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This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in East Asia.
In this book Shepherd and Wicke make a bold and original contribution to the understanding of music as a form of human expression. They argue that music is fundamental to social life. Music is not merely a form of leisure or entertainment: it is central to the very formation and reproduction of human societies. The authors pursue this argument through a wide-ranging assessment of some of the major cultural theoretical contributions to understanding music. Theories of culture, linguistic theories, structuralist and post-structuralist theories and psychoanalytic theories of music are carefully explained and critically examined. The authors then develop their own account of music as a non-referential yet material form of human expression which embodies and conveys principles of symbolic structuring. They emphasize the human body as a principal site for the musical mediation of social and symbolic processes. Music and Cultural Theory establishes new links between musicology and cultural studies, showing how each discipline can inform and enrich the other. It will be recommended reading for students and professionals in musicology, media and communication studies, cultural studies and the sociology of culture.
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 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.
In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education, editors Wayne D. Bowman and Ana Lucia Frega have drawn together a variety of philosophical perspectives from the profession's most exciting scholars from all over the world. Rather than relegating philosophical inquiry to moot questions and abstract situations, the contributors to this volume address everyday concerns faced by music educators everywhere. Emphasizing clarity, fairness, rigour, and utility above all, The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy in Music Education will challenge music educators all over the world to make their own decisions and ultimately contribute to the conversation themselves.
Representing Stephen Davies's best shorter writings, these essays outline developments within the philosophy of music over the last two decades, and summarize the state of play at the beginning of a new century. Including two new and previously unpublished pieces, they address both perennial questions and contemporary controversies, such as that over the 'authentic performance' movement, and the impact of modern technology on the presentation and reception of musical works. Rather than attempting to reduce musical works to a single type, Davies recognizes a great variety of kinds, and a complementary range of possibilities for their rendition. Among the questions that Davies considers are these: How can expressiveness be in a musical work when music experiences nothing? Is music a language of the emotions? How do recorded pop songs and purely electronic pieces differ from works created for live performance? Is John Cage's silent piece, 4'33", music? To what extent is the performer free to create her own interpretation and to what extent is she constrained by the composer's score? Is training in musical technicalities a prerequisite for a full appreciation of musical works and performances? Is an awareness of the socio-historical setting in which a work is created relevant to its appreciation? How does the value of individual musical works go beyond the worth of an interest in music in general? Stimulating and insightful both as individual discussions and as a coherent argument, these essays will be greatly enjoyed by philosophers, aestheticians, art theorists, and musicologists.
This book shows how recent work in cognitive science, especially that developed by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, can be used to explain how we understand music. The book focuses on three cognitive processes--categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models--and explores the part these play in theories of musical organization. The first part of the book provides a detailed overview of the relevant work in cognitive science, framed around specific musical examples. The second part brings this perspective to bear on a number of issues with which music scholarship has often been occupied, including the emergence of musical syntax and its relationship to musical semiosis, the problem of musical ontology, the relationship between words and music in songs, and conceptions of musical form and musical hierarchy. The book will be of interest to music theorists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists, as well as those with a professional or avocational interest in the application of work in cognitive science to humanistic principles.
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.
Music, Passion, and Cognitive Function examines contemporary cognitive theories of music, why they cannot explain music's power over us, and the origin and evolution of music. The book presents experimental confirmations of the theory in psychological and neuroimaging research, discussing the parallel evolution of consciousness, musical styles, and cultures since Homer and King David. In addition, it explains that 'in much wisdom is much grief' due to cognitive dissonances created by language that splits the inner world. Music enables us to survive in this sea of grief, overcomes discomforts and stresses of acquiring new knowledge, and unifies the soul, hence the power of music. - Provides a foundation of music theory - Demonstrates how emotions motivate interaction between cognition and language - Covers differentiation and synthesis in consciousness - Compares the parallel evolution of music and cultures - Examines the idea of music overcoming cognitive dissonances
_______________ 'A series of dazzling case studies exploring the idea of lateness in a range of composers, writers and artists' - London Review of Books 'Gracefully unquiet, probing and wise ... Said's own elegiac masterpiece of late style' - Financial Times 'What Said stands for - critical intelligence, high art and the preservation of the language - must be at the centre of our lives. This book is a fine monument to his life and work' - Hanif Kureishi 'His own late style, if it is acceptable to call it that, mixes an easy mastery of material with an unquenched desire to preserve difficulties' - Guardian _______________ On Late Style examines the work produced by great artists -Beethoven, Thomas Mann, Jean Genet among them - at the end of their lives. Said makes it clear that, rather than the resolution of a lifetime's artistic endeavour, most of the late works discussed are rife with contradiction and almost impenetrable complexity. He helps us see how, though these works often stood in direct contrast to the tastes of society, they were, just as often, announcements of what was to come in the artist's discipline - works of true artistic genius.
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.