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The article presents philosophical views on music in the context of the transformations of the worldview from Antiquity to the Modern Time. In this research author also mentions the contemporary issues, and uses her own philosophical concept of the music, which can be described as following: the value of music as a substance and the way of the valuable interaction of a person with the world affirm the essence of musical being, in which the invariable principle of Harmony, the principle of Chaos-Form movement, is preserved (see "The Value of the Music: Philosophical Aspect"). Music expresses the fluid essence of the world and changes of being in space and time. Philosophy of music as a field of philosophical knowledge considers music from ontological-epistemological and phenomenological-axiological prospectives, as something more than just a form of art. It explores the deep, ultimate foundations of the existence of music as such and the philosophical and aesthetic foundations of musical art. Since ancient times music has been a representation of the world in the human conscience and served as the harmonic equivalent of cosmological philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and astrophysics (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus, Porphyry et als.). The scientific view on music was enriched in the Modern Time by the expanded view on the cosmo-sound space reflected in musical art, which at the same time transforms the mathematical ideas of geometricity, squareness etc. The tendency to create integral world music in the musical practice of the XX-XXI centuries explains the attempt of mankind to present music by modern methods of composing musical art as an expression of fear towards the secret Harmony of universal existence, and, on the other hand - as a form of search for salvation and mental balance, intuitively reflecting what is happening in natural science, which more and more points to the abyss of unknowable universe, and the unstable place of man in the world.

Understanding cultural practices including music from the visual may look like a daring endeavour. To disclose the synaesthetic relationships between such practices, this article offers a nomadic journey through different interpretive aspects of the visual arts, music history and even philosophy, starting from the prism of Raphael’s famous fresco “The School of Athens” (1509–1511).

El presente trabajo propone un modelo de análisis musical-sonoro de bandas sonoras de cine del compositor japonés Tōru Takemitsu en tres colaboraciones junto al director Hiroshi Teshigahara y el novelista, dramaturgo y guionista Kōbō Abe: La trampa (1962), La mujer de la arena (1964) y El rostro ajeno (1966). Takemitsu se presenta en estas realizaciones como un precursor de la composición de soundscape narrativo (paisajes sonoros narrativos) aplicado al campo del cine. Su pensamiento musical y estético para la composición de música de cine posee una gran afinidad con el concepto de soundscape (paisaje sonoro) y la filosofía musical del compositor canadiense Raymond Murray Schafer. En gran medida, debido a su interés común por John Cage. El enfoque metodológico, combina categorías de análisis del entorno acústico provenientes de los estudios sobre soundscape, categorías del campo de los estudios en música y sonido de cine, nociones estéticas de la música y las artes tradicionales japonesas y también categorías conceptuales creadas por el propio Takemitsu. Se analizó especialmente, la función narrativa de la banda sonora en relación con los distintos planos narrativos propuestos por el guión cinematográfico., The present work proposes a model of music and sound analysis of film soundtracks by the Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu in three collaborations with the director Hiroshi Teshigahara and the novelist, playwright and screenwriter Kōbō Abe: Pitfall (1962), Woman in the dunes (1964) and The face of another (1966). Takemitsu could be seeing in these productions as a precursor of the narrative soundscape composition applied to the field of cinema, since his musical and aesthetic thoughts on music composition for cinema had a great affinity with Canadian composer Raymond Murray Schafer’s concept of soundscape and his music philosophy. Mainly, due to their common interest in John Cage. The methodological approach combines acoustic environment categories of analysis provided by the field of soundscapes studies, other categories from the field of film music and sound studies, also categories that belongs to the traditional Japanese arts and music, and, in addition, categories developed by Takemitsu himself. We specially analyzed the narrative function of the soundtrack in relation to the different narrative levels proposed by the screenplay., Facultad de Artes

This article studies the comparative analysis of epistemology and philosophy of music in the Islamic civilization according to the viewpoints of medieval scholars in the Islamic civilization. The scholars selected are al-Kindi, Ikhwan al-Safa, al-Farabi and Ibn Sina. The basis of this research begins from the polemic among scholars concerning the legal status of using music, whether permissible or forbidden, due to the absence of authenticated textual proof (nas qat’i) from al-Quran and protracted debate over the authenticity of hadith on the prohibition of music. Behind the debate is that music was applied as an Islamic psychotherapy method of treatment in hospitals of the medieval Islamic civilization such as Fez Hospital in Morocco, cAdudi Hospital in Baghdad, al-Mansuri Hospital in Cairo, Nuri Hospital in Damascus, al-Arghuni Hospital in Allepo, Gevher Nesibe Hospital and Giyaseddin Keyhusrev Medical Hospital in Kayseri, Keykavus Hospital in Sivas, Turan Malik Hospital in Divrighi, Pervane Bey Hospital in Tokat, Atabey Ferruh Hospital in Cankiri, Ali bin Pervane Hospital in Kastamonu, Amasya Hospital in Amasya, Fatih Hospital in Istanbul, Edirne Sultan Bayezid II Hospital in Edirne and Suleymaniye Hospital in Istanbul. This research uses qualitative methodology and library research method by analyzing various primary and secondary sources. Research results show that there is a slight discrepancy of views between supporters of neo-Pythagorean (al-Kindi and Ikhwan al-Safa) and Aristotelian (al-Farabi and Ibn Sina) schools of thought from the epistemological viewpoint. However, in terms of philosophy, there seems to be points of similarity in the matter of enhancement of moral and spiritual values for the sake of human well-being, whether physical or spiritual.

This essay is about how artists, listeners and critics claim to hear life in a sound and how this suggestive, but hazily defined, provocation connects vast cultural circuits of production, technolo...

Although Eco was deeply interested in music, his bibliography does not include a work entirely and exclusively dedicated to this theme. However, references to the problems of musical production, listening, interpretation and transmission are scattered in numerous essays, and are often implicitly or explicitly linked to the theoretical and compositional work of his friend and composer Luciano Berio, who in turn dialogued with the developments of Eco’s thought. This article reconstructs the intellectual relationship and friendship between Eco and Berio, originated in the fifties at the Rai studios in Milan; then it examines the passages in Eco’s work dedicated to music, from The Open Work (1962) to Kant and the Platypus (1997). Finally, the article focuses on the controversies raised by the concept of open work, conceived by Eco starting from some musical works including Berio’s Sequenza I for solo flute (1958). With respect to the freedom left to the performer in the 1958 score, Berio’s rewriting in traditional notation in the Nineties seems to undermine at its roots the idea of openness which, according to Eco, distinguishes contemporary poetics. This circumstance provoked some musicological, philological and philosophical controversies, which allowed Eco (2012) to return to reflect on the concept of open work, specifying and clarifying the aesthetic conception underlying it.

The article explores the phenomenon of music from the viewpoint of Man. In the philosophy of music, the connection with man is getting relevant, replacing the positivism, as well as the speculatism, common to music theories in the past, when formal logical methods were used.The article focuses on the connection between man’s personal experience, his or her anthropological energy, that is the one that comes from the innermost foundations and utmost underlying feelings of the person (horror, pain, happiness, delight, and self-transcendence), and specific musical energy. In this rendering, we rest on the philosophical concept of the outstanding modern Russian thinker Sergey Khoruzhy. He describes man as an energetic entity formed by a limit-experience, which is the experience of reaching the limits of existence and consciousness. The synergistic approach to man continues the non-classical philosophical tradition of building the model of man using the categories like “energy”, “self-practice”, “limit-experience”, “constitution of man” and excluding the categories like “entity”, “substance”, “subject” present in the classical vision of man in European philosophy of the 17th—19th centuries.The anthropological component of the non-classical synergistic concept of music includes the comprehension of man through a certain typification of man’s striving to reach the limits. This philosophical anthropology depicts man opening up to the ontological, ontical and virtual limits.Music, as such synergy, stands for a projection of man, thus becoming the music of ontological, ontical and virtual striving. From this point of view, not only a specific concept of music is formed, different from other concepts, such as the concepts of music as a number and as an expression, but also an approach to the entire historical musical legacy and to musical practice, including composer’s, performer’s and listener’s activities.

The professional pianist and philosopher Alexandr Klujev’s book The Summa of Music is a fundamental work that sets a goal to comprehend the essence of music, to reveal the implicit that is “behind the notes,” that is little discussed but that defines the meaning of this art. The book presents Klujev’s concept of the philosophy of music and consists of his three works: “Music and life: on the place of Musical Art in the Developing World,” “The Ontology of Music” and “Music: A Path to the Absolute.” There is an Appendix to the book, which contains fragments from works on music by prominent authors of the 20th and 21st centuries: K.R. Eiges, N.O. Lossky, A.F. Loseva, T. Adorno, N. Hartmann, R. Ingarden, Schonberg and others. The opinions of these authors, on the one hand, confirm and, on the other hand, complement the ideas of A. Klujev. Therefore, the book’s author creates a kind of polylogue on music.

The essay presents an attempt at characterizing contemporary music’s culture by identifying a dialectical tension between “modern” and “postmodern” currents in it. After initial considerations on the manifold usages of the term “postmodernism,” five composers’ approaches will be analyzed: John Cage, Philip Glass (and other minimalists), Bernhard Lang, Mauricio Kagel and Johannes Kreidler. However different they may be from one another, all these composers are being interpreted as undermining, in various ways, the practice and theoretical background of modernist avant-garde music.

Experiential learning is an educational approach that has been associated with different fields including music education, but rarely with philosophy. Our project consisted of a philosophical experience in action using the work of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. In his Soundscape concept, all sounds in an environment become part of the music that surrounds us. Pre-service student teachers were introduced to his philosophy of music education through experiential learning rather than through a traditional lecture. Additionally, we followed three of them as they taught grades 3, 9 and 11. Our goal was to see to what extent experiential learning of philosophy could be an appropriate pedagogical tool in higher education. Our research question was: How can student-teachers construct their own understanding of a philosophy of music education after having experienced it from the perspective of a student and of a teacher? The following data were examined through collaborative thematic analysis of 1) an open question, 2) their own music composition following Shafer’s guidelines, and 3) their experience of teaching the children. Participants were able to explain in their own words the main components of Shafer’s view on music education, they described how they could use this vision in their own teaching and they identified specific outcomes (creativity, freedom, motivation and critical thinking) from using this approach. The conclusion was drawn that the experiential learning framework can be an appropriate tool for instructing topics that have traditionally been seen as purely theoretical.

In this article, scholarly writings on conventions and traditions in music education are explored. The purpose is to shed a critical light on current practices in music teaching and learning and it is pointed out, that remarkably little has been written in terms of critique or questioning of the status quo in Icelandic music education. The focus of the article is mostly on music teaching and learning at higher levels of music studies where students are taking private lessons with a master tutor on a musical instrument, including the voice. Severe side effects that can impact professional musicians for life have been known to result from conventional teaching practices at higher levels of music education. This writing is rooted in a desire to search for a positive and healthy learning environment where music students and teachers can grow concurrently as human beings and as artists. The harmful effects of negative or toxic learning environments in music schools can eventually lead to serious consequences for individuals and professional careers. The article begins with a summary of the traditional private-studio and master-apprentice approaches in music education, outlining how these models developed and became the standard in serious or elite music learning in the Western tradition of music education. Then, a discussion follows on the power structures at play in these learning situations and what the consequences can be for individuals and communities. Furthermore, attention is directed towards conventional learning cultures in higher music education and which strategies could be taken towards more democratic and humane approaches to music teaching and learning at the upper levels of music study. The focus of the discussion is directed towards the choices teachers can make and how the learning environment can support the healthy development of individuals within music education institutions. In this context, the ideas of character education within educational reform are explored. Critical theories in music education have investigated conventions and traditions in music teaching and learning and pointed out how power structures in the conventional masterapprentice model can be detrimental to the education and formation of musicians. An overview is provided of several scholarly writings on the philosophy of music education from this perspective. Most of the scholars cited have in common that they build on Critical Theories in their approach to music education with strong references to Dewey and Freire in their view on educational reform. It is imperative that music teachers and music education institutions ask critical questions regarding their role in the education of their students, such as whether it is their role to uphold conventions and traditions handed down for centuries, or whether their duty is to search for new ways to instruct individuals who are allowed to influence their own learning processes. In order to foster progress in music education at any level it is necessary to build education systems that will train individuals to develop and take an active role in their own learning processes. A large number of professional musicians suffer from challenging working conditions that affect their mental and physical health. Professional musicians are known to treat side effects of their careers such as performance anxiety and depression with prescription drugs to a much higher extent than in the normal population. There is more than one possible cause of this problem but many scholars point towards the culture and traditions surrounding the educational systems where musicians are schooled. These traditions are discussed as well as what actions can be taken to change conventional practices in music schools. It is stated that private lessons or the master-apprentice model seems to be the dominant model in Icelandic music schools and even more prominent in the early stages of music studies in Iceland than in many other countries. However, more research is needed on teaching practices in Icelandic music schools. Public or scholarly discussion of methods, conventions and practices in Icelandic music schools has been minimal to this date. Debates in the field of music education at international level in the past decades have seemingly gone more or less unnoticed in the Icelandic music education community. As this article provides a review of some of the scholarly critiques within music education at international level, the authors hope that it will encourage a lively debate and an increased awareness of issues in music education within Iceland and in a wider context of reform in music training and instruction.

Alexei Losev’s doctrine of myth is closely related to his interest in onomatodoxy [imyaslavie], a religious and philosophical school of thought that was developed by the early twentieth century, while being rooted in the Eastern Orthodox thought of Byzantium, namely in the fourteenth-century doctrine of energy (knowledge of the essence of God through its energy), formulated by St. Gregory Palamas. Losev understands myth not as a fiction but as a substantial reality and corporeality; it is the essence of a person represented in a word, a picture, or a sculpture. Thus, Losev regards philosophy, mythology, and aesthetics as a single whole. Artistic form, according to Losev, has a personal being and lives through and changes the course of history. For Losev music is not an exception here. This chapter investigates a lesser-known aspect of Losev’s work, namely his philosophy of music, which he developed in both scholarly and literary works.

This chapter examines some of the leading figures in musicology’s development in a context when recognition of the humanities was developing intensively. Starting from a national point of view and moving progressively toward an international amalgam of thinking and tradition in the humanities at the turn of the century, the author shows that, despite its being acknowledged as a discipline and gradually receiving recognition from European academics, musicology during the second part of the nineteenth century was in reality a patchwork of knowledge areas (history, philosophy, literature, music, poetry, and new sociology). The chapter suggests how the inclusive and interdisciplinary tendencies of contemporary musicology have deep roots into the nineteenth century, when many of the disciplines that are regularly brought together today came into being. Study of acoustics, psychology, and sociology has contributed to the work of today’s musicologists and they owe much to pioneers of the nineteenth century.

With the arrival of the information society, the research on the philosophy of music art has been paid more and more attention to, and the difference and identity in the information of piano performance is worth our deep thinking. In the new era of social information, it is a timely topic which breaks through the traditional research methods of piano art and utilizes the research system of information philosophy. Based on the perspective of information philosophy, this paper attempts to reveal the difference and identity of the main body of piano performance information by observing the ontology and law of music art research and applying the basic principle of information philosophy theory. Thus, the guiding significance of information philosophy in piano performance is discussed and further analyzed.

The philosophical work of Vladimir Jankélévitch lives on a narrow interweaving of metaphysics, morals and aesthetics. The metaphysical concepts he created and mobilized, as well as his method – which combines “paradoxology” and “mysteriology” – are find in the treatment of musical questions, as already are seen in action in his ethics. Amateur but dedicated pianist, Jankélévitch also possessed high musicological skills. Thus, in addition to monographic studies and essays on modern composers such as Ravel, Debussy, Fauré, among others, he left us elements of a philosophy of music in La musique et l’ineffable (1961). The present article aims to present some of the fundamental themes of this connection between philosophy and musical experience. Fundamentally, music allows listening to the “irreversible”: a way of experiencing the essence of time, articulating lived time and the time of cosmos in a “stylized time” that ultimately is a great instant between two liminal and fecund silences.

The article focuses on the experimental music that emerged after the Second World War and in graphic musical notation. He has a special interest in the influence exercised by the reading of the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus in the musical work Treatise by Cornelius Cardew. The isomorphism between language and reality and the different types of propositions formulated by the first Wittgenstein represent a new conception of music in the composer.

The author considers the metaphysics of Aristotle in its significance for the aesthetics and the philosophy of music, where the music is, first of all, by its nature is presented as a substance (essence, consisting in movement, rhythm, among other things, the divine mind) and, secondly, as a becoming shape musical art, the value of human interaction with the world. In the author’s interpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine of the essence, the music is becoming substantialistically musical being. In the making of the musical form the laws of the logos, Mind, creation. Concepts: substance (essence), matter and form, entelechy, energy - are considered in the context of aesthetics and musical art. The author draws attention to the fact that the issue of music as an art form in the world of human existence, Aristotle was interested in music for the purpose of man, where he shared a professional work and making music, you need to nurture. Noting its purpose, according to the philosopher said, pleasure, recreation, virtue, purification of the soul, it was found that the ability of music to influence the moral aspect of the soul remained for him an open problem. Aristotle’s metaphysics approved idea of music as a musical form and substance as a process music as a means of value of human interaction with the world, which makes the belief in the stability of the laws of becoming of musical forms.

In Words and Music, as in Cascando, Beckett deploys music as an actual 'char acter', cast against "Words" in an exploration of their different capacities for generating significance either separately or when working together. The radio play was originally commissioned by the BBC, and this 1962 production used music especially composed by the author's cousin John Beckett. However, the score was then withdrawn. A later production by Katharine Worth (recorded in 1973) commissioned music from Humphrey Searle, but the most publicly avail able versions - there are currently two different recordings available - use music written by Morton Feldman in 1986-87 at the request of Everett Frost. The concerns of Words and Music are clearly related to Beckett's general preoccupation with the limitations of the expressive powers of language. However, the fact that the music could not be composed by Beckett and therefore changes with the individual composer involved in each produc tion has always rendered the word-music opposition, and hence the play as a whole, somewhat problematic. Beckett gives some instructions to the

The success of the early music movement raises questions about performing historical works: Should musicians perform on period instruments and try to reconstruct the original style? If a historically “authentic” performance is impossible or undesirable, what should be the goal of the early music movement? I turn to Gadamer to answer these questions by constructing the outlines of a hermeneutics of early music performance. In the first half of the paper, I examine Gadamer’s critique of historical reconstruction and argue that this critique sheds light on mistaken tendencies and misunderstandings within the early music movement, but it does not discredit the movement as such. In the second half of the paper, I attempt to show how Gadamer’s dialogical account of historical consciousness provides a framework for understanding what historically informed performance is seeking to accomplish, as well as its advantage over a Nietzschean approach.

This article discusses the role of music in the context of A.F. Losev’s philosophical prose of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Describing the key ideas of Losev’s philosophy of music, the essay presents Losev as both the writer and the philosopher and analyzes the relationship between these two facets of his work. It pays particular attention to the way philosophical ideas are conveyed in the novel The Woman-Thinker where the opposition of rational thought and antinomical knowledge emerges in the form of a binary of the “musical” and the “non-musical,” as two modes of attitude to the being. In the novel, the specificity of the musical worldview is embodied in the tragic fate of the pianist Radina whose character reveals a deep reflection on the meaning of life and the spiritual state of contemporaneity.

The intention of this article is provide a preliminary comparison of two areas of music which are frequently associated with one another - in pieces of opinion journalism, in reviews, and sometimes on the stage - however, contrary to superficial intuitions, they differ from each other considerably - not only in their cultural sources and philosophical premise but also in the final sound-related and music-related result, which may be heard during concerts. Both musical trends are a result of ideological transformations within the world of music, but the reasons for which they arose are extremely different. Let this article serve the purpose of posing questions and making an attempt at outlining the differences between World Music and Sound Art.

Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone technique made him one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century, but his contribution to music pedagogy remains far less well known. This article is a descriptive and interpretive work and therefore tries to present the main ideas of Schönberg, from theoretical references. This paper explores Schoenberg’s concepts about music education as they emerge in the collection of essays published under the title Style and Idea: the dialectic between tradition and modernity; the social dimensions of music education; the notion of musicality; the presence of emotion in twelve-tone composition; and the composer’s conviction that contemporary creation could be an axis of music education. This research also argues that Schoenberg’s ideas about music education make him deserving of greater attention amongst music teachers and pedagogues today. Arnold Schönberg ha sido uno de los compositores más influyentes en la música del siglo XX a través de su método de composición dodecafónico. No obstante, sus aportaciones a la pedagogía musical han pasado desapercibidas. Este artículo es un trabajo descriptivo interpretativo, a partir de referencias teóricas, que pretende dar a conocer las ideas de Schönberg acerca de la enseñanza de la música mediante el análisis de sus escritos más relevantes que hacen referencia a aspectos pedagógicos y que se recopilan en la primera edición de escritos con el título Style and Idea. Entre sus aportaciones cabe destacar la dialéctica entre la tradición y la modernidad, las dimensiones sociales de la educación musical, la musicalidad, la emoción en la composición dodecafónica y la creación contemporánea como eje de la enseñanza musical. Por todo ello creemos que Schönberg es merecedor de una mayor consideración entre los pedagogos musicales de la actualidad.

Shakespeare is one of the most widely read figures in literature, but his use of music is not usually touched on in literary discussions of his works. This paper discusses how Shakespeare portrays music within the context of his plays, both through dialogue and songs performed within each work. In Shakespeare’s time, Boethius’ philosophy of the music of the spheres was still highly popular. This was the idea that the arrangement of the cosmos mirrored musical proportions. As a result, every aspect of the universe was believed to be highly ordered, and this idea is prominent throughout Shakespeare’s works, from Hamlet to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. To make this clear to the reader, the paper discusses dialogue symmetry weaved throughout The Merchant of Venice , clear allusions to the music of the spheres in Pericles, and the use of music as a signifier of the strange and mysterious – from madness to love – in numerous works, always relating these topics back to the philosophy of the music of the spheres. In order to compile this information and make it clear, the author researched the philosophy of music during Shakespeare’s era. The author also researched how Shakespeare uses music thematically to emphasize different characters’ struggles as well as plot details. After examining his plays as well as the other sources available on the subject, it is clear that Shakespeare was highly influenced by the philosophical and practical ideas regarding music of his time, specifically the theory of the music of the spheres.

In describing musical improvisation as “interactive”, the primacy of a centralized musical score is called into question. When musicians develop aesthetic agreements and navigate differences between themselves through performance and rehearsal, this article argues they are engaging in a kind of composition. In a series of conversations conducted with improvisers living and working in New York, agreement and disagreement were discussed via spatial metaphors. Each player must find “common ground” between their own voice and the overall collective frame, allowing for a “playing field” to emerge. The field establishes a set of aesthetic possibilities to be realized in rehearsal, discussion, and performance. The field also establishes a framework for individual composition to occur. Using statements by New York improvisers Mary Halvorson (guitar), Peter Evans (trumpet) and Steve Lehman (saxophone), this article reveals three distinct conceptualizations of how an individual can reimagine the playing field through composition. Keywords: Music Philosophy, Metaphor, Improvisation and Ethics, New Jazz Studies, Steve Lehman, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans, Composition, Contemporary Improvisation.

The Xing Zi Ming Chu 性自命出 (Dispositions Come from What Is Allotted; hereafter XZMC) presents a distinctive account of human dispositions that centers on the spontaneous arising of affects like joy and sadness. This focus on emotion grounds a particular conception of the function of music and ritual that gives music a central role in self-cultivation. Although the account of human dispositions in XZMC was ultimately overshadowed by the opposing views of Mengzi 孟子 and Xunzi 荀子 and the question of whether our dispositions are good or bad, its views remained central for Ru 儒 philosophy of music. The first three parts of the essay trace the development of the ideas appearing in XZMC through the “Discourse on Music” chapter of the Xunzi and parts of the Yueji 樂記. The fourth section highlights the distinctiveness of XZMC’s account through a contrast with the views of Mengzi and Xunzi. The essay concludes by examining the ways in which, in accounting for ritual and music, both the Mengzi and Xunzi employ views like those of the XZMC, even if those are in tension with their core philosophical theories.

Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900. By David Wyn Jones. Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Boydell Press, 2016. [x, 277 p. ISBN 9781783271078. $45.] Illustrations, tables, bibliography, index.In a musicological climate in which contextual and cultural studies are the rule, rather than the exception, David Wyn Jones's new book Music in Vienna, 1700, 1800, 1900 stands out. Music in Vienna is exceptional not in departing from this rule, but in demonstrating how a thoroughly contextual and broadly cultural exploration of music and place can illuminate both. The book is divided into three sections, each comprising three chapters, preceded by an introductory chapter, "Telling Tales of Music in Vienna." This introductory chapter sets up the three frames of reference within which Jones has confined what might otherwise have been the subject of at least three volumes. His frames of reference-which comprise historiographical narratives and paradigms described below-provide the book with an excellently balanced discussion of social, political and musical matters. Chapters within section 1 cover "Music at the Imperial and Royal Court," "Catholicism, Ritual and Ceremony," and "Italian Opera and the Preservation of the Habsburg Dynasty." The section on 1800 includes "Court, Aristocrats and Connoisseurs," "Demand, Aspiration and the Ennobling of the Spirit," and "Music, War and Peace." And the final section, on 1900, encompasses "Vienna, City of Music," " 'Seid umschlungen, Millionen' " (focusing on Beethoven reception), and "From Johann Strauss to Richard Strauss."Regarding the overall framing of the book, Jones has chosen not to rely on the traditional parsing of music into historical periods (baroque, classical, romantic, etc.), or on the traditional emphasis on composers' biographies. These, he finds, lead to a narrowness of vision and tend to overemphasize change. Instead, he focuses on manifold human agents, operating in capacious "epochs" around 1700, 1800, and 1900. In this way he sets out to create "a portrait of each period that allows contrasts to emerge and continuities to be articulated" (p. 2). Extending his painterly metaphor, one might consider the three sections as three panoramas, painted from an impressively wide palette of evidence about Vienna and its music. His palette includes, but is by no means restricted to: eyewitness accounts, portraits, title pages, stage designs, city planning information, patrons' biographical information, memoirs, programs, publishing catalogs, and of course music-works in diverse genres by manifold composers. In sum, Jones offers what anthropologist Clifford Geertz might have called a "thick" history of Vienna at the turns of each of three centuries, a history that fully takes account of human agency and recognizes that it "was not the prerogative of composers only, but routinely involved emperors, princes, publishers, institutions, administrators, scholars, and others" (p. 2). The result is path-breaking in its contextual depth.Indeed, such is the wealth of detail on social and especially political matters in each chapter that one might think that the discussion of music would suffer. Music is, in fact, nowhere in sight in this book, in that there are no music examples. This is unfortunate for the musically literate reader, who might well like to refer to scores during Jones's numerous detailed references to works by lesser-known composers (for example, Johann Baptist Wanhal and Franz Xaver Sussmayr). Much of the music to which he refers is not readily available in modern editions. Overall, though, there is no question that music remains at the forefront with detailed description and interpretation of music figures throughout, beautifully woven into the narrative. On the largest scale (that of the entire book), his narrative focuses on music in relation to place: he traces the increasingly strong identification of Vienna as a "city of music." By 1900, he argues, the conception of "Musikstadt Wien" was so strong that music had tended to gain the upper hand, rather than becoming subservient to any overarching civic identity (p. …

MUSICS OF THE WORLD The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music. Edited by Joshua S. Walden. (Cambridge Companions to Music.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xiii, 293 p. ISBN 9781107023451 (hardcover), $89.99; ISBN 9781107623750 (paperback), $29.99; ISBN 9781316434895 (e-book), $24.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, index.The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music, edited by Peabody Conservatory professor Joshua S. Walden, seeks to answer the seemingly obvious question, "What is Jewish music?" In the course of this book, however, the reader will learn that the response is not so clear-cut. Since Jews have lived in a multitude of countries, they have adopted and adapted numerous disparate musical styles to their own ancient traditions, thereby creating a rich musical tapestry that continues to evolve. Walden informs us that the term "Jewish music" comprises "folk songs in multiple languages, dance music played by ensembles of instrumentalists, forms of religious music developed in the synagogue and the home in far-flung communities, methods of chanting the text of the Hebrew Bible, classical music written for the concert hall, and commercial popular music . . . " (p. 6). Indeed, Walden offers the example of the tune for "Hatikvah" in the book's introduction as a means of demonstrating the ubiquity of Jewish music. While most Jews (and some non-Jews) recognize this tune as the Israeli national anthem, Walden explains that it shares a common folk song ancestor with Bedrich Smetana's Die Moldau, as well as Mozart's "Ah! Vous dirai-je, maman" ("Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"), among several others (p. 2). In this way, he illustrates the vast influences on Jewish music, explaining that what makes the music Jewish is its associations.This particular focus on ontology pervades the book and separates it from other works on Jewish music that emphasize primarily history (Abraham Z. Idelsohn's seminal tome, Jewish Music: Its Historical Development [New York: H. Holt, 1929; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1992]; Marsha Bryan Edelman, Discovering Jewish Music [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003]) or genre (for example, Mark Slobin, Fiddler on the Move [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Instead, Walden utilizes a gestalt approach, allowing for a very broad yet in-depth examination of the topic. The book's back cover states that it "is a key resource for students, scholars, and everyone with an interest in the global history of Jewish music." Due to the detailed examination of numerous topics, however, this author feels that the book is best suited for musically-knowledgeable readers seeking an overview of Jewish music, or perhaps a college course on the topic. Therefore, The Cambridge Companion to Jewish Music is similar to the other books in the Cambridge series, which offer indepth investigations into various genres, styles, composers, and instruments.Walden divides the sixteen-chapter book into three sections. Part I, entitled "Conceptions of Jewish Music," attempts to pinpoint its essence. Chapter 1, "Ontologies ofJewish music" by Philip Bohlman, informs us that there are five conditions of Jewishness in music: religion, language, embodiment (contextuality), geography, and identity, adding that these definitions continue to evolve as the music itself also evolves. He states that Jewish music is often defined by what it is not, noting, "Jewish music comes into being when an original text or ritual process undergoes transformation that expands upon its meaning, enhancing them within the multiplying contexts of Jewish culture and history" (pp. 15-16).Edwin Seroussi addresses the multiple meanings of "diaspora" in chapter 2, asserting that "the mapping out of clusters of Jewish musical styles and repertoires" by simple binaries such as Ashkenazic/ Sephardic "obliterated countless nuances based on place and time" (p. 30). Since the term has now grown "to describe every possible physical or imagined, voluntary or forced displacement of individuals or communities" (p. …

Mark Evan Bonds’ recent book, Absolute Music, deepens considerably the historical context within which Eduard Hanslick’s famous treatise on musical beauty can be read. This paper argues that, with the aid of this expanded context, we can understand Hanslick’s treatise to have provided contemporary and subsequent audiences with a kind of meta-programme for listening to symphonic and other non-texted music. That is to say, Hanslick’s text arguably informed and directed the way audiences came to listen to instrumental music by furnishing them with imaginative constructs (about musical form and its spiritual significance) which could then be applied to the practice of musical listening. In much the same way as the texts which supply the poetic scenarios of so-called programme music, Hanslick’s ‘meta-programme’ became indispensable to an expanding culture of musical listening in the second half of the 19th century and beyond beyond. My claim thus contradicts the well-known formalist tenets of Hanslick’s musical aesthetics.

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This book provides a new approach to the intersections between music and philosophy. It features articles that rethink the concepts of musical work and performance from ontological and epistemological perspectives and discuss issues of performing practices that involve the performer’s and listener’s perceptions. In philosophy, the notion of essence has enjoyed a renaissance. However, in the humanities in general, it is still viewed with suspicion. This collection examines the ideas of essence and context as they apply to music. A common concern when thinking of music in terms of essence is the plurality of music. There is also the worry that thinking in terms of essence might be an overly conservative way of imposing fixity on something that evolves. Some contend that we must take into account the varying historical and cultural contexts of music, and that the idea of an essence of music is therefore a fantasy. This book puts forward an innovative approach that effectively addresses these concerns. It shows that it is, in fact, possible to find commonalities among the many kinds of music. The coverage combines philosophical and musicological approaches with bioethics, biology, linguistics, communication theory, phenomenology, and cognitive science. The respective chapters, written by leading musicologists and philosophers, reconsider the fundamental essentialist and contextualist approaches to music creation and experience in light of twenty-first century paradigm shifts in music philosophy.

The article surveys the course of the tension within Christianity over the role of the aesthetic in music for worship and in religious music more widely, from Augustine to the present day. It outlines the recurrent features of debate. It then focuses specifically on England, beginning with the tension over the aesthetic in music during the sixteenth century Reformation and in the two subsequent centuries. It looks at major changes, such as the autonomy of the aesthetic, associated with nineteenth century romanticism. The main section of the article traces debates over both church music and mass collective singing, in part as they bear on the construction of national identity. The article concludes with developments in Evangelicalism and in spirituality in a secular society.

Osnovne postavke Adornove Filozofije nove glazbe u ovom se radu sagledavaju iz perspektive pojma glazbe kao same stvari i pojma glazbenih konvencija, koji se uzimaju kao dijalektički polovi glazbe u Adornovom učenju, pa se njihova analiza provodi usporedno s razmatranjem Adornove negativno­dijalektičke metode u ovoj knjizi. Pojmom glazbe kao same stvari Adorno formulira povijesne tendencije same glazbene forme, do kojih skladatelj dolazi proširujući mogućnosti glazbenog stvaranja izvan granica koje je postavila glazba njegovih prethodnika. S druge strane, glazbene konvencije su dominantan oblik glazbenog stvaranja jedne epohe, kojim skladatelji ne unapređuju glazbenu djelatnost, nego ostaju u području poznatih skladateljskih obrazaca. Prema Adornu, glazbi kao samoj stvari približava se dodekafonijska glazba Arnolda Schönberga, dok glazba Igora Stravinskog ipak ostaje u okvirima konvencionalne glazbe., In this paper, the basic themes of Adorno’s Philosophy of New Music are viewed from the perspective of the concepts of music as the thing itself and musical conventions, which can be considered as dialectical poles of music. The analysis of these concepts is performed along with the examination of Adorno’s negative dialectics method and its application in this book. The concept of music as the thing itself refers to historical tendencies of the musical form, i. e. tendencies a composer uses to extend the capabilities of music set by his predecessors. On the other hand, musical conventions are viewed as the dominant form of composing in an epoch. In this case, composers do not develop musical forms but remain in the domain of those previously known. According to Adorno, Schönberg’s dodecaphony is the concept closest to the music as the thing itself, while music of Stravinsky still remains within the limits of conventional music.

В статье научно обоснованы особенности музыкального мышления И. Брамса. Выявлены стилевые координаты творчества И. Брамса. Обоснованы основные факторы, которые оказали существенное влияние на становление творческой личности композитора. Доказано воздействие эстетики классицизма и романтизма на творчество И. Брамса. В музыкальном языке И. Брамса преобладают романтические мотивы и узнаваемые интонации автора. Психологизм и лиризм музыки И. Брамса актуальны для современной культуры. Это объясняет частое обращение современных исполнителей и слушателей к творческому наследию композитора., The article scientifically substantiates the peculiarities of Brahms’s musical thinking. Stylistic coordinates of I. Brahms’s creativity are revealed. The main factors that had a significant impact on the formation of the creative personality of the composer have been substantiated. The impact of the aesthetics of classicism and romanticism on the works of J. Brahms have been proven. Romantic motifs and recognisable intonation of the author dominated in Brahms’s musical language. Psychology and lyricism of Brahms’s music are relevant to contemporary culture. This explains the frequent use of the creative heritage of the composer by modern performers and listeners.