We explore the topic of self-translation in migration through the biography of Fritz A. Kuttner, a German Jewish economist who became a musicologist during the years he spent in his native country just before he managed to escape from the Nazis. His interest in musicology intensified as an immigrant in Shanghai from 1939 to 1949, where he also studied pre-modern Chinese musical culture. After his emigration and becoming a US citizen, Kuttner emerged as a pioneer in this new field. We (...) trace Kuttner’s path as a whole, but focus especially on his Shanghai years. Among other things, these are marked by his study of the Chinese language, life in the multilingual Jewish refugee community, music as a meeting point between East and West, his growing understanding of a connection between Chinese language, music and culture as a whole, and his efforts to translate his understanding of the semiotics of ancient Chinese music into the language and theoretical perspective of Western musicology. In addition to documenting his experiences and academic self-translation, we argue in favour of a broader concept of self-translation as being relevant to an intercultural sense of self. (shrink)

In Against the Musicologists (Math. 6), Sextus uses two types of arguments against musicology. Some would argue that a science of music – does not contribute to a happy life, while others deny that such a science has ever been established. Since the respective beliefs that musicology exists and that it benefits those who have mastered it are fine specimens of dogmatism, all Sextus has to do is to set the naysayers and the believers against each other in good (...) Pyrrhonian fashion. If their accounts balance each other out, he can go on to suggest that reasonable inquirers will suspend judgement as to the truth about these matters, while leaving everyday musical practice intact. Against the Musicologists thus lends itself to being read as an attempt to display the Sceptical capacity to motivate suspension of judgement in a specific domain where the Sceptic has detected dogmatic belief. -/- In what follows, I develop a reading of the treatise along these lines. In Section 5.1, I argue that Sextus’ polemical engagement with philosophical musicology sits well with the project of the treatise to which it belongs, and with a plausible understanding of his philosophical position as presented in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism (Pyr.). Then I turn to the two kinds of arguments that are contrasted by Sextus as being ‘more dogmatic’ and ‘more aporetic’ in spirit. After their brief presentation in Section 5.2, explaining the nature of their contrast by pointing to the diverging agendas that they originally served, I give an overview of both as ultimately aiming at epochē in Sections 5.3 and 5.4. Finally, in Section 5.5, I push back against readings that take the treatise to present a deviation from the suspensive outlook. (shrink)

Musicologists have increasingly taken a wide-angled lens on the study of music in society, to explore how it can be intertwined with issues of politics, gender, religion, race, psychology, memory and space. Recent studies of music in connection with society take in a variety of musical phenomena from diverse periods and genres-medieval, classical, opera, rock, etc. This ten-chapter book asks not only how music and society are, and have been, intertwined and mutually influential. It also examines the agents behind (...) these connections: who determines musical cultures in society? Which social groups are represented in particular musical contexts? Which social groups are silenced or less well represented in music's histories, and why? (shrink)

Anglophone musicologists read the cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek more than they read the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and they are more concerned with Žižekian academia than they are with Lacan’s clinical practice. Two major problems emerge: Lacan is conflated with Žižek, and Lacan is conflated with Kant. As a result, analytic discourse is confused with post-modern academia as well as an eighteenth-century master-discourse on the Sublime. According to the author’s argument, Lacanian musicology is a misnomer, for it in fact (...) refers to Žižekian musicology, and what musicologists call the Lacanian Real is not really Lacanian. The re-branding of the Kantian Sublime and/or the Thing as the Lacanian Real is not necessary; it is a symptom of confusion. The article concludes with a cautious recommendation, pertinent to the study of music and discourses. (shrink)

THE HISPANIC RITE stands out from the non-Roman Western medieval liturgies for its long history of observance and for having the largest corpus of extant manuscripts. Despite its importance, it has not received the scholarly attention that it deserves. One of the main reasons for this lacuna is that the vast plainchant repertoire of this rite was recorded using a notational system that lacks clear specification of pitch and thus eludes most musicologists (let alone modern historians and liturgists). We (...) have seen in this book that the lack of precisely prescribed pitch, rather than impeding the advancement of studies on plainchant, can trigger the exploration of many other variables which are often neglected but which need to be studied to further our knowledge in this field. These variables include not only musical aspects other than pitch-specification (such as the grammar that underpins chant melodies, melodic repetitions, and musical pacing of the text), but also sets of textual and liturgical variables which, together with the music, form the essence of the entity known as plainchant. (shrink)

According to musicologist Christopher Small, the treatment of music in musicology carries fundamentally flawed historical premises. Instead of focusing on music through art „objects“, anything understood as „music“ should be examined on the grounds of its spatiotemporal appearance, as a social activity of musicking and the unfolding event. The emphasis of the verb „musicking“ instead of the substantive „music“ signifies a reinterpretation of a static into a processual concept. According to Small, musical meaning is formed with regards to the time (...) and space of the immersive situation and the bodily encounter of participating individuals. This processual intervention over existing musical concepts through reinterpretation as „musicking“ opens the door to a broader philosophical scope. In order to approach two seemingly opposed interpretations of the subject matter mentioned above, I will attempt a reinterpretation of Small with reference to Arthur Schopenhauer’s concept of the „Will“, but with a more detailed emphasis on the expanded principle of the „Dyonisian“ and „Apollonian“ as suggested by Friedrich Nietzsche. I will further suggest some criteria for interpretation of any potential „musicking“ through several points of contention between Small’s musicology and Nietzsche’s philosophy. For this, I will utilize Nietzsche’s philosophical opposition between Being and Becoming serving as foundations of knowledge and art. The suggestion is that, while the entanglement of the Apollonian „image“ and the Dyonisian „rush“ enables the emergence of music as art, the foundation of Small’s „musicking“ lies in the non-ethical character of the Dyonisian—in what lies „behind“ the phenomenon and conceptualization of it. This ultimately questions the implication of music „as“ art, as it suggests that any justification thereof can not be considered outside of the subjective disposition encountering the event, nor beyond the individual disposition emerging within it. „Musicking“ doesn’t emerge with any cultural, social, symbolic or teleological purpose, but attains any one of these as soon as it’s designated „as-such“ by those principles that enable the concept to emerge in the first place. This, despite its broadly influential treatise, ultimately reveals the limits of Small’s „musicking“. (shrink)

Contemplating Art is a compendium of writings from the last ten years by one of the leading figures in aesthetics, Jerrold Levinson. The twenty-four essays range over issues in general aesthetics and those relating to specific arts--in particular music, film, and literature. It will appeal not only to philosophers but also to musicologists, literary theorists, art critics, and reflective lovers of the arts.

Peter Kivy is the author of many books on the history of art and, in particular, the aesthetics of music. This collection of essays spans a period of some thirty years and focuses on a richly diverse set of issues: the biological origins of music, the role of music in the liberal education, the nature of the musical work and its performance, the aesthetics of opera, the emotions of music, and the very nature of music itself. Some of these subjects (...) are viewed as part of the history of ideas, others as current problems in the philosophy of art. A particular feature of the volume is that Kivy avoids the use of musical notation so that no technical knowledge at all is required to appreciate his work. The essays will prove enjoyable and insightful not just to professionals in the philosophy of art and musicologists, or to musicians themselves, but also to any motivated general reader with a deep interest in music. (shrink)

This book collects a renowned scholar's essays from the past five decades and reflects two main concerns: an approach to logic that stresses argumentation, reasoning, and critical thinking and that is informal, empirical, naturalistic, practical, applied, concrete, and historical; and an interest in Galileo’s life and thought—his scientific achievements, Inquisition trial, and methodological lessons in light of his iconic status as “father of modern science.” These republished essays include many hard to find articles, out of print works, and chapters which (...) are not available online. The collection provides an excellent resource of the author's lifelong dedication to the subject. Thus, the book contains critical analyses of some key Galilean arguments about the laws of falling bodies and the Copernican hypothesis of the earth’s motion. There is also a group of chapters in which Galileo’s argumentation is compared and contrasted with that of other figures such as Socrates, Karl Marx, Giordano Bruno, and his musicologist father Vincenzo Galilei. The chapters on Galileo’s trial illustrate an approach to the science-vs-religion issue which Finocchiaro labels “para-clerical” and conceptualizes in terms of a judicious consideration of arguments for and against Galileo and the Church. Other essays examine argumentation about Galileo’s life and thought by the major Galilean scholars of recent decades. The book will be of interest to scholars in philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, history of science, history of religion, philosophy of religion, argumentation, rhetoric, and communication studies. (shrink)

This book is an important contribution to the philosophy of music. Whereas most books in this field focus on the creation and reproduction of music, Bruce Benson's concern is the phenomenology of music making as an activity. He offers the radical thesis that it is improvisation that is primary in the moment of music making. Succinct and lucid, the book brings together a wide range of musical examples from classical music, jazz, early music and other genres. It offers a rich (...) tapestry incorporating both analytic and continental philosophy, musicology and performance-practice issues. It will be a provocative read for philosophers of art and musicologists and, because it eschews technicality, should appeal to general readers, especially those who perform. (shrink)

Groove, as a musical quality, is an important part of jazz and pop music appreciative practices. Groove talk is widespread among musicians and audiences, and considerable importance is placed on generating and appreciating grooves in music. However, musicians, musicologists, and audiences use groove attributions in a variety of ways that do not track one consistent underlying concept. I argue that that there are at least two distinct concepts of groove. On one account, groove is ‘the feel of the music’ (...) and, on the other, groove is the psychological feeling (induced by music) of wanting to move one’s body. Further, I argue that recent work in music psychology shows that these two concepts do not converge on a unified set of musical features. Finally, I also argue that these two concepts play different functional roles in the appreciative practices of jazz and popular music. This should cause us to further consider the mediating role genre plays for aesthetic concepts and provides us with reason for adopting a more communitarian approach to aesthetics which is attentive to the ways in which aesthetic discourse serves the practices of different audiences. (shrink)

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

The sciences aim to get at the truth about the nature of the world. Do the humanities have a similar goal—namely, to get at the truth about things like novels, paintings, and historical events? I consider a few different ways in which the humanities aim at the truth about their objects, in the process giving rise to epistemic goods such as knowledge and understanding. Two works in the humanities are used as test cases: the historian Tyler Stovall’sParis Noir (1996) and (...) the musicologist Susan McClary’s article, ‘The Blasphemy of Talking Politics During Bach Year’ (1987). (shrink)

How can an abstract sequence of sounds so intensely express emotional states? In the past ten years, research into the topic of music and emotion has flourished. This book explores the relationship between music and emotion, bringing together contributions from psychologists, neuroscientists, musicologists, musicians, and philosophers.

Thinking of problems of aesthetics has a long and strong tradition in Austrian Philosophy. It starts with Bernard Bolzano (1781-1848); it is famously represented by the critic and musicologist Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904); and it is continued within the school of Alexius Meinong (1853-1920), in particular by Christian von Ehrenfels (1859-1932) and Stephan Witasek (1870-1915). Nowadays the aesthetic writings of Bolzano, Ehrenfels, and Witasek are hardly known, particularly not in the Anglo-Saxon world. Austrian aesthetics is surely less known than Austrian contributions (...) to other philosophical disciplines, like ontology, epistemology or philosophy of science. One of the aims of this paper is to show that this is both regrettable and unjustified for the following reasons: Austrian aestheticians have dealt with a number of problems (mainly concerning the foundations of aesthetics) that are salient until today; in terms of subtlety and depth as well as exactness and originality, in general, they easily stand comparison with today's analytic aesthetics; and many of there views and arguments are still worthy of consideration. In this paper, the focus is on a number of hardly known Austrian contributions to aesthetics. These contributions concern the following, partly interrelated, central problems of philosophical aesthetics: i. The problem of the definition of beauty (What is beauty? What does it mean to say of an object that it is beautiful?) ii. The problem of the ontological status of works of art (What kinds of objects are works of art?) iii. The problem of the objectivity of aesthetic values (Do we claim objective validity for aesthetic value judgements, and if so, is this claim justified?) The answers of Bolzano, Meinong, Witasek and Ehrenfels to these questions will be considered. (shrink)

Though many well-known German philosophers have devoted considerable attention to music and its aesthetics, surprisingly few of their writings on the subject have been translated into English. Stefan Lorenz Sorgner, a philosopher, and Oliver Fürbeth, a musicologist, here fill this important gap for musical scholars and students alike with this compelling guide to the musical discourse of ten of the most important German philosophers, from Kant to Adorno. _Music in German Philosophy_ includes contributions from a renowned group of ten scholars, (...) including some of today’s most prominent German thinkers, all of whom are specialists in the writers they treat. Each chapter consists of a short biographical sketch of the philosopher concerned, a summary of his writings on aesthetics, and finally a detailed exploration of his thoughts on music. The book is prefaced by the editors’ original introduction, presenting music philosophy in Germany before and after Kant, as well as a new introduction and foreword to this English-language addition, which places contemplations on music by these German philosophers within a broader intellectual climate. (shrink)

Porphyry's Commentary, the only surviving ancient commentary on a technical text, is not merely a study of Ptolemy's Harmonics. It includes virtually free-standing philosophical essays on epistemology, metaphysics, scientific methodology, aspects of the Aristotelian categories and the relations between Aristotle's views and Plato's, and a host of briefer comments on other matters of wide philosophical interest. For musicologists it is widely recognised as a treasury of quotations from earlier treatises, many of them otherwise unknown; but Porphyry's own reflections on (...) musical concepts and his snapshots of contemporary music-making have been undeservedly neglected. This volume presents the first English translation and a revised Greek text of the Commentary, with an introduction and notes designed to assist readers in engaging with this important and intricate work. (shrink)

Rhythm is the fundamental pulse that animates poetry, music, and dance across all cultures. And yet the recent explosion of scholarly interest across disciplines in the aural dimensions of aesthetic experience--particularly in sociology, cultural and media theory, and literary studies--has yet to explore this fundamental category. This book furthers the discussion of rhythm beyond the discrete conceptual domains and technical vocabularies of musicology and prosody. With original essays by philosophers, psychologists, musicians, literary theorists, and ethno-musicologists, The Philosophy of Rhythm (...) opens up wider-and plural-perspectives, examining formal affinities between the historically interconnected fields of music, dance, and poetry, while addressing key concepts such as embodiment, movement, pulse, and performance. Volume editors Peter Cheyne, Andy Hamilton, and Max Paddison bring together a range of key questions: What is the distinction between rhythm and pulse? What is the relationship between everyday embodied experience, and the specific experience of music, dance, and poetry? Can aesthetics offer an understanding of rhythm that helps inform our responses to visual and other arts, as well as music, dance, and poetry? And, what is the relation between psychological conceptions of entrainment, and the humane concept of rhythm and meter? Overall, The Philosophy of Rhythm appeals across disciplinary boundaries, providing a unique overview of a neglected aspect of aesthetic experience. (shrink)

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

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.3 (2003) 108-112 [Access article in PDF] Themes in the Philosophy of Music, by Stephen Davies. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003, 283 pp., hardcover. Over the last few decades, there has been a remarkable output of several books and articles on the philosophy of music. Stephen Davies is one of the leading contributors to this growing literature in the Philosophy of Music. This (...) important and thought-provoking volume collects fifteen of Davies's essays on various philosophical issues pertaining to music such as ontology, performance, expression, and appreciation. With the exception of two, all of the essays have been published before. There is not enough space here to do justice to all fifteen essays, and thus I focus on those that strike me as most important and where I disagree with Davies.First a word about the book's relevance to aesthetic education and itspotential for use in aesthetic education. Davies's book strikes me as having immense potential for aesthetic education. I can easily see the various essays as being of great value in educating performers, composers, musicologists, and music lovers about various aspects of performance and appreciation especially. Here is a brief list of questions pertinent to aesthetic education that Davies's work raises and addresses: Why is performance on authentic instruments important? What is involved in understanding musical works? Is technical training necessary to appreciate musical works fully? To what degree can the performer create her own interpretation of a work, and how much does the score constrain her?Now on to the essays themselves. The first part of Davies's volume concerns ontology, and the first essay "John Cage's 4'33": Is it Music?" addresses this very famous musical work. Davies argues that 4'33" is not music but rather a theatrical piece about music because it does not exclude anysounds as being ambient noise, as Davies thinks musical works should do. Davies does not deny, however, that this work is an artwork. He thinks instead that the work is not organized sound, as all music must be, for it does not exclude any sonic events during performance as ambient; even sounds made by the performer of this work, claims Davies, are mistakes and not ambient. Thus neither Cage nor the performer organize (select, appropriate) sounds. Davies also suggests that while Cage wants us to have an aesthetic interest in the sonic properties of 4'33," he failed in his intention for we hear the work instead in musico-historical terms.Contrary to Davies's view, one mustwonder if 4'33" just is a theatrical piece about music, not a musical work as such. Unlike theater and theatrical works which are meant to be both seen and heard, Cage's work is only meant to be heard. Davies's view would seem to neglect this important auditory aspect in claiming that the work is just theater not music. Besides, why must all musical works exclude some soundsas ambient, and why might Cage's [End Page 108] work not be an exception to this? Why couldn't 4'33" be a limiting case of music, at one extreme of a range of musical works? As for Davies's claim that any sounds made by the performer who is supposed to be silent are mistakes not ambient noise, one must wonder if Cage intended instead that sounds made by the performer (such as musical tones or coughs) be bracketed by listeners as not part of the work while sounds made by the audience are part of the work, thus undermining the audience-performer distinction. Moreover, against Davies's claim that Cage intended us to have an aesthetic interest in sonic properties, I submit that Cage was Zen-influenced and not committed to such dualisticaesthetic concepts (such as beautiful vs. ugly) or any concepts for that matter, whether musico-historical or not. Instead, Cage intended us to simplylisten, with an open mind and openears, without adhering rigidly to concepts or hearing 4'33" in musico-historical terms, difficult as that may be. Finally, there... (shrink)

_Beyond Reason_ relates Wagner’s works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career:_ Der Ring des Nibelungen_, _Tristan und Isolde_, _Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg_, and _Parsifal_. Karol Berger seeks to penetrate the “secret” of large-scale form in Wagner’s music dramas and to answer those critics, most prominently Nietzsche, who condemned Wagner for his putative inability to weld small expressive gestures into larger wholes. Organized by (...) individual opera, this is essential reading for both musicologists and Wagner experts. (shrink)

This paper asks a number of methodological questions related to the field of music performance as explored in musicological research. What information can musicologists glean from analysing individual performances? What is the impact of work performance analysis on the paradigm of musicological studies? What is the role of the aesthetic-philosophical component in such analysis? In an attempt to answer these questions, music performance is analysed in the first section of this paper from the perspective of musicology as the primary (...) discipline studying music and its sources. In the second section, philosophical analysis of the musical source is presented in the context of musicological studies and performance practice. Analysed in the third section are those major aspects of music performance that are of interest to philosophical musicology. In the conclusion, the benefits and methodological limitations of conducting musicological research into music performance are indicated. The aim of this article is to highlight the need for an interdisciplinary dialogue between musicology and philosophy concerning music performance, which has a significant bearing on our understanding of the musical work itself. The author also proposes to expand musicology’s research methods by incorporating detailed analysis of the performative aspects of the musical work. (shrink)

Dario Martinelli’s compact and enjoyable treatise on zoömusicology, _Of Birds, Whales and Other Musicians_ introduces musicologists, biologists, social scientists, and philosophers to a new theoretical model for studying how animal behavioral patterns relate to sound communication. Organized by musical trait rather than animal species, and drawing upon the work of such esteemed philosophers as Umberto Eco, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Thomas Sebeok, Martinelli’s analyses redefine the boundaries surrounding music and help readers—scholars and amateurs alike—to appreciate the relationship between animals (...) and musicological exchanges. (shrink)

This paper argues that, contrary to what many musicologists and classical musicians have maintained, music can, and should, be analysed as discourse. It then surveys a number of approaches to the critical analysis of musical discourse and applies these approaches to a range of examples, including sonatas, advertising jingles and news signature tunes.

The Cultural Study of Music is an anthology of new writings that will serve as a basic textbook on music and culture. Increasingly, music is being studied as it relates to specific cultures-not only by ethnomusicologists, but by traditional musicologists as well. Drawing on writers from music, anthropology, sociology, and the related fields, the book both defines the field-i.e., "What is the relation between music and culture?"-and then presents case studies of particular issues in world musics. This book would (...) serve as an introductory textbook for the cultural study of music, an area that is increasingly being taught at the upper-level undergraduate and graduate level. Plus it would appeal to scholars in all areas of music, reflecting the latest and most up to date thinking on the complex issues surrounding how music and culture interrelate. (shrink)

In _Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction_, Jeanette Bicknell explores key aesthetic, ethical, and other philosophical questions that have not yet been thoroughly researched by philosophers, musicologists, or scientists. Issues addressed include: The relationship between the meaning of a song’s words and its music The performer’s role and the ensuing gender complications, social ontology, and personal identity The performer’s ethical obligations to audiences, composers, lyricists, and those for whom the material holds particular significance The metaphysical status of isolated (...) solo performances compared to the continuous singing of opera or the interrupted singing of stage and screen musicals Each chapter focuses on one major musical example and includes several shorter discussions of other selections. All have been chosen for their illustrative power and their accessibility for any interested reader and are readily available. (shrink)

Music and Postwar Transitions in the 19th and 20th Centuries is the first book to highlight the significance of the idea of 'postwar transition' in the field of music and to demonstrate how the contribution of musicians, composers, and their publics have influenced contemporary understandings of war. At the intersection of four domains including: the relationship between music and war culture, commemorative and consolatory dimensions of music, migration and exile, and the links between music, cultural diplomacy, and propaganda, leading historians, (...) political scientists, psychologists, and musicologists explore disruptions and connections to music through the backdrop of war. In turn, this volume sheds new light on what has been a blind spot in a growing historiography. (shrink)

What is creativity? One new idea may be creative, whereas another is merely new: What's the difference? And how is creativity possible? These questions about human creativity can be answered, at least in outline, using computational concepts. There are two broad types of creativity, improbabilist and impossibilist. Improbabilist creativity involves novel combinations of familiar ideas. A deeper type involves METCS: the mapping, exploration, and transformation of conceptual spaces. It is impossibilist, in that ideas may be generated which – with respect (...) to the particular conceptual space concerned – could not have been generated before. The more clearly conceptual spaces can be defined, the better we can identify creative ideas. Defining conceptual spaces is done by musicologists, literary critics, and historians of art and science. Humanist studies, rich in intuitive subtleties, can be complemented by the comparative rigour of a computational approach. Computational modelling can help to define a space, and to show how it may be mapped, explored, and transformed. Impossibilist creativity can be thought of in “classical” Al terms, whereas connectionism illuminates improbabilist creativity. Most Al models of creativity can only explore spaces, not transform them, because they have no self-reflexive maps enabling them to change their own rules. A few, however, can do so. A scientific understanding of creativity does not destroy our wonder at it, nor does it make creative ideas predictable. Demystification does not imply dehumanization. (shrink)

In this paper I address the issue of narrativity in music. The central question is the extent to which pure instrumental music in the classical tradition can or should be understood as narrative, that is, as narrating a story of some kind. I am interested in the varying potential and aptness for narrative construal of different sorts of instrumental music, and in what the content of such narratives might plausibly be thought to be. But ultimately I explore, at greater length, (...) an alternative way of construing musical process, namely, as dramatic rather than narrative in nature, following the lead of two musicologists, Anthony Newcomb and Fred Maus. After a comparison of the respective merits of narrative and dramatic construals of music, the paper concludes with an illustrative reading, in dramatic mode, of part of the opening movement of Schubert's Piano Sonata in A minor, D. 845. (shrink)

This paper aims at an analytical explanation of the distinctive nature of music, as it has been formulated in perhaps one of the world's very first works on the subject, namely the ‘Sangeet Ratnakar’ of Pandit Sarangadeva, a 13th century musicologist of India. He, in the first chapter of the work defines music ('sangeet' in Sanskrit and Hindi) as a composite of singing or 'Gita', instrumental music or 'vadan' and dancing or ‘nrittam’. In addition, he also holds singing to be (...) the most important component of music. These two ideas are not only unquestionably acceptable, as the analysis in the paper will show, but give to Indian music, in its difference from western music, its distinctively spiritual character, making it a path to liberation or Moksha (Muktidayakam na tu ranjakam). Sarangadeva's reason, here, is not rational but empirico-inductive. It is that mainly by virtue of its 'gitam’ (singing component), which, like the Yoga system of exercise, needing only one's body as its instrument, music too needing only one’s voice is as self-sufficient and autonomous as the ultimate Reality itself (Swayamev Rajate). In the hierarchy (a distinctively ancient Indian insistence) of arts, singing is the highest and unique because in spite of being heard by the auditory sense, it affects our 'reflective sensibility' and transports us to the virtual world of melodic and rhythmic forms. Forms, as against their particular illustrations, are abstract universals. Ultimate Reality is also a Form-all comprehensive and internally harmonious. However, pure Form, whether melodic or religious or even rational like that of triangularity, is almost impossible to concentrate on. Realizing this practical difficulty, Indian scriptures and the world's first Grammarian-linguist, Acharya Panini, framed a composite sound as the manifestation of the ultimate musical Form. This purely formal-because devoid of all meaning, sound is that of 'om', spelt, in Sanskrit as a conjunction (sandhi) of 'a'+'u'+'m'. For Indian musicologists and musicians, ‘om’ is the perfect manifestation of the Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’ because, 1. Its composite nature resembles God, as a harmony of 'sat', 'chit', and 'ananda'; and 2. The composite sound is self-existent as its all three components-two vowels, i.e. ‘a’, ‘u’, and one consonant i.e. ‘m’, can be and are pronounced just as they originally are, -un-elongated and un-vitiated and therefore pure. This is the reason why every recital of Indian classical vocal music is begun with an elaborate rendering of 'om' as an invocation to Sound-God or ‘Nada-Brahman’. Scholarly and authentic, this ancient Indian approach to music, is undoubtedly the earliest and original. My observation is that its main contentions like Sharang Dev’s insistence that of the three components of music, ‘gitam’ or singing is the highest, have only been translated and never argued for. In this presentation my good intention is to provide much needed rational support for making these key statements in this unparalleled Indian text, indubitable and unquestionable. (shrink)

Although popular music is increasingly recognized as an important area of inquiry in philosophy of art, many organizing principles have been taken over from other fields without scrutiny. This article selects heavy metal as an example of the value of applying philosophy of criticism to discourse about popular music. Metal is now in its fifth decade, and its combination of longevity and diversity have made it an attractive topic in popular music studies. In accounts of metal by musicologists and (...) social science researches, metal is almost always referred to as a genre of music, and the genre is said to unify diverse metal subcultures, which are associated with diverse styles of metal. An examination of the concepts of genre and subculture as they are typically understood in popular music studies generally, and in metal studies in particular, suggests that they do not function to delineate metal as a unitary category. However, contemporary philosophy of art provides several theoretical principles that provide criteria for identifying a unified genre. The relevant theories are historical definitions of art and Kendall Walton's account of style. Viewed in terms of these philosophical developments, metal should be seen as an evolving assemblage of related styles, only some of which are associated with fans who constitute a subculture. However, it is not a "category" in Walton's sense of that term. Video abstract. (shrink)

Music, literature, history. These things are not quite alike. But in Europe, before the advent of recording machines that made it possible for sounds to be recorded and played back, the three activities relied on the same technology of preservation. They were kept in/as books. Bookishness, in European and colonial imaginaries, was an often-idealized, powerful means of keeping things from slipping away. An understanding of bookish things as a repository can be evinced in laws that required preserving a copy of (...) newly published literary works and music for the benefit of posterity; or in popular novels where a book featured as the chronicler (both recorder and narrator) of its own adventures, beyond the lifespans of individual users. Scholars have paid specialist attention to the ontological differences among music, literature, and history when they are kept as books. Discipline-specific trainings and conversations tend to emphasize how different these objects and practices are. Yet focusing on their shared mode of bookish preservation offers other rewards. Our multi-authored article is a creative experiment in bringing together musicologists, literary scholars, and historians to test the potential, for our own fields and with implications for other humanities disciplines, of foregrounding this technological convergence. We propose the more capacious categories of bookkeepers (people who keep things as books) and cultures of note-taking (whether glossing a textbook or notating music) as fruitful avenues to avoid writing the artificially separate histories of creation versus consumption, public versus personal, authoritative versus amateurish, or artistic versus documentary practices. Music, broadly conceived, and the nineteenth-century album (a book of blank pages to keep verses, music, memories, and many more things) serve as the starting point for our reflections. Both exhibit a tangential connection to the normative codes of what Roger Chartier called “the order of books.” In considering actors/artifacts/acts at the very margins of textuality, or existing in a perverse relationship with bookishness, our aim is to redraw the knowledge-making structures we use to investigate our objects of study, calling attention to the intermedial and social practices, and cultures of remembrance, in which they are historically imbricated. (shrink)

It does not typically seem to be worthwhile rewatching a sport match, for example, in a video recording, once the result is known. Sports matches are like detective stories. Once one knows ‘whodunit’, there seems little point in revisiting the tale. By drawing on an argument from musicologist Edward T. Cone, this paper argues that certain sports matches may be revisited with profit. The initial experience of a game may be of a series of events that are often ambiguous or (...) confusing as to their meaning or purpose. The full appreciation of a sport match requires, not just this initial familiarity with the immediately perceived events of the game, but also an awareness of the tactics being deployed by both sides. An understanding of tactics and strategy is akin to the analysis of a piece of music. A further viewing of the game, during which one can appreciate how the tactics inform the events naively experienced in the first viewing, will yield, it will be argued, an aesthetic pleasure. This takes the experience of sport beyond the merely entertaining or exciting. In certain games, the third viewing may also transcend an appreciation of the merely formal qualities of the game, and so offer substantial insights into what it is to be human. (shrink)

Although philosophers have examined and commented on music for centuries, Martin Heidegger, one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century, had frustratingly little to say about music—directly, at least. This volume, the first to tackle Heidegger and music, features contributions from philosophers, musicians, educators, and musicologists from many countries throughout the world, aims to utilize Heidegger’s philosophy to shed light on the place of music in different contexts and fields of practice. Heidegger’s thought is applied to a wide (...) range of musical spheres, including improvisation, classical music, electronic music, African music, ancient Chinese music, jazz, rock n’ roll, composition, and musical performance. The volume also features a wide range of philosophical insights on the essence of music, music’s place in society, and the promise of music’s ability to open up new ways of understanding the world with the onset of the technological and digital musical age. _Heidegger and Music_ breaks new philosophical ground by showcasing creative vignettes that not only push Heidegger’s concepts in new directions, but also get us to question the meaning of music in various contexts. (shrink)

Does it make sense to refer to bird song - a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully calculated to woo a mate - as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as "the art of possibly animate things," Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist (...) approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature--approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change--Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music's structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music's physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music's formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share. (shrink)

Music-Dance explores the identity of choreomusical work, its complex authorship and its modes of reception as well as the cognitive processes involved in the reception of dance performance. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which a musical score changes its prescriptive status when it becomes part of a choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage, and the intersection of listening and seeing. As well as being of interest to musicologists and choreologists considering issues (...) such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will appeal to scholars interested in applied research in the fields of cognition and neuroscience. The line-up of authors comprises representative figures of today's choreomusicology, dance historians, scholars of twentieth-century composition and specialists in cognitive science and performance studies. Among the topics covered are multimedia and the analysis of performance; the notational practice of choreographers and the parallel attempts of composers to find a graphic representation for musical gestures; and the experience of dance as a paradigm for a multimodal perception, which is investigated in terms of how the association of sound and movement triggers emotions and specific forms of cognition. (shrink)

The musician and composer Paul Natorp has not been recognised in research. The references in his Self-Presentation (Selbstdarstellung) (1921) to the importance of music, especially in his early years, have so far remained unacknowledged. The musical legacy and previously unpublished diaries and letters provide more detailed information. They demonstrate the young Natorp’s passionate relationship with music. In addition, it becomes clear that Natorp was active as a composer throughout his life. The article starts by describing the musical legacy. At the (...) centre is the correspondence with Johannes Brahms, to whom the young Natorp submitted some of his compositions for review. Brahms strongly advised against a career as a musician and composer. Also significant are reports from the young Natorp about his composition studies with the musicologist and composer Gustav Jacobsthal (1845-1912) in Strasbourg. Reports on concerts with Clara Schumann and Franz Liszt are biographical and cultural-historical documents. The article concludes with a sketch of Natorp's reflections on the world-historical significance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s music. (shrink)

Renowned for his influence as a political philosopher, a writer, and an autobiographer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is known also for his lifelong interest in music. He composed operas and other musical pieces, invented a system of numbered musical notation, engaged in public debates about music, and wrote at length about musical theory. Critical analysis of Rousseau’s work in music has been principally the domain of musicologists, rarely involving the work of scholars of political theory or literary studies. In _Rousseau Among (...) the Moderns_, Julia Simon puts forth fresh interpretations of _The Social Contract_, _The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality_, and _The Confessions_, as well as other texts. She links Rousseau’s understanding of key concepts in music, such as tuning, harmony, melody, and form, to the crucial problem of the individual’s relationship to the social order. The choice of music as the privileged aesthetic object enables Rousseau to gain insight into the role of the aesthetic realm in relation to the social and political body in ways often associated with later thinkers. Simon argues that much of Rousseau’s “modernism” resides in the unique role that he assigns to music in forging communal relations. (shrink)

Bringing together an international collection of experts, this work explores various philosophical issues surrounding modern music recordings. With perspectives from practicing musicians, musicologists, sound artists, and recordings engineers, this reference asks how theoretical issues related to their work relate to the context of making and using recordings. Additional questions asked by this study include What kind of “spatiality” is generated through recordings, and by what means? What is the nature of “recorded space”? Do recordings reflect musical reality or create (...) one? and What are the philosophical bases of an “ethics” of recording? (shrink)

This Companion addresses fundamental questions about the nature of music from a psychological perspective. Music cognition is presented as the field that investigates the psychological, physiological, and physical processes that allow music to take place, seeking to explain how and why music has such powerful and mysterious effects on us. This volume provides a comprehensive overview of research in music cognition, balancing accessibility with depth and sophistication. A diverse range of global scholars-music theorists, musicologists, pedagogues, neuroscientists, and psychologists-address the (...) implications of music in everyday life while broadening the range of topics in music cognition research, deliberately seeking connections with the kinds of music and musical experiences that are meaningful to the population at large but are often overlooked in the study of music cognition. Consisting of over forty essays, the volume is organized by five primary themes. The first section, "Music from the Air to the Brain," provides a neuroscientific and theoretical basis for the book. The next three sections are based on musical actions: "Hearing and Listening to Music," "Making and Using Music," and "Developing Musicality." The closing section, "Musical Meanings," returns to fundamental questions related to music's meaning and significance, seen from historical and contemporary perspectives. (shrink)

This article comprises a lyrical exposition of the ‘in-betweenness’ that underlies pedagogical relations and musical practice. The latter comprises making, performing, teaching, and indeed listening to music, phenomena encapsulated in the term ‘musicking’, first coined by the musicologist Christopher Small in 1999. Improvisatory practice is inscribed into the very process of writing as a means of mainstreaming the power of connection; and troubling the notion of seeking as the hallmark of ‘poor pedagogy’ (Masschelein, 2010) or weak education (Ingold, 2018). Drawing (...) inter alia on a scintillating improvisational performance by the musician Bobby McFerrin, we argue that pedagogical relations, construed as the art of encounter, are about finding rather than seeking. Finding implies experiencing a sense of connection, ‘that feeling of landing in the present tense’, of being immersed in whatever occupies you, paying close attention to the details of experience’ (Tempest, 2020, p. 5). This is a far cry from education in a major key, the secure territory of understanding that is premised on codified knowledge that pre-empts attention or marginalises it altogether. We draw on examples from music education to explore the deleterious effects of power dynamics. We end with a rallying cry for education as a common chorus. (shrink)

This study examines the definitions and historical development of the Şehnaz makam in Turkish music theory. The analysis is based on edvars and musical treatises written by prominent musicologists of their time, which are considered to accurately reflect the theoretical stages of Turkish music. The earliest written sources on Turkish music date back to the 9th century, with Al-Kindi and Al-Farabi. One of the most distinctive features of Turkish music is its modal system and the richness of its modal (...) repertoire. Although approximately 625 makams and terkibs (compound modes) are mentioned throughout history, many have not survived, and those that did have undergone significant transformations. The Şehnaz makam, one of the oldest modes of Turkish music, was first defined by Safiyyüddin Abdülmü’min Urmevi in his Kitab ül-Edvar (1235). In this treatise, it is described under the sixth avaze as “similar to the Maye mode,” indicating that its meaning and structure at that time differed from the Şehnaz makam known today. The aim of this study is to trace and analyze the changes in the Şehnaz makam from the 13th century to the present, focusing on key theoretical elements such as pitch organization, melodic progression, initiation, and cadence. The research employs qualitative and quantitative content analysis of Edvar manuscripts written between the 13th and 19th centuries. The findings generally indicate that the Şehnaz makam has undergone certain changes from the period when it was composed to the present day, and that it is described as a makam, şube (sub-mode), avaze, or terkib in different sources. As a result of the research, the stages that the Şehnaz makam has undergone from the past to the present were analyzed from an ontological perspective using qualitative and quantitative scanning methods in Edvar sources written between the 13th and 19th centuries. (shrink)

The late lamented Sir Roger Scruton (1944–2020) must have written more books on music than many professional musicologists. One also wonders if specialists on Wagner, his favourite composer, have b...

Theodor Adorno was a German philosopher, sociologist and musicologist and was a leading member and eventually director of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research. Adorno studied an extraordinary range of subjects during his lifetime – from dialectical logic and the syntax of poetry to newspaper astrology columns and the Hollywood studio system – and he left a significant mark on each of the many disciplines in which he worked. His philosophically sophisticated rethinking of Marxian materialism has been central to much (...) European and American social theory in the latter half of the twentieth century and his studies of mass culture, radio and television were foundational documents for the discipline of cultural studies. This collection charts the most important moments in the international reception of Adorno's thinking, covering the wide range of disciplines his studies touched upon, including literary criticism, musicology, aesthetics, epistemology and metaphysics. There is also a great deal of important scholarship and commentary on Adorno in German that remains untranslated into English. This set will therefore provide Anglophone scholars with the first English translations of these important works. (shrink)

Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This widened (...) scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

A groundbreaking attempt at a prolegomenon to the study of style, this collection brings together eleven essays by distinguished philosophers, literary theorists, art historians, and musicologists, all addressing the role played by style in the arts and literature.

The primary objective of this study is to determine how the perception of educational information by students through the use of musical charts affects their academic performance compared to traditional teaching methods. The experiment entailed a qualitative analysis of sound maps created using the JamBoard application. A total of 120 students from Kharkiv State Academy of Culture participated in the study and were divided into control and experimental groups. The results were analyzed using a paired-sample t-test. The practical significance of (...) the statistical information obtained from the research is rather high. Primarily, it can be utilized by musicologists for further contrastive analysis of the effectiveness of musical charts among student groups with and without prior musical education. Additionally, the study holds significant practical value in terms of serving as a foundation for developing educational plans and methodologies within the context of the educational process. (shrink)

Through a loose narrative, the Author reconstructs the history of the Insubric International Centre, which preserves the Archival and Library memory of the Milan School. The Centre currently preserves some thirty philosophical Archives, together with seven Author Libraries. By the work and thought of Piero Martinetti and Antonio Banfi, through to Banfi’s great pupils of the 1930s—Enzo Paci, Remo Cantoni, Giulio Preti and Dino Formaggio—the Milan School took on a breadth that is unique in the cultural landscape of the twentieth (...) century. This school was not just philosophical, because it also included poets such as Antonia Pozzi, Vittorio Sereni and Daria Menicanti, musicologists, educationists, intellectuals, and filmmakers. Today, the legacy of this school constitutes a research programme with a rationalist-critical and phenomenological framework that still displays notable critical relevance. (shrink)

Based on a conception that a musical composition is constituted by normative properties, it is argued that every such composition has one ideal performance—a performance that fulfils all the aesthetic-normative properties that the composition determines. A performance is conceived of (and evaluated) as inherently and essentially ‘intentionalistic’—being, by its very nature, a performance of a certain composition. This conception allows for various different performances, none of which is preferable over the others. The properties concerned are conceived of broadly as comprising (...) not only the tones themselves and various ‘theoretical’ features such as thematic relations, harmonic progressions, rhythmical structures, but also descriptive, emotive, and ‘rhetorical’ properties, which are ‘objective’ properties of the composition. It is further claimed that these are indicated in the score when properly understood in the light, inter alia, of pertinent conventions, which are the business of theoreticians and musicologists to determine. The main significance of the result lies both in highlighting some important implications of the intentionalistic character of a performance, and in the style of conceptual connection it indicates between a musical composition, its aesthetic-normative properties, and features of performance or ways of fulfilling them. (shrink)