A number of philosophers of music have proved resistant to the idea that song should be considered as a hybrid art that combines language and music. Separately, Levinson in his influential account of hybrid art forms does not admit folk song, even though he does allow nineteenth-century lieder into the hybrid category. Folk songs are sometimes treated as if they are anterior to and therefore ontologically distinct from the more complex songs of Western art music, or even of modern popular (...) culture. In contrast, this article argues that in a historical perspective English-language folk songs constitute a category of considerable complexity, and that the combination of the two distinct media of language and music is fundamental to any consideration of such songs in an ontological perspective. (shrink)

Obwohl es "die Zeit" nicht gibt, ordnet sich doch alles, was wir erleben, zeitlich. Auch die großen Schlagworte unserer Tage betreffen allesamt von zeitlichen Herausforderungen: Nachhaltigkeit, Resilienz, Transformation, Zeitenwende. Dieses Buch handelt davon, was Zeitliches ausmacht, warum sich die Wirklichkeit zeitlich ordnet und was das mit der wechselseitigen Taktung von Ereignissen und Autonomieerfahrungen zu tun hat. Es werden Missverständnisse aufgelöst, indem aufgezeigt wird, inwiefern es "die Zeit" nicht gibt, es oftmals sogar leidvolle bis hin zu pathologischen Konsequenzen mit sich bringt, (...) wenn Zeit als Gegenstand oder Ressource betrachtet wird. Es ist ein Buch über den Vergleich von Abläufen und darüber, was es bedeutet, wenn Ereignisse miteinander im Takt sind, und wie sie durch Wiederholung und Variation Bedeutung gewinnen und damit "intakt" wirken. Musik und vor allem das Hören dienen als Modelle, um diese allgemeinen zeitlichen Struktureigenschaften der Wirklichkeit begrifflich anklingen zu lassen. Darüber hinaus regen Hyperlinks zu konkreten Hörbeispielen dazu an, sich direkt auch auf besondere Erfahrungen von Zeit einzulassen. - Ein Buch für all diejenigen, die Grundlegendes über Zeit nicht nur lesen wollen, sondern sich im Idealfall auch für einen taktvollen Umgang mit Zeit motivieren lassen möchten. (shrink)

Roger Scruton’s account of the nature of music and our experience of it foregrounds the imagination. It is a particularly interesting and promising ‘non-realist’ view in the aesthetics of music, in the sense that it does not postulate aesthetic properties of music that we represent in musical experience. In this paper I critically examine both Scruton’s view and his main argument for it.

Este proyecto de innovación tiene como objetivo subsanar las dificultades del alumnado del Grado en Historia y Ciencias de la Música para utilizar las herramientas de análisis musical. Está orientada a las competencias curriculares de la asignatura Música y pensamiento en el siglo de las luces (s. XVIII), que requiere un trabajo analítico del repertorio de música tonal Centroeuropea en conexión con las corrientes estilísticas y de pensamiento de la época. Se han desarrollado una serie de estrategias didácticas que conectan (...) la experiencia emocional del discente con la significación de los tópicos musicales según el principio de la topic theory. (shrink)

A central method within analytic philosophy has been to construct thought experiments in order to subject philosophical theories to intuitive evaluation. According to a widely held view, philosophical intuitions provide an evidential basis for arguments against such theories, thus rendering the discussion rational. This method has been the predominant way to approach theories formulated as conditional or biconditional statements. In this paper, we examine selected theories of musical expressivity presented in such logical forms, analyzing the possibilities for constructing thought experiments (...) against them. We will argue that philosophical intuitions are not available for the evaluation of the types of counterarguments that would need to be constructed. Instead, the evaluation of these theories, to the extent that it can succeed at all, will centrally rely on inferential, non-immediate access to our subjective musical experiences. Furthermore, attempted thought experiments lose their methodological function because no proper distinction can be drawn between the persons figuring in the thought-experimental scenario and the evaluator of the scenario. Consequently, some of the central contributions to what is generally understood to be analytic philosophy of art are shown to represent a form of aesthetic criticism, offering much less basis for rational argumentation than is often thought. (shrink)

What do musicians, critics, and listeners mean when they use emotion‐words to describe a piece of instrumental music? How can ‘pure’ musical sounds ‘express’ emotions such as joyfulness, sadness, anguish, optimism, and anger? Sounds are not living organisms; sounds cannot feel emotions. Yet many people around the world believe they hear emotions in sounds and/or feel the emotions expressed by musical patterns. Is there a reasonable explanation for this dilemma? These issues gain additional importance when we ask them in the (...) context of music education. For example, can we, or should we, teach music students to listen‐for musical expressions of emotion? If so, how? My contention is that listeners can and do hear emotions in musical patterns; musical sounds can be expressive of emotions. Accordingly, I offer ideas for teaching students how to hear and create musical expressions of emotions. (shrink)

What do musicians, critics, and listeners mean when they use emotion‐words to describe a piece of instrumental music? How can ‘pure’ musical sounds ‘express’ emotions such as joyfulness, sadness, anguish, optimism, and anger? Sounds are not living organisms; sounds cannot feel emotions. Yet many people around the world believe they hear emotions in sounds and/or feel the emotions expressed by musical patterns. Is there a reasonable explanation for this dilemma?These issues gain additional importance when we ask them in the context (...) of music education. For example, can we, or should we, teach music students to listen‐for musical expressions of emotion? If so, how?My contention is that listeners can and do hear emotions in musical patterns; musical sounds can be expressive of emotions. Accordingly, I offer ideas for teaching students how to hear and create musical expressions of emotions. (shrink)

Kann Peter Kivys Theorie eines musikalischen Platonismus auch auf den Song "Rockstar" des deutschen Rappers Cro befriedigend, das heisst ohne Änderungen an der Theorie vornehmen zu müssen, angewendet werden, oder muss der musikal- historische Kontext mitberücksichtigt werden?

The current debate concerning musical profundity was instigated, and set up by Peter Kivy in his book Music Alone (1990) as part of his comprehensive defense of enhanced formalism, a position he championed vigorously throughout his entire career. Kivy’s view of music led him to maintain utter skepticism regarding musical profundity. The scholarly debate that ensued centers on the question whether or not (at least some) music can be profound. In this study I would like to take the opportunity to (...) relate Wittgenstein’s ideas on music to this current debate, thereby achieving a twofold goal: not only to reintroduce Wittgenstein’s ideas into the current debate, but also to use the current debate as a foil to better appreciating Wittgenstein’s otherness as a philosopher of music. I argue that Wittgenstein’s unique philosophical response to the Romantic framing of the discourse concerning musical profundity —specifically, its threefold emphasis on the specificity, aboutness, and artistically exalted status of music— occasioned a view, which was bound to be glossed over by a philosophical tradition, whose origins had made it inimical to Wittgenstein’s original philosophical insights. I conclude that, in a sense, Wittgenstein occasions a paradigm shift by his philosophical thrust to undo the gravitational forces which form the current debate: the very idea of aboutness pertaining to music, and the very idea that a clear line could ever be drawn between music and language. (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)

The present study is a theoretical discussion concerning some of the important processes that characterize human perception, which is understood as a fundamental structure of consciousness. The aim is to acquire new insights for a better comprehension of the human experience in the world and the way individual subjects become familiar with their environment. To accomplish this task, the experience of listening to music is analysed due to the widespread acceptance of music as an important aspect of human life. With (...) reference to a various research studies and hypothesis focused on the way listeners understand music, principles of perceptual organization which allow immediate awareness of music are investigated. Particular attention is given to studies in the field of music perception and cognition. Through an analysis of the main mental processes involved, the goal is to describe several relevant aspects of how listeners understand music at the perceptual level and constitute musical meanings in a subjective manner. This constitution results in a listener’s ability to become immediately aware of their auditory experience as having a specific meaning – that of being, first of all, a musical experience. Focusing on everyday experience and exposure to music, expectation and anticipation are presented as fundamental principles that contribute to the knowledge of the auditory environment and the meaning which acoustic events acquire for a subject. An in-depth analysis of their specific features will show the different influence expectation and anticipation have on a listener’s basic perceptual comprehension of music and in the constitution of musical meanings that are subjectively characterized. Within the framework of a theoretical investigation into human processes of musical knowledge acquisition, the additional objective is to create a dialogue between empirical research results in the field of music cognition and phenomenological descriptions of the structures of human consciousness. In particular, through clarification of the specific terminology that characterizes these two fields of research, the intent is to go beyond the historical gap which has existed between them. This combination of perspectives may increase our understanding of the way human beings know the world and learn how to react to the events which they encounter. (shrink)