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To "Fill Up, Completely, the Whole Capacity of the Mind": Listening with Attention in Late Eighteenth-Century Scotland.
- Source :
- Music Theory Spectrum; Spring2022, Vol. 44 Issue 1, p141-154, 14p
- Publication Year :
- 2022
-
Abstract
- This essay explores a hitherto unsuspected intellectual relationship among three important thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment. The great philosopher and economist Adam Smith is known to have had a conception of instrumental music exceptional for his time in its foreshadowing of ideas generally associated with Eduard Hanslick. As I show here, Smith's views were decisively influenced by the psychological theories of his countryman Thomas Reid in all likelihood by way of the extraordinary proto-cognitivist music theory of their contemporary John Holden, in particular the latter's conceptualization of the faculty of attention. The innovative contributions of these writers constitute a compact and suggestive case study in the circulation of ideas about perception and listening between philosophy and music, and suggest that the Scottish Enlightenment attitude to psychology enabled a new kind of theorizing about the musical experience: one that foregrounded the importance of the faculty of attention in the process of perceiving music and sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 01956167
- Volume :
- 44
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Music Theory Spectrum
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 156290493
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1093/mts/mtab012