Abstract

This chapter raises interesting new questions for aesthetics. While philosophers have long debated the question as to what makes something a work of art, Christopher Peacocke asks: What makes a work an example of a particular artistic style? Using the example of the Romantic style of music, Peacocke proposes an answer that draws on the perception of expressive action in combination with an account of what is involved in hearing emotion and other mental states in music. The account can link the phenomenology of musical perception with the ideas and ideals of the Romantic movement. He notes that by changing various parameters in the account, we can also obtain accounts of what is variously distinctive of impressionist music, expressionist music, and some neoclassical writing in the style of Stravinsky.