We provide a new perspective on the relation between the space of description of an object and the appearance of novelties. One of the aims of this perspective is to facilitate the interaction between mathematics and historical sciences. The definition of novelties is paradoxical: if one can define in advance the possibles, then they are not genuinely new. By analyzing the situation in set theory, we show that defining generic (i.e., shared) and specific (i.e., individual) properties of elements of a (...) set are radically different notions. As a result, generic and specific definitions of possibilities cannot be conflated. We argue that genuinely stating possibilities requires that their meaning has to be made explicit. For example, in physics, properties playing theoretical roles are generic; then, generic reasoning is sufficient to define possibilities. By contrast, in music, we argue that specific properties matter, and generic definitions become insufficient. Then, the notion of new possibilities becomes relevant and irreducible. In biology, among other examples, the generic definition of the space of DNA sequences is insufficient to state phenotypic possibilities even if we assume complete genetic determinism. The generic properties of this space are relevant for sequencing or DNA duplication, but they are inadequate to understand phenotypes. We develop a strong concept of biological novelties which justifies the notion of new possibilities and is more robust than the notion of changing description spaces. These biological novelties are not generic outcomes from an initial situation. They are specific and this specificity is associated with biological functions, that is to say, with a specific causal structure. Thus, we think that in contrast with physics, the concept of new possibilities is necessary for biology. (shrink)

This article focuses on the “intention-image-expression” framework in the aesthetics of Chinese traditional music, discussing its generative mechanism and structural features in traditional musical practices such as the guqin, and further testing this framework within the contemporary context of AI music generation. Beginning with the relational chain of “intention-image-expression,” the article argues that meaning in traditional music is not determined by a single parameter such as pitch or beat. Rather, it is constructed through the combined action of (...) performance context, bodily technique, rhythmic elasticity, and cultural experience. Taking guqin notation and the handling of “rhythm and beat” as examples, the article then analyzes how traditional music forms a perceptible structural order through aesthetic orientations such as “blank-leaving,” qiyun, and “central harmony and peaceful balance,” thereby presenting a non-mechanical and non-linear logic of temporal organization and expression. Finally, the article turns to the technical pathways and evaluation methods of AI-generated music. It argues that current models and feature-engineering methods, including audio features, style classification, emotion recognition, and scale-based measurement, entail irreducible contextual losses when processing the “intention-image-expression” framework: generative systems are better at reproducing computable surface styles than at restoring the internal norms of traditional music sustained by communities of practice, performance discipline, and aesthetic judgment. (shrink)

In “Sideways Music”, Ned Markosian uses aesthetic intuitions about temporally-rotated music to argue that the metaphysics of time is different from the metaphysics of space. In response, I use aesthetic intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings to pose a dilemma for Markosian’s argument: either he accepts the intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings, in which case he must give up on some assumptions in his argument, or he rejects intuitions about spatially-rotated paintings, in which case an analogous response can be given regarding (...) intuitions about temporally-rotated music. That is, if Markosian wants to hold on to the assumptions that underwrite his argument, then he thereby offers his opponent the resources with which to resist his conclusion. As such, Markosian’s argument cannot offer a new independent consideration for adjudicating the metaphysical debate between the Dynamic Theorist and the Spacetime Theorist. [Unpublishable 2019]. (shrink)

The rapid growth of Indonesian Heavy Metal music, especially the Death Metal subgenre, since around the turn of the millennium, has been quite remarkable. Indonesia is now numerically the largest scene in the world. Man, the vocalist of Jasad, told the author that the provincial West Javanese city of Bandung had 128 active Death Metal bands as at February 2011. I discuss the cancellation of an April 2012 music festival held in the Bandung hinterland by police halfway through (...) the festival, and explain how and why it took place. Police became nervous and worried about Heavy Metal shows following the deaths of eleven concertgoers, due to a crowd crush, at a Beside album launch in Bandung in 2008. I also analyze the “maternal rage” of a band member’s mother (also a policewoman at the scene) from the perspective of grounded gendered cosmopolitanism. Lastly, a short case study of Sickles, a young band from the religiously-conservative Madura Island, shows the problems that young bands experience plus the type of global underground support which they can attract. (shrink)

Aesthetic non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express genuinely aesthetic beliefs and instead hold that they work primarily to express something non-cognitive, such as attitudes of approval or disapproval, or desire. Non-cognitivists deny that aesthetic statements express aesthetic beliefs because they deny that there are aesthetic features in the world for aesthetic beliefs to represent. Their assumption, shared by scientists and theorists of mind alike, was that language-users possess cognitive mechanisms with which to objectively grasp abstract rules fixed independently of human (...) responses, and that cognizers are thereby capable of grasping rules for the correct application of aesthetic concepts without relying on evaluation or enculturation. However, in this article I use Wittgenstein’s rule-following considerations to argue that psychological theories grounded upon this so-called objective model of rule-following fail to adequately account for concept acquisition and mastery. I argue that this is because linguistic enculturation, and the perceptual learning that’s often involved, influences and enables the mastery of aesthetic concepts. I argue that part of what’s involved in speaking aesthetically is to belong to a cultural practice of making sense of things aesthetically, and that it’s within a socio-linguistic community, and that community’s practices, that such aesthetic sense can be made intelligible. (shrink)

On Nietzsche, science, the oral tradition -- or the troubadours and ancient Greek music drama.

The philosophical model of constellation has been applied to contemporary musical form, but it reveals too many limitations when confronted with late Adorno’s model of informal music. Once the component of heteronomy, in hierarchical and centered structures of traditional music, has been overcome, it reemerges in the opposite type, the decentered, non-hierarchical or free structures, between the opposites of serialism and aleatoric music. Therefore, the model of informal music, as an "image of freedom", pursues the realization (...) of a musical-aesthetic nominalism that is subtracted from all forms of heteronomy, ancient or modern. To do this, it has to achieve the 'actually constructed totality' of the work, integrating in it the opposite of free subjectivity. (shrink)

While medical systems rely on categorical distinctions to organise care, from the perspective of lived mortality, these distinctions eventually cease to exist. Whether in an oncology ward or a palliative unit, patients are confronted with the same existential rupture, the sudden exposure to mortality that gives rise to the question, “Why me?”. The more I sit with this question, the more it multiplies. The water muddies; certainty recedes. Medical care can often provide explanations, diagnoses, probabilities, and treatment pathways, but these (...) answers rarely address what is being asked. Sometimes they do the opposite: they confirm that the wound is not informational. Even if a complete explanation were possible, it would not, by itself, dissolve the existential and psychological pain that has already taken hold. And to be fair, this is not only a limit of Medicine or science. Even if philosophy, psychology or theology could offer a perfectly sufficient causal account, whether in the language of karma, divine will, fate, or moral order, the wound would not necessarily close. What remains is not a demand for more explanation, but for a way of bearing and knowing what cannot be solved. This moment suggests a different kind of orientation. The crisis is not simply a lack of explanation, nor can it be resolved by expanding causal accounts. What is at stake is not knowing why in the explanatory sense, but knowing how to remain—how to stay present to one’s life when its continuity has been threatened. This form of knowing is neither propositional nor explanatory. It does not resolve uncertainty, but reorganises what can be felt, endured, and shared. In clinical encounters with existential suffering, such “knowing" often emerges not through interpretation or reassurance, but through embodied and relational practices that make the unbearable bearable without pretending it is solved. These practices do not negate finitude, nor do they promise reconciliation. Instead, they alter the conditions under which suffering is lived, shifting attention, affect, and relational presence in ways that allow experience to be held rather than escaped. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:What's so Important about Music Education?Leonard TanJ. Scott Goble, What's so Important about Music Education? (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010)In What's so Important about Music Education, J. Scott Goble proposes a new philosophical foundation for music education in the United States based on the theory of semiotics by American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce. Following a brief summary, I will note several merits in Goble's (...) book before sketching four recommendations for future editions.In Chapter One, Goble notes how the inclusion of non-Western musics in the public schools as espoused in the 1967 Tanglewood Declaration has raised two crucial questions: "Whose music should be included in the curriculum?" and "What is the role or social importance of public school music education in the United States as a postmodern society?" Noting that music education was established in the United States during the modern era, and that the Tanglewood Declaration did not account for vast differences in beliefs about music, Goble argues that there is a need to establish a new philosophical foundation that can accommodate the varied beliefs and practices of diverse cultural groups in postmodern United States.In Chapter Two, Goble sketches and critiques five cultural anthropologists. Of the five, he singles out Clifford Geertz's conception of culture as "semiotic [End Page 201] webs" (p. 20) as the conceptual foundation that is appropriate for this study. He then links Geertz's notion of culture to the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce which is to become the theoretical underpinning of the book. Subsequently, he unpacks many key Peircian themes: human conceptions are maintained not individually but collectively in cultural groups, provisional truth (as opposed to absolute Truth) is relative and dependent on conceptions of communities, and the scientific method is the sole mode of inquiry by which people in communities may use to satisfy their doubts to formulate beliefs. Most importantly, Goble expounds the "pragmatic maxim" that since humans live in communities united by common beliefs, "the 'clear' meaning of an idea held by a member of the community will almost inevitably stem from the beliefs—or ways of understanding—held by members of that community" (p. 30). Goble concludes the chapter by presenting the Peircian semiotic system of cognition which posits that a "sign" is conceptualized in a triadic relationship: the Sign or "Firstness," the Object or "Secondness," and the Interpretant or "Thirdness" (p. 33).In Chapter Three, Goble considers how music is a sign based on the theoretical framework laid in Chapter Two. Drawing on the work of ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and a neuroscientist, he formulates a Peircian pragmatic approach to musical practices which posits that "the musical practices of different cultural communities represent a diverse cluster of community-specific ritualized behaviors involving sound" (p. 252). Furthermore, each of the musical practices "serves those persons who meaningfully participate in it as a means of psychophysiological, psychosocial, and/or sociopolitical equilibration relative to the worldview—or ordered conception of Reality—they tacitly share" (p. 252). For Goble, this pragmatist conception of musical practices is neither ethnocentric, universalist, nor relativist, and can serve as a conceptual framework for all diverse musical practices in postmodern United States.With the Peircian pragmatic conception in mind, Goble examines historical factors that contributed to current conceptions of music in the United States in Chapter Four. He laments that as a result of European Enlightenment and three socio-political phenomena in the United States (the separation of church and state, promotion of no other worldview than democracy, and adoption of democratic capitalism), music is no longer pragmatically oriented but trivialized and pursued by self-serving musicians.In Chapter Five, Goble traces the philosophical justifications for music education throughout the history of the United States. While the sign "musical practice" was conceptualized as "worship" in colonial America, the sign "music" was conceived as "art" during the age of Enlightenment, and as "product" during the age of science and technology. Noting that Bennett Reimer's music education as aesthetic education is limited in its Western focus on music as works [End Page 202] of artistic objects, Goble aligns his Peircian conception along praxial lines—in particular, with... (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to establish the fundamental reason for Plato’s claim that philosophy is the greatest music. Holding that the main reason for the perceived ambiguity of this assertion stems from a discrepancy between Plato’s understanding of music and philosophy and their modern meanings, the author first elaborates on the original Greek notion of music and compares it with the contemporary one. In the second part of the paper, the author explores Plato’s relationship with (...) music, examining the role he assigned to music within his philosophy. It turns out that the traditional view of Plato’s negative attitude towards music is false. The author provides the reader with a more complex analysis of the problem and offers a positive view of music in Plato's work, which is then linked to Plato’s political preference for the Phrygian mode, pointing towards a rarely observed Dionysian aspect in his thought. The paper concludes that only through careful cultural contextualization of Greek philosophy does it become clear why, for Plato, philosophy was the greatest form of music. (shrink)

'A Differential Play of Forces' is a study of transcendental empiricism in musical contexts. It presents a reading of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s philosophical apparatus and explores how music can be thought of as functioning in the operation Deleuze terms transcendental empiricism. Central to transcendental empiricism is the idea of an encounter with intensive difference and the consequent experience of intensive and virtual forces. The thesis sets out to explore this idea in three interwoven steps. First, it develops (...) transcendental empiricism as a philosophical framework, expounding central notions related to time and aesthetic experience. In the context of this philosophical apparatus, music is then discussed as an encounter with intensity and what this may entail for our understanding of musical experience and its potential. The third part of the thesis explores the idea of experiencing intensive forces through music in the thinking and poietic of three composers of the twentieth century: Arnold Schönberg, Olivier Messiaen and Giacinto Scelsi. The thesis develops three ‘images of thought’ corresponding, respectively, to the composers’ expressed theoretical ideas, identifying central concepts from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy. A mutual illumination of ideas about music and transcendental empiricism is thus presented, pointing towards a possible convergence between theory and practice, thinking and aesthetic experience as a differential play of intensive forces. (shrink)

This essay explores Plato’s rudimentary epistemology of non-discursive thought. I will proceed in three steps, beginning with a general view of Plato’s philosophy, subsequently focusing on the Meno, and ending with a close reading of the passages on music in Republic. In the first section, I will outline a general framework to examine the relation between truth (alētheia) and discourse (logos) in Plato’s philosophy. My central argument is that, for Plato, discourse is a necessary yet not sufficient condition for (...) truth. Accordingly, I identify two sides of Plato’s philosophy: his “logocentric” project, which aims to demonstrate the necessity of discourse in truth-finding, and his “logoskeptic” project, which underscores the insufficiency of discourse in truth-finding. This double philosophical undertaking, then, raises the question of how both aspects—discourse’s necessity and its insufficiency—relate to each other in a combined extra-discursive pursuit of truth. In the subsequent two sections, I will focus on two Platonic dialogues to characterize the relation between logoskepticism and logocentrism as a dialectical circle. First, I will analyze this relation through a reading of the Meno, in particular the aporia of the ‘‘paradox of inquiry”. This interpretation aims both to solidify the general framework presented in the previous section and to introduce the notion of “dialectics” to conceptualize the relation between one’s discourse and that which transcends one’s discursive abilities. In the Meno, I argue, this dialectic unfolds as a circular mode of thinking in which a form of passivity ultimately proves decisive. However, in the Meno, the dialectical mode of thought remains largely confined to the realm of discursivity, leaving unresolved the question of how discourse and the non-discursive might collaborate in a similarly dialectical yet extra-discursive mode of reason. Finally, in the third section, I argue that a close reading of the passages on music in Book III of the Republic (398b–403c) reveals an insight into the dialectical relation between discursive and non-discursive reason. Throughout these passages, Plato launches a paradoxical theory of musical pedagogy. In short, Plato makes a case for the cognitive value of music’s non-discursive nature, while simultaneously explaining this non-discursive quality in a thoroughly logocentric manner. Much of the scholarship on Plato’s philosophy of music tends to emphasize only one side of this paradox. However, I contend that by recognizing both contrasting aspects of Plato’s musical pedagogy, by preserving rather than resolving their circular relation to each other, we can see how discourse and non-discursive material interact dialectically in music. In doing so, I aim to show how Plato’s paradoxical theory of music bridges two key aspects of his overall philosophy, namely discourse’s necessity and its insufficiency in the pursuit of truth. (shrink)

The development of communication technologies, resulting in the arrival of the Internet and the World-Wide-Web has been rapid, influencing almost all aspects of modern society including education. Concepts of epistemology, how we know what we know, have been forced to rapidly adjust to these new and emerging technologies. Online communities of learners have developed in virtual spaces where community members share knowledge and resources as well as offer support and feedback. This is particularly prominent in the field of learning to (...) play the guitar. This paper presents findings of a systematic literature review to empirically examine the question: What does it mean epistemologically to use digital methods when learning the guitar? With a particular focus on self-directed learning through online communities, notions of epistemic inertia and resonance are discussed, and concepts of epistemic indulgence and discretion are presented. This paper also presents the conception of the evolving communication in online guitar communities, in the form of tablature developed in word processors and simple imaging software, to be a folksonomy, which is itself a product of epistemic resonance. (shrink)

Originally appeared in the field of thermodynamics, the concept of entropy, especially in its statistical acceptation, has found applications in many different disciplines, both inside and outside science. In this work we focus on the possibility of drawing an isomorphism between the entropy of Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics and that of Xenakis’s stochastic music theory. We expose the major technical aspects of the two entropies and then consider affinities and differences between them, both at syntactic and at semantic level, hereto (...) particularly referring to the philosophical problem of the asymmetry of time. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper explores the profound conceptual and structural parallels between string theory in physics and music theory, grounded in the application of three universal laws: the law of karma (cause and effect and system integrity), the law of balance in nature, and the principle of feedback mechanisms among conscious systems. Through comparative analysis, it is shown that both domains—seemingly disparate—embody the same fundamental principles of vibration, harmony, balance, and feedback, thereby highlighting an elegant unity between science and (...) art. -/- . (shrink)

Improvising musicians—especially towards the “freer” or more “experimental” end of the spectrum—are often seen as having the space to do just about anything. But actual improvisations are (also) processes of what enactivist philosophers Hanne De Jaegher and Ezequiel Di Paolo call “participatory sense-making”; musicians’ active choices are both enabled and constrained by musical phenomena, or “autonomous organising principles”, that emerge between them. Here we explore one example of such phenomena: groove. We begin by theorizing groove more broadly as a “grid” (...) and as “participatory discrepancies”, emphasizing how groove shows a form of agency in processes of sense-making. We then analyze sense-making at work in a case of emergent groove performed by the 21-piece experimental improvising ensemble Splitter Orchester. We conclude that collective sense-making is a dynamic process in which individual agents negotiate not only with each other, but also the shared norms and emergent other-than-human processes that they enact. (shrink)

Abstract The development of expert-level skill in disciplines such as music, sports, and academics is deeply influenced by the age of initiation, quality of practice, and consistency over time. This paper synthesizes insights from neuroscience, psychology, and pedagogy to explain how early-age practice, deliberate repetition, and focused learning foster skill perfection. Through an analysis of neuroplasticity, myelination, identity formation, and mentorship, this work highlights the shared mechanisms behind mastery in different fields and underlines the value of holistic early education. (...) -/- . (shrink)

Rumi is often presented as a universal mystic whose poetry floats above history. This article argues the opposite. Rumi’s universality was produced through a deeply historical world of movement. The Silk Roads carried more than silk, spices, horses, paper, pigments, and precious objects. They carried spiritual vocabularies, poetic forms, manuscripts, scholarly habits, musical practices, medical and astronomical knowledge, calligraphic aesthetics, legal-religious training, and Sufi methods of remembrance. Reading Rumi through this world does not reduce him to geography. It restores the (...) conditions that made his symbolic language possible. This article reconstructs the Persianate and Islamic networks surrounding Rumi’s formation, beginning with the eastern world associated with Balkh, Khurasan, Transoxiana, and Central Asian learning, then following the westward pressure of migration, Mongol rupture, Seljuk Anatolia, and Konya’s religious-intellectual ecology. It treats the Silk Roads not as a single road but as a layered network of cities, caravan routes, sea lanes, markets, madrasas, lodges, shrines, manuscript cultures, courts, workshops, and oral traditions. Rumi’s poetry is read as a condensed archive of this network: Qur’anic allusion, Persian poetics, music, breath, motion, cosmology, healing, light, calligraphy, exile, and the discipline of love. The article’s contribution is methodological. It proposes a source-controlled model for reading mystical literature through transmission systems rather than isolated genius, national ownership, or modern spiritual branding. The central claim is not that every image in Rumi can be traced to a trade route. The stronger claim is that Rumi’s mystical imagination belongs to a Silk Road ecology of knowledge in which poetry, religion, science, art, sound, and movement traveled together. (shrink)

Civilization is not only a collection of institutions, monuments, texts, and inherited customs. It is a system for making pattern durable. This article develops the thesis of civilization as stored pattern: societies preserve order by externalizing memory into calendars, ritual sequences, buildings, city plans, legal codes, oral formulas, musical meters, myths, language systems, archives, media technologies, and digital platforms. The argument does not claim that every civilization repeats the same pattern, nor that memory is always harmless. It argues that civilization (...) scales by making selected patterns repeatable beyond the lifespan, memory, and body of any individual person. The article builds a source-controlled synthesis from collective memory studies, material engagement theory, extended mind theory, anthropology of time, ritual studies, architecture and urban theory, law and systems theory, oral tradition, semiotics, media archaeology, and counter-histories of state formation. The central contribution is the concept of civilization as memory technology: not a machine in the narrow technical sense, but a layered system of externalized, embodied, institutional, and symbolic storage. Calendars store time. Ritual stores action. Architecture stores orientation. Law stores authority. Music and oral form store rhythm. Myth and language store symbolic continuity. Archives and media store selection, access, and transmission. The article also states the limits of the thesis. Stored pattern does not establish moral progress, social harmony, or inevitable complexity. Civilizational storage can preserve wisdom, but it can also preserve domination, taxation, exclusion, forgetting, and collapse. The disciplined claim is smaller and stronger: civilization endures by making memory repeatable, public, spatial, temporal, legal, sonic, symbolic, and material. This article argues that civilization survives by storing selected patterns in calendars, rituals, buildings, cities, laws, songs, myths, languages, archives, and media systems. It treats civilization as memory technology while keeping the claim controlled: stored pattern can preserve meaning and identity, but it can also preserve domination, exclusion, and collapse. (shrink)

This article aims to explore and analytics about Ethiopian traditional music instrument through indigenous knowledge (kirar, masinko, Begena, kebero and washint/flute). The researcher would have observation and referring the difference documentations. Kirar, and masinko are mostly have purposeful for local music including washint, the others which is Kebero, Begena have use full in the majority time for church purpose. Ethiopia has extended culture, art and indigenous knowledge related to original own music. Their studies have qualitative research design (...) that has descriptive methodology to more exploring the traditional music’s free statement descriptions. Its researcher mainly has providing the descriptive information about the Ethiopian traditional music instrument as analytical finding out. (shrink)

In the present book, the starting line is defined by a morphogenetic perspective on human communication and culture. The focus is on visual communication, music, religion (myth), and language, i.e., on the “symbolic forms” at the heart of human cultures (Ernst Cassirer). The term “morphogenesis” has more precisely the meaning given by René Thom (1923-2002) in his book “Morphogenesis and Structural Stability” (1972) and the notions of “self-organization” and cooperation of subsystems in the “Synergetics” of Hermann Haken (1927- ). (...) The naturalization of communication and cultural phenomena is the favored strategy, but the major results of the involved disciplines (art history, music theory, religious science, and linguistics) are respected. Visual art from the Paleolithic to modernity stands for visual communication. The present book focuses on studies of classical painting and sculpture (e.g., Leonardo da Vinci, William Turner, and Henry Moore) and modern art (e.g., Jackson Pollock and Joseph Beuys). Musical morphogenesis embraces classical music (from J. S. Bach to Arnold Schönberg) and political songwriting (Bob Dylan, Leonhard Cohen). The myths of pre-literary societies show the effects of self-organization in the re-assembly (bricolage) of traditions. Classical polytheistic and monotheistic religions demonstrate the unfolding of basic germs (religious attractors) and their reduction in periods of crisis, the self-organization of complex religious networks, and rationalized macro-structures (in theologies). Significant tendencies are analyzed in the case of Buddhism and Christianism. Eventually, a holistic view of symbolic communication and human culture emerges based on state-of-the-art in evolutionary biology, cognitive science, linguistics, and semiotics (philosophy of symbolic forms). (shrink)

This article is a study with the heading of moral philosophy in age of Enlightenment, to bring together Immanuel Kant, the great philosopher of Enlightenment age and launcher of a new age in history of philosophy and Ludwig van Beethoven, the great composer who was contemporary of him and launcher of a new age in music history. The first part of article is an investigation of the systems of metaphysical philosophy exposed by eminent philosophers since Platon to Kant in (...) general. Henceforth, it is striven to reveal the metaphysics of Kant by means of his way of speculate about it in a different way than all philosophers before him and way of achieve philosophical revolution. The moral philosophy which is in central position of his system of metaphysics has been main theme of this article. In this study, research based on the exposition of moral way of life and world view by Kant and it's influence on the music of Beethoven. It is invesitgated in the last part of article as one of the very crucial example how the musical content of Ninth Symphony by Beethoven is determined by that influence. This work has been a milestone in the music history likewise the break a new ground in philosophy by Kant. Furthermore, year 2020 is coming across the 250th anniversary of birth of Beethoven was an inspiration for this article. (shrink)

The study sought to find out the role of computer technology in music education in Colleges of Education in the Volta Region of Ghana. It aimed at surveying the use of computer technology for teaching music and exploring the instructional prospects for computer technology usage in music in Colleges of Education. The study employed Rogers’ Diffusion Innovation theory and descriptive survey research method. Data was collected from the respondents using questionnaire, interview, and observation. The study revealed that (...) even though about 90% of the music tutors have good academic qualification and over five years teaching experience, lack of competence in handling computer technology in teaching music among some music tutors and incoherent ICT initiatives hindered proper application of computer technology in the field of music education. It is however envisaged that increasing access and coherent computer technology initiatives will be paramount for the teaching of music in the Colleges of Education. (shrink)

Arts Entrepreneurship is a comparatively new concept in arts management however, it is inevitable for the arts, especially classical music to adapt the concept for its survival. This article investigates how arts entrepreneurship is executed through strategic collaboration in three different cases of classical music organizations in Seoul, Korea: Yellow Lounge Seoul, Ensemble Ditto and The New Baroque Company. By providing vivid examples of how to apply arts entrepreneurship in classical music products, it will better help to (...) understand the concept. The study conducted a focused group interview (FGI) with concert with classical music marketing specialists and their strategic collaborators. The framework of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) was applied to analyze identify arts entrepreneurship in each organization. The entrepreneurial approaches of these organizations are identified by how their entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is executed in their innovativeness, risk-taking, and proactiveness. The results of this empirical study are demonstrated in three aspects: 1) Strategic collaboration with an unconventional partner resulted in realization of entrepreneurial orientation. 2) Entrepreneurship through strategic collaboration resulted in reducing production costs, sourcing new funds, increasing the audience base and performance opportunities 3) Arts entrepreneurship was designed to maintain the core value that the quality of music would not be compromised or altered. (shrink)

In the small but growing literature on the philosophy of country music, the question of how we ought to understand the genre’s notion of authenticity has emerged as one of the central questions. Many country music scholars argue that authenticity claims track attributions of cultural standing or artistic self-expression. However, careful attention to the history of the genre reveals that these claims are simply factually wrong. On the basis of this, we have grounds for dismissing these attributions. Here, (...) I argue for an alternative model of authenticity in which we take claims about the relative authenticity of country music to be evidence of ‘country’ being a dual character concept in the same way that it has been suggested of punk rock and hip-hop. Authentic country music is country music that embodies the core value commitments of the genre. These values form the basis of country artists’ and audiences’ practical identities. Part of country music’s aesthetic practice is that audiences reconnect with, reify, and revise this common practical identity through identification with artists and works that manifest these values. We should then think of authenticity discourse within country music as a kind of game within the genre’s practice of shaping and maintaining this practical identity. (shrink)

Music therapy for autism has historically been guided by a “pathology paradigm” that aims to normalize autistic people in line with neuronormativity. The neurodiversity movement has initiated a paradigm shift towards more neuro-affirming practices. However, music therapy would benefit from a more robust theoretical grounding to guide this neuro-affirming transition. We address this gap by putting forward an enactive account of autistic musical engagement—grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm—that avoids pathological framing. Drawing on first-person reports from recent qualitative studies, (...) we discuss how autistic people use music in everyday life for emotional regulation, identity construction, and social connection, while also noting how music can sometimes clash with autistic sensory sensitivities and agency. From this enactive perspective, autistic styles of musical engagement are revealed not as a set of symptoms to be managed but as vital dimensions of sense-making. We conclude by deriving some core principles to guide the development of neuro-affirming music therapies and inclusive live music events, creating spaces for autistic flourishing. (shrink)

For 4E cognitive science, minds are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. Proponents observe that we regularly ‘offload’ our thinking onto body and world: we use gestures and calculators to augment mathematical reasoning, and smartphones and search engines as memory aids. I argue that music is a beyond-the-head resource that affords offloading. Via this offloading, music scaffolds access to new forms of thought, experience, and behaviour. I focus on music’s capacity to scaffold emotional consciousness, including the self-regulative processes (...) constitutive of emotional consciousness. In developing this idea, I consider the ‘material’ and ‘worldmaking’ character music, and I apply these considerations to two case studies: music as a tool for religious worship, and music as a weapon for torture. (shrink)

Contemporary musical ontology has become fixated on musical works, treating them as the primary—often exclusive—subject of metaphysical inquiry. This paper argues that such work-centrism is methodologically limiting. Musical work is a heterogeneous category that resists unified ontological treatment, while the very concept of a work proves historically contingent and practice-relative. Moreover, work-centrism leaves un(der)theorized vast ranges of musical phenomena that merit ontological consideration. These limitations are diagnosed from testing the work-centric methodology against four desiderata for an ontological theory of (...) class='Hi'>music, each motivated by reflecting on musical phenomena and practices. I then propose a compositional approach to musical ontology, focused on musical elements (pitches, rhythms, motifs) and their interrelations under compositional operations, as a promising alternative. This approach not only meets the desiderata but also systematically tracks musical content—what makes something musical—thereby offering a stable foundation for philosophical theorizing about music as such. (shrink)

The Long and Winding Word by Steve Sayles reimagines The Beatles not as a musical group within cultural history but as a philosophical phenomenon: a sustained inquiry into consciousness, time, and the architecture of meaning through sound. This paper examines the work as both literary experiment and metaphysical argument, proposing that Sayles’s “Prosodyne” form restores the ancient unity of poetry, philosophy, and theology. His method treats each Beatles song not as artifact but as event — a sonic field where emotion, (...) thought, and revelation converge. The analysis proceeds from four interpretive axes: ontological (sound as being), phenomenological (consciousness as rhythm), theological (the Word as music), and aesthetic (form as revelation). Sayles’s book transforms popular music into an arena for metaphysical reflection, moving from the innocence of early songs to the redemptive stillness of the late works, mirroring the dialectic of the soul from immediacy to understanding. Drawing on Hegel, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Augustine, and C. S. Lewis, this study situates The Long and Winding Word within the broader tradition of philosophical poetics. The Prosodyne emerges as both genre and method — a modern Logos-form that translates rhythm into reflection and melody into ontology. In Sayles’s synthesis, the Beatles become a vehicle for truth’s re-entry into the modern imagination: the rediscovery of meaning through sound, love through loss, and unity through the fragmenting noise of history. (shrink)

Contemporary musical ontology has become fixated on musical works, treating them as the primary—often exclusive—subject of metaphysical inquiry. This paper argues that such work-centrism is methodologically limiting. Musical work is a heterogeneous category that resists unified ontological treatment, while the very concept of a work proves historically contingent and practice-relative. Moreover, work-centrism leaves un(der)theorized vast ranges of musical phenomena that merit ontological consideration. These limitations are diagnosed from testing the work-centric methodology against four desiderata for an ontological theory of (...) class='Hi'>music, each motivated by reflecting on musical phenomena and practices. I then propose a compositional approach to musical ontology, focused on musical elements (pitches, rhythms, motifs) and their interrelations under compositional operations, as a promising alternative. This approach not only meets the desiderata but also systematically tracks musical content—what makes something musical—thereby offering a stable foundation for philosophical theorizing about music as such. (shrink)

In the ontology of music the Aristotelian theory of musical works is the view that musical works are immanent universals. The Aristotelian theory (hereafter Musical Aristotelianism) is an attractive and serviceable hypothesis. However, it is overlooked as a genuine competitor to the more well-known theories of Musical Platonism and nominalism. Worse still, there is no detailed account in the literature of the nature of the universals that the Aristotelian identifies musical works with. In this paper, I argue that the (...) best version of Musical Aristotelianism identifies musical works with structural universals. I first motivate the view by outlining its explanatory benefits. I then argue that Musical Aristotelianism is preferable to Musical Platonism and present a novel account of musical works as structural universals by developing D. M. Armstrong’s theory of structural universals. I discuss the consequences of Musical Aristotelianism with respect to on-going issues in debates about musical works and defend the view against an influential objection, concluding that Musical Aristotelianism is a genuine competitor in debates about the nature of musical works. (shrink)

In “Flourish,” Martin Seligman maintained that the elements of well-being consist of “PERMA: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment.” Although the question of what constitutes human flourishing or psychological well-being has remained a topic of continued debate among scholars, it has recently been argued in the literature that a paradigmatic or prototypical case of human psychological well-being would largely manifest most or all of the aforementioned PERMA factors. Further, in “A Neuroscientific Perspective on Music Therapy,” Stefan Koelsch also (...) suggested that “Music therapy can have effects that improve the psychological and physiological health of individuals,” so it seems plausible that engaging in practices of music can positively contribute to one living a more optimally flourishing life with greater psychological well-being. However, recent studies on music practice and participation have not yet been reviewed and integrated under the PERMA framework from positive psychology to further explore and explicate this possibility. This article therefore contributes to extant work by reviewing recent research on psychological well-being and music to offer support for the claim that music practice and participation can positively contribute to one living a flourishing life by positively influencing their emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment. (shrink)

In Flourish, the positive psychologist Seligman (2011) identifies five commonly recognized factors that are characteristic of human flourishing or well-being: (1) “positive emotion,” (2) “relationships,” (3) “engagement,” (4) “achievement,” and (5) “meaning” (p. 24). Although there is no settled set of necessary and sufficient conditions neatly circumscribing the bounds of human flourishing (Seligman, 2011), we would mostly likely consider a person that possessed high levels of these five factors as paradigmatic or prototypical of human flourishing. Accordingly, if we wanted to (...) go about the practical task of actually increasing our level of well-being, we ought to do so by focusing on practically increasing the levels of the five factors that are characteristic of well-being. If, for instance, an activity such as musical engagement can be shown to positively influence each or all of these five factors, this would be compelling evidence that an activity such as musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. I am of the belief that psychological research can and should be used, not only to identify and diagnose maladaptive psychological states, but identify and promote adaptive psychological states as well. In this article I advance the hypothesis and provide supporting evidence for the claim that musical engagement can positively contribute to one’s living a flourishing life. Since there has not yet been a substantive and up-to-date investigation of the possible role of music in contributing to one’s living a flourishing life, the purpose of this article is to conduct this investigation, thereby bridging the gap and stimulating discussion between the psychology of music and the psychology of well-being. (shrink)

I argue for an enactive account of musical experience — that is, the experience of listening ‘deeply’(i.e., sensitively and understandingly) to a piece of music. The guiding question is: what do we do when we listen ‘deeply’to music? I argue that these music listening episodes are, in fact, doings. They are instances of active perceiving, robust sensorimotor engagements with and manipulations of sonic structures within musical pieces. Music is thus experiential art, and in Nietzsche’s words, ‘we (...) listen to music with our muscles’. This paper attempts to explicate and defend this claim. First, I discuss enactive approaches to consciousness and cognition generally. Next, I apply an enactive model of perceptual consciousness to the experience of listening to music. To clarify what is at stake, I use Peter Kivy’s ‘enhanced formalism’ as a philosophical foil. I then look at how the animate body shapes musical experience. (shrink)

Realism about musical works is often tied to some type of Platonism. Nominalism, which posits that musical works exist and that they are concrete objects, goes with ontological realism much less often than Platonism: there is a long tradition which holds human-created objects (artifacts) to be mind-dependent. Musical Platonism leads to the well-known paradox of the impossibility of creating abstract objects, and so it has been suggested that only some form of nominalism becoming dominant in the ontology of art could (...) cause a great change in the field and open up new possibilities. This paper aims to develop a new metaontological view starting from the widely accepted claim that musical works are created. It contends that musical works must be concrete and created objects of some sort, but, nevertheless, they are mind-independent, and we should take the revisionary methodological stance. Although musical works are artifacts, what people think about them does not determine what musical works are. Musical works are similar to natural objects in the following sense: semantic externalism applies to the term ‘musical work’ because, firstly, they possess a shared nature, and, secondly, we can be mistaken about what they are. (shrink)

I explain a tension between musical creationism (the view that musical works are abstract artifacts) and the view that there is no vague existence. I then suggest ways to reconcile these views. My central conclusion is that, although some versions of musical creationism imply vague existence, others do not. I discuss versions of musical creationism held by Jerrold Levinson, Simon Evnine, and Kit Fine. I also present two new versions. I close by considering whether the tension is merely an instance (...) of a general problem raised by artifacts, both abstract and concrete. I argue that on at least one defensible account of music the tension is especially problematic for abstracta. I focus on musical works, but much of the paper straightforwardly applies to other kinds of abstract artifacts. (shrink)

Some hold that musical works are fusions of, or coincide with, their performances. But if performances contain wrong notes, won't works inherit that property? We say ‘no’.

The discourse concerning musical expression hinges on a fundamental analogy between music and language. While the extant literature commonly compares music to language, this essay takes the reverse direction, following Wittgenstein’s approach. The discussion contrasts the theoretical underpinnings of the “music as language” simile with those of the “language as music” simile. The emphasis on characterization, performance, mutual tuning-in relationships, the interaction between language and music, and the open-ended effort to reorient ourselves as we draw (...) in significance challenges the “informing paradigm” that has been paramount across contemporary philosophical theories of musical expression. One of the most promising philosophical avenues that emerges as we move beyond the “informing paradigm” is recognizing the inseparable relationship between musical expression and our power to shape our own language. (shrink)

Music is a universal human activity. Its evolution and its value as a cognitive resource are starting to come into focus. This chapter endeavors to give readers a clearer sense of the adaptive aspects of music, as well as the underlying cognitive and neural structures. Special attention is given to the important emotional dimensions of music, and an evolutionary argument is made for thinking of music as a prelinguistic embodied form of cognition—a form that is still (...) available to us as contemporary music creators and consumers. (shrink)

In this article I address some questions concerning the emerging conjunction of musical research on improvisation and work in the ‘posthumanities’, in particular the theoretical results of the ‘ontological turn’ in the humanities. Engaging with the work of the composer John Cage, and George E. Lewis’s framing of Cage’s performative indeterminacy as a ‘Eurological’ practice that excludes ‘Afrological’ jazz improvisation, I examine how critical discourse on Cage and his conception of sound is relevant to the improvisation-posthumanities conjunction. After discussing some (...) criticisms of ontological and materialist approaches to sound, I consider the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) of Bruno Latour, posed as offering an alternative to these approaches. Following an examination of some limitations to ANT based around the themes of critique and abstraction, I draw from the work of Gilles Deleuze and Georgina Born to suggest that work on improvisation and the posthumanities may be fruitful, but must be part of a pluralistic mode of inquiry that does not reject critique and abstraction, as some work in the posthumanities has done. (shrink)