönberg converted to Protestantism for professional reasons but later returned to Judaism. Carl Djerassi, himself a refugee from Hitler's Austria, dramatizes a dialogue between these four men in (...) which they discuss fraternity, religious identity, and legacy as well as reveal aspects of their lives-notably their relations with their wives-that many have ignored, underemphasized, or misrepresented. The desire for canonization and the process by which it is obtained are the underlying themes of this dialogue, with emphasis on Paul Klee's _Angelus Novus _(1920), a canonized work that resonated deeply with Benjamin, Adorno, and Scholem (and for which Djerassi and Gabrielle Seethaler present a revisionist and richly illustrated interpretation). Basing his dialogue on extensive archival research and interviews, Djerassi concludes with a daring speculation on the putative contents of Benjamin's famous briefcase, which disappeared upon his suicide. (shrink)

The thesis of this text is that representation and mimesis, and so reason and passion, are not opposed, but differ. Their presumed opposition leads to many false and therefore harmful ideas and practices, as Glaucon exhibits in his republic, but even these harmful ideas and practices exhibit not only that it is not possible to escape either mimesis or representation but also that the harm is precisely to develop a culture along the lines of a hegemonic structure wherein one is (...) dominant and the other secondary—that is the point Plato exhibits in his Republic. Mimesis and representation are, in a more contemporary parlance, differing regimens of phrasal connection, phrase being a word that is as musical as it is grammatical. No ground can serve as a place of judgement between the two of them for all ground is the dust/blood/text of both. As Plato says, "all the arts of the muses are iconic and mimetic." It is more accurate, and therefore best, to see mimesis and representation not as differing acts, but as differing aspects or moments of every semiotic act—and every act is semiotic to a being for which any act is so. (shrink)

The paper investigates the cultural unit of “sanctity” in the light of the notion of “form of life”, in order to show how jazz master John Coltrane pursued sanctity as a regulative model with regards both to personhood and musicianship, so as to translate his existential quest into music. Firstly, the paper briefly summarizes: what we mean today by sanctity ; what are the relationships interweaving music and sanctity ; what we mean by form of life—a notion brought into philosophical (...) discourse by Ludwig Wittgenstein—in semiotic terms and why we can apply it to sanctity. Afterwards, the paper addresses Coltrane’s musical career, relying both on hagiographic discourse built around him and his discography, with special focus on three game-changers among his albums: Giant Steps, A Love Supreme, and Ascension. Coltrane headed a twofold conversion: he abandoned his native Methodist faith to embrace a personal form of syncretic pantheism; he abandoned the language of traditional jazz to embrace the avant-garde technique of modal composition and the once despised free jazz. Not only Coltrane wanted to be a saint, not only was he regarded as such to the extent that a “St. John William Coltrane Church” was established in San Francisco, but he tried to be one through music; namely, by conveying his spiritual journey via sonic means: proposing a musical catechism, a musical mass, and his own mystique. Consistently with the process of selection any saintly figure—and mystiques especially—undergoes in order to be canonized stricto sensu, only some tokens within Coltrane’s body of work were included in the canon, while his later works were left out due to their radicalism. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to present a personal reflection regarding the theoretical/philosophical relation between the generally accepted theological grounding of icon painting and other contemporary artistical endeavours to integrate the religious feeling – of Christian-Orthodox inspiration. This reflection is based on a mixture of ideas from different thought-frameworks which have as common ground the need for speculating on issues such as ‘tradition understanding’, ‘personal expression’, ‘art and religiousness’, exactly those key-themes that are constituting the fundamental threads of my (...) argumentation. Hence, my appeal to authors like Lucian Blaga, Leonid Uspensky, Martin Heidegger, Paul Evdochimov, and Christos Yannaras. The point of departure for my study is the powerful and unavoidable conflict between the need for personal artistic interpretations of religious themes – expressed through contemporary artistic techniques and the application of contemporary metaphysical modelings – and the need for attaching oneself to an ‘authentic’ tradition of religious experience and to a community with deep roots in history. My all-round thesis is that this conflict cannot be, at least, clarified by choosing, from the artistic point of view, between two extremes: contemporary secular art on the one hand, and sacred, canonical art on the other hand, but by finding conceptual common pathways. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value by Julian JohnsonWilliam M. PerrineJulian Johnson, Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value. Oxford University Press, 2002.In Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value, British musicologist and composer Julian Johnson defends the value of classical music in a commercialized culture fixated on the immediate gratification of popular music. At 130 pages divided (...) into six chapters, Johnson’s book is a reasonably accessible and engaging presentation of his topic. This short book contains relevant and sometimes controversial insights of interest to professional music educators. In this review I will provide a brief summary of the author’s primary arguments accompanied by critical commentary.Johnson argues that commercial forces in our society limit serious reflective discourse on music. The marketplace treats music as a commodity which derives its value from relative commercial success. In this context, classical music is relegated to one possible cultural choice among many legitimate options and is in danger of losing its distinctive features as an art form that transcends commercial concerns. Preference for particular musical products becomes an identity marker for an individual’s place within society, and criticism of a particular style of music is perceived as a personal attack. The process of turning classical music into a commodity has been aided by critics who have condemned the Western [End Page 96] canon as elitist, patriarchal, and arrogant. These critics have instead advocated a democratization of culture, placing greater emphasis on the validity of popular art forms and active participation in music-making rather than the more passive contemplation. Johnson describes this as a “pseudo-democratic” attack which encourages downward social mobility. When combined with the omnipresence of commercial culture, this approach undermines individual musical value by assuming the equal validity of all aesthetic judgments. Democracy is damaged when, refusing to discriminate between cultural products, society fails to recognize human individuality and excellence.Johnson is at his strongest when he argues for the importance of classical music fulfilling its function as art. The author argues that different types of music fulfill different functions. In contemporary society music is valued and chosen for how it is used. Music is described as “good” when it functions to provide background music for activities or when it successfully complements or enhances the listeners’ moods. Focusing solely on social use or reception, however, tends to neglect objective differences in the formal structure of music. This is the point at which Johnson begins to distinguish between classical and popular music. Popular music is composed to ensure a uniformity of affect, and deliberately avoids formal or harmonic complexity. As an aspect of popular culture, it is tied to contemporary fashion trends and rapidly becomes obsolete. Like other types of fashion, music becomes a means for expressing a current position within a larger social and cultural space. It is the music of youth; its commercial saturation of the culture blurs the boundaries between youth and adulthood. Johnson claims that the process of commercialization leads to a bland standardization. Classical music can also function as a type of popular music when it submits itself to market processes, but in doing so the music loses its distinctive features.In his discussion on popular music, Johnson presents what might be his most controversial claim: that popular music serves a pornographic function. He defines pornography as “the process by which the humane is reduced to the status of things” (p. 59) and argues that popular music takes pleasure in debasing humanity by reducing individuals to material commodities and denying the spiritual. This contention echoes Allan Bloom’s concern in The Closing of the American Mind that rock music desensitizes and debases youth by destroying imagination and deadening their capacity for passion and wonder. The strength of this language undermines Johnson’s contention in his introduction to the paperback edition that he is not trying to set up a binary opposition between art and popular music in which the classical is “better.” Moreover, if pornography is a form of dehumanization and is a legitimate concern in music, it is important to point out that such a charge is not exclusive to... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Editorial Reflections on Philosophizing in Music EducationEstelle R. Jorgensen and Iris M. YobIn this article, we reflect on issues that go to the heart of teaching and scholarship in the philosophy of music education. After thirty years of editing Philosophy of Music Education Review, it is a good time to take stock of the philosophical work that has been and is being published and of challenges that remain.Over the (...) years, there has been a growing quality of philosophical articles published in the journal, due in significant part to the efforts of reviewers and the willingness of writers to work with their suggestions. Authors regularly express appreciation for the informed, critical, and constructive reviews their work receives. An exemplary body of philosophical scholarship in music education has been published over this time and PMER is regarded as a premier journal internationally devoted exclusively to the philosophy of music education. In thirty volumes of uninterrupted publication, we have sought to be responsive to important issues in music education. Our writers have engaged relevant subjects of interest to our readers, citations of articles remain strong, and articles are included in [End Page 109] university and college course reading lists. PMER is available in print and online via subscription; it has a wide digital exposure in search engines and leading indexes, and our readership continues to grow.Despite this progress, although the number of submissions has increased, their quality has sometimes been uneven. Our pedagogical commitment to foster philosophical writing and the philosophical inexperience of some writers has significantly impacted the work required to bring submissions to publication standard. Submissions sometimes evidence a lack of attention to formulating a tight argument, citing relevant sources, and polishing and editing the manuscript. The published style guidelines are too often ignored, creating a poor first impression with reviewers and editors. Writers are occasionally in a hurry to publish and less willing to entertain multiple revisions of their articles required to produce work of lasting value. The growing number of music education journals that publish philosophical work, while opening more fora, in some cases perversely result in ideologically driven, polemical, and philosophically uninformed articles in the name of philosophy. This is a good moment to reconsider the importance of philosophical fundamentals that should undergird our philosophizing in music education and what these mean for our academic responsibilities. To this end, we suggest several principles that need to be central to our philosophizing in music education. These principles also have broader implications for the expectations of scholarship in music education generally.WRITING PHILOSOPHYLike other subject areas in the academy, philosophy has its own intellectual structure, a canon of significant writings, its own interpretative methods, and its distinctive role and purpose. A philosophical paper in music education reads differently from papers in the history of music education, methods of teaching music, sociology of music education, empirical research in music education, multi-cultural, gender, and ethnic studies, music education curriculum building and policy making, and so on. And yet, the boundaries between these disciplines, which are artificial constructions when human knowledge is considered wholistically anyway, are somewhat porous with concepts and ideas and claims seeming to move easily from one discipline to another.To help distinguish between philosophy and other areas of study and research, it may be helpful to consider philosophy as a second-order activity. That is, first-order activity examines the raw data of research and experience and attempts to make sense of them. Using inference, pattern-seeking, deduction, hypotheses, statistical analysis, and so on, these activities result in claims, interpretations, and theories that give meaning to what we see, hear, and feel. [End Page 110]The second-order activity takes a step away from these first-order activities. It does not concern itself so much with raw data or with creating theories about them, but critically analyzes the claims and inferences that are made in regard to them. Where first-order disciplines analyze inputs from observation and experimentation, second-order disciplines analyze these analyses—that is, they function as meta-analyses. Philosophers do not need laboratories or fieldwork (which makes applications for grants to support philosophical research difficult to secure!). They need libraries... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Response to Paul Woodford, “A Liberal Versus Performance-Based Music Education?”Peter R. WebsterA study of the history of music teaching and learning in North America will likely reveal very few examples of extended and well-argued professional discourse. By "discourse" I mean a continuous expression or exchange of ideas designed to present contrasting views on important issues in the music teaching profession. Often our annual conventions are filled with presentations that (...) address a single perspective in research, pedagogy, or theory. "Special theme" issues of magazines are rarely devoted to contrasting points of view about music teaching and learning. Conferences are organized to promote single views on a subject, often speaking to a partisan audience that expects to be neither challenged to think in a contrary way nor encouraged to develop alternative perspectives.Of course there are some rare and wonderful exceptions. During my course on measurement and assessment in music, I frequently ask my students to read [End Page 208] the exchange in the pages of the Music Educators Journal during the late 1930s between James Mursell and Carl Seashore as they debated approaches to music aptitude testing.1 I recall the great exchange at the 1994 meeting of the Music Educators National Conference between Bennett Reimer and Edwin Gordon on the subject of music learning.2 In past eras, there have been notable "point-counterpoint" exchanges in the pages of the Bulletin of the Council of Research in Music Education,3 as well as interesting perspectives on completed doctoral dissertations that spawned some debate. More recently, contributions in Philosophy of Music Education Review have been notable, particularly given the recent upturn in published work and interest in music education philosophy that this very Symposium exemplifies. The formation of the MayDay group in recent years is no small example of this trend.4 I am sure that I have missed other examples. However, compare these few instances with the millions of pages that are written in our field and the hours of papers presented and conference sessions held and the examples of real discourse pale in comparison to the body of professional exchange.In his paper, especially in the early pages, Paul Woodford makes this point forcefully and effectively. He challenges us to consider just how few examples there are of real discourse within the profession. I enjoyed enormously the case made for liberal education as not defined by the teaching of a canon of great books or art works as an end but as a thoughtful discussion of ideas in light of con-temporary circumstance. The paper reminds us that the idea of criticism in our field need not be a negative concept in this current age of post-modern thought, but a positive mark of a maturing profession.I was sympathetic to Woodford's example of multiculturalism running the risk of becoming an absolutism to be imposed on children. I feel the same way at times about other trends in our field such as the rise of technology as a kind of end-experience or the encouragement of popular music in classrooms simply because it is such a dominant part of children's lives. Each of these aspects of modern music education is worthy of careful debate by intellectuals in our field in much more sophisticated ways then we see today. Woodford would have us believe that this is a major professional failure, and I tend to agree.Not to belabor this point too much, but what about the National Standards? How often do you see an article published in Music Educators Journal that actually takes issue with any aspect of the standards? Where is the national debate about the content, extension, redefinition, refocusing, and development of these standards? Are they so good that they are not the subject of at least some national debate?At core here, for me, is the notion that discourse involving critical comment leads not to a sense of competition for superiority but real understanding of complex [End Page 209] issues. Very little that is worth discussing is black and white, and nearly always there are levels of complex gray. Many of us learn this from our days on the high... (shrink)

This paper suggests a framework for re-thinking the relationships between power and knowledge in music education. Informed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of equality it explores how a dialectic between knowledge/mastery and ignorance/equality effects a rupture in the canonical relationships between knowledge and authority. Further, and based on a commentary of Alain Badiou, the paper explores the sense in which the Rancièrian perspective induces an understanding of equality as both a condition and a productive process: as a condition ignorance becomes the (...) radical root of the emergence of new knowledge; as a productive process it leads to the creation of a space where those who have been doomed to silence are able to appear. Following on from that, the paper explores how the supposition of equality might trigger the development of a “what if...?” attitude, transforming the pedagogic encounter to continuous exploration with the teacher starting by presupposing that she does not know anything until she and her student(s) begin building together, thus bringing students’ creative endeavors to the center of the music education encounter. This productive ignorance might have important consequences for how we think about notions of discipline and passionate engagement in music making, as well as music education’s relationships to music history and culture, remaining faithful to the aporetic dimension of music. (shrink)

The maqam, closely connected at first with the cult-ritual practice, absorbed and reflected philosophical and ethical ideas. These ideas, fixed in the system of maqams, despite their clear canonization, changed; they underwent a certain historical transformation due to changes in the social structure of society itself. However, the main aesthetic function of the maqam, the nature of its emotional and psychological impact on a person, a deep connection with the world around him, remained in the view of Eastern thinkers and (...) musicians unshakable until the XX century. Today, macs should be understood on the one hand as a paradigmatic structure, on the other hand, as a compositional form. The subtlest gradation of human feelings, emotional and psychological states also determined a carefully developed (theoretically) mode, intonation, pitch system of images, symbols, signs, their connection with specific manifestations of spiritual experiences and emotional states. Certain universal principles of musical dramaturgy are observed in the makam, based on diverse contrast: fret, timbre-register, dynamic, vocal-instrumental, rhythmic. These internal contrasts are infinitely diverse, but they are outlined so subtly, barely perceptible. Instrumental and vocal-instrumental music in Islamic culture was mainly an environment of professional musicians who mastered the art of maqam thinking. Makam represented the unity of the theory of performing practice for musicians. (shrink)

Mediante la discusión de un artículo del musicólogo Carlos Villanueva, tomado como paradigma de un determinado tipo de discurso, problematizamos la noción de interpretación histórica para confrontar al historicismo sonoro no una lúcida crítica presentista sino un enfoque actualista capaz de contraponerse con solidez filosófica y artística a las prácticas museísticas del historicismo musicológico típicamente basado en una pretensión de objetivismo sonoro supuestamente respaldada por las disciplinas historiográficas. Esta expansión hermenéuticamente actualista, tanto de la noción de autenticidad como de fidelidad (...) a la intención del compositor, fundamentaría prácticas interpretativas que acercasen mejor el repertorio histórico al oyente actual sin el lastre del canon estético típicamente imperante en las salas de concierto. Porque, ¿y si mediante un enfoque actualizador novedoso la labor interpretativa del repertorio histórico musical lograse comunicar mejor a la idiosincrasia social actual las grandes obras del pasado sin renunciar a un rigor de adecuación estilística ni traicionar, o incluso preservando mejor aún, la intención del compositor? (shrink)

If opera had existed in Elizabethan London, the world's Top Bard, as W.H. Auden called him, might have become the world's Top Librettist. As Gary Schmidgall shows in this illuminating study, Shakespeare's expressive ways and dramaturgical means are like those of composers and librettists in numerous and often astonishing ways. No wonder that well over two hundred operas have been based on Shakespeare's plays. Ranging widely through the Shakespearean canon and the standard operatic repertory, Schmidgall presents a fascinating comparison, focusing (...) on similarities of expressive style, scenic structure, staging, and performance practice. Shakespeare and Opera offers extended discussions of issues central to both theatrical genres, including their shared demand for virtuoso display, the comparable functions of set speeches and arias, and the similarities of verbal and musical rhetoric, and the charges of unreality and melodrama that have dogged them both. In addition, Schmidgall provides concise essays on the most intriguing Shakespeare-based operas, including works of Verdi, Wagner, Bellini, Rossini, Berlioz, Thomas, Vaughan Williams, Barber, and Britten. He enriches his argument with the insights of the great composers who never set Shakespeare (Mozart, Puccini, and Strauss among them), major observers of the legitimate stage (from Samuel Johnson to Eric Bentley) and the musical stage (from Joseph Addison to Joseph Kerman), as well as the incisive views of influential artists, critics, and performers as diverse as Walt Whitman, H.L. Mencken, and Laurence Olivier. For all who love the stage, Shakespeare and Opera offers endless insight and fascination. Schmidgall's extended comparison of the two dramaturgies provides a fresh perspective on Shakespeare, musical theater, comparative drama, and theater history. (shrink)

Adorno unquestionably loved opera music as much as he hated opera as a cultural institution. His take on opera in the twentieth century led him to write its socio‐political obituary, while recognizing at the same time that opera continued to attract a steady stream of would‐be onlooker‐auditors. Paradoxically for Adorno, opera continued to appeal to audiences, and – from his dialectical reckoning – characteristically for precisely the wrong reasons. His opera analyses address the sociology of musical theater, performance hermeneutics, (...) and the direct consideration of music itself (though given his typical writing mode this writing is perhaps best characterized as criticism rather than analysis, as the latter term is commonly employed within musicology). Adorno's interests principally revolve around modern opera (Schoenberg, Berg, Strauss, Weill, especially) but also, if to a lesser extent, canonic works from Mozart to Verdi. Wagner, Wagnerian music drama, and cultural Wagnerism more generally were special cases for Adorno, and subjects he returned to repeatedly throughout his adult life, coinciding with the rise and fall of National Socialism and the Wagner cult, which in the 1930s and 1940s war years comfortably accommodated fascist proclivities. Adorno recognized the socio‐cultural agency of opera as a still‐prestigious cultural leftover of nineteenth‐century bourgeois triumphalism, which he vigorously opposed. In its place, he labored to promote what he regarded as a more socially responsible musico‐operatic practice to supplant the aesthetic and social complacency of the established order, ideas that after his death have found considerable currency, nowhere more evident than in late‐modern opera productions throughout the world. (shrink)