Realism and Russia? Realism is a notion with multiple meanings, so options abound as to how the two might connect with one another. An old Russian proverb conveys a realist message about social properties: "An individual in Rssia was composed of three parts: a body, a soul, and a passport." (Ruben 1985, 83) Having a passport signals the possession of a complex set of social properties, and if these are taken to be real in some appropriate sense, one (...) is inplying a realist view in social ontology. In another sense of the word, realism is a live issues in the study of international relations. Political realism considers the behaviour of states by emphasizing the importance of national interests and the drive for power on the one hand, and the suppression of moral concerns on the other (e.g. Donnelly 2000). Russian realists hold diverse views about the newly emerged unipolar global power structure and Russia's proper strategy for adjusting to this structure (e.g. Shakleyina and Bogaturov 2004). Realism is a family of viewpoints also in the arts (including painting, music and literature) and their study. Socialist realism is a version that used to be an official doctrine in Russia, gently requesting artists to optimistically represent society's march towards communism, glorifying the heroic role of the proletariat in driving the process. Socialist realism was also well known elsewhere. So much so that in the 1970s, a philosophy professor at the University of Helsinki announced to give a lecture course on "scientific realism" but on its way to the university catalogue through the university administration, the title of the course was transformed into "socialist realism". In the spirit of rectifying that old administrative mistake, the remards to follow deal with scientifit realism as a philosophy of science. The general issue to be addressed is how the social sciences relate to the social world, in both directions. (shrink)

Success in Soviet trade negotiations depends to a great extent on the images that the Soviet negotiators form of their Western counterparts. These images, in turn, depend to a great extent on the images presented to such Soviet negotiators during their education, through various tales and stories.

Martin replies to Sciabarra's essay on Rand, Rush, and progressive rock with critical reflections from a Marxist perspective. Focusing on the film version of The Fountainhead, which shares much in common with film noir and Socialist Realism, Martin rejects as reification Rand's emphasis on property as the defining feature of human life. Her dismissal of rock music has overtones of racism and Eurocentrism. The rock band Rush may have drawn inspiration from Howard Roark, but two other real-life (...) role models would have been better suited: Ludwig van Beethoven and Frank Lloyd Wright. (shrink)

The article contains the conceptual vision of socialist realism as one of the key characteristics of art, transformed in the postmodern cultural era. Social realism is a cultural manifestation of the historical development of Soviet republics, including the Ukrainian SSR. The essence of socialist realism is seen as a manifestation of ideology in the Soviet conditions. Besides, the article considers the phenomenon in the context of postmodernism, relying on the findings of various scholars, and describes (...) the interaction between postmodernism and socialist realism. Despite the general view that postmodernism emerged in the United States and Western Europe in the 1960s-1970s, there could be another way this movement evolved in fine art and architecture. The fact that the artists from the post-Soviet space managed to adapt to the global cultural field of postmodernism so swiftly proves that the totalitarian system failed to eliminate the plurality of opinions. A post-Soviet variant of postmodernism was largely defined by the influence of socialist realism. The recently proclaimed era of post-truth that allegedly started after the new millennium produced fascinating political and artistic experiments in the post-Soviet space. Hence, it would be logical to assume that some previously developed mechanisms were activated there. Post-truth as an instrument of politics in that sense resonates with the socialist realism used as an instrument of class struggle. Research methods include description, synthesis and analysis. (shrink)

ABSTRACTPopular music life is permeated by a quantitative form of male dominance, and has been for several decades. Based on a recent study this article engages with the reproduction of said male dominance by attempting to understand boys’ approaches to popular music and musicians. In particular, by making use of an interdisciplinary explanatory feminist theory the article seeks to show that interacting mechanisms at different levels make the adoption of a so-called ‘identificatory’ approach attainable for boys. The potential (...) effect of their adoption of this approach is that male dominance within popular music life is reproduced. In addition to this, however, a more general aim of this article is to illustrate the ways in which critical realism can inform empirical gender research, especially in terms of the postulation of explanatory mechanisms. (shrink)

The question of the essence of contemporary socialist artistic culture is being acutely posed today, in the period of renewal of the whole life of Soviet society. To what extent does the method of socialist realism, which has become established in our theory and practice, correspond to the processes taking place within art? Is its method adequate for an all-round reflection and analysis of the entire diversity and uniqueness of today's society? After all, the method of (...) class='Hi'>socialist realism presumes a truthful, historically concrete depiction of reality in its revolutionary development, i.e., it orients the artist toward reflecting that reality only in "forms of life" and requires him to represent only progressive processes. (shrink)

Provides a broad European and cross-cultural perspective on the theory and practice of literature and the Left over the past 50 years.

In the wake of Stalin’s death and the publication of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s early fictions, Georg Lukács claimed to discern a revivification of socialist realism, the officially-sanctioned school of Soviet literature. A furtherance of that process was integral to the “renaissance of Marxism” and vitalization of socialist democracy that he hoped would restore the faith in socialism shaken by the Stalinist era. Although he dared not admit it, he envisioned a socialist realism cast in the image (...) of bourgeois “critical realism.”. (shrink)

It would be no exaggeration to say that our art is presently undergoing a revolutionary stage in its development. The revolutionary renewal that has seized all spheres of life is being ever more forcefully represented in artistic culture as well. That culture is beginning to free itself from bureaucratic regimentation, incompetent pressure from above, inflated authorities, lifeless cliches, and opportunism of the moment. Art is actively seeking its place in perestroika, and is in turn in many respects defining the moral (...) climate of perestroika. Recent works such as Fire [Pozhar] by V. Rasputin, the Sad Detective Story [Pechal'nyi detektiv] by V. Astaf'ev, The Execution Block [Plakha] by Ch. Aitmatov, the paintings of G. Korzhev and V. Sidorov, the sculpture of V. Klykov, etc., are actively working for renewal. (shrink)

According to pluralism about some concept, there are multiple non-equivalent, legitimate concepts pertaining to the ontological category in question. It is an open question whether conceptual pluralism implies anti-realism about that category. In this article, I argue that at least for the case of music, it does not. To undermine the application of an influential move from pluralism to anti-realism, then, I provide an argument in support of indifference realism about music, by appeal to (...) class='Hi'>music archaeological research, via an analogy with Adrian Currie’s indifference realism about species licensed by paleobiological research. (shrink)

The article examines the phenomenon of conformism in the context of socialist realism, which for a long time was the main direction for the Soviet art sphere. Conformism is interpreted as an effective way for the artist to optimize relations with the authorities and society, giving the opportunity for social self-preservation. Conformism is a kind of strategy for artists, thanks to which they manage to achieve their creative goals and successfully exist within the established cultural framework. The author (...) of the article argues that conformism helped artists who put their creativity at the service of socialist realism to find some basis for their activities, because socialist realism did not initially have such a basis. The author comes to the conclusion that in the conditions of constant transformation of cultural requirements and the need to fully comply with them, conformism becomes for the artist not just a tactic in achieving creative goals, but also a kind of self-defense mechanism that allows to preserve mental and physical health. The most successful Soviet artists were able to realize their talent by creating many bright works of art due to the fact that they created precisely in the mainstream of socialist realism, and if it were not for it, perhaps the world would never have known about some outstanding Soviet artists, as well as not seen their works of art, since the realization of Soviet artists in another cultural environment might well not have taken place. (shrink)

There are only three distinct temporal relationships between art and theory: either the development of new events precedes theory, or both develop side by side, or theory anticipates the appearance of the new artistic current. This temporal relationship is, to some degree, fundamental in the relationship between both phenomena. If one is dealing with the first case, theories of art serve only to redress a balance. The art-theory introduces nothing in any way new; it serves only to explain an artistic (...) process which has already flowered. At most, largely thanks to critical studies, it helps the public understand the new works unexpectedly arising in the field of art, and plays the role of popularizing these new works, in the best sense of the word. (shrink)

The article analyzes textbooks and offers an insight into the didactical manuals written in early socialism. Textbooks of modest volume, published at the end of the forties and in the fifties of the last century, reflected the basic requirements of educational policy. The main goal of music education was to educate students to sing by notes. The publications were conceived as theoretical instructions for musical literacy. The first didactical manual written by Joža Požgaj was published, which in its revised (...) version was used in music teaching for many years. Textbooks written in the first half of the 1960s, after the educational reform, were adapted to children’s age, while didactical manuals focused on enriching the lessons with songs, literary examples, games, stories, the use of school instruments etc. The attention shifted from music literacy to singing as dominant activity in music teaching, but again with the aim of acquiring basic musical vocabulary. (shrink)

One impediment facing socialists is the widespread belief among their opponents that they advance only by destroying things. Ironically, socialists often help spread this belief by declaring defeat when they are unsuccessful at destroying their targets. The thesis tested in this article is that, instead, socialism at its best hopes to transform the institutions we all inherit. It tries to transform values, culture, governance, production, and finance. Destroying that inheritance leaves no secure basis for generating a better world. The trick (...) for the socialist realist is to find the right balance between radical destruction and timid gradualism. (shrink)

Historians of French politics, art, philosophy and literature have long known the tensions and fascinations of Louis XV's reign, the 1750s in particular. David Charlton's study comprehensively re-examines this period, from Rameau to Gluck and elucidates the long-term issues surrounding opera. Taking Rousseau's Le Devin du Village as one narrative centrepiece, Charlton investigates this opera's origins and influences in the 1740s and goes on to use past and present research to create a new structural model that explains the elements of (...) reform in Gluck's tragédies for Paris. Charlton's book opens many new perspectives on the musical practices and politics of the period, including the Querelle des Bouffons. It gives the first detailed account of intermezzi and opere buffe performed by Eustachio Bambini's troupe at the Paris Opéra from August 1752 to February 1754 and discusses Rameau's comedies Platée and Les Paladins and their origins. (shrink)

Auditory scene analysis is an elementary aspect of music perception, yet only little research has scrutinized auditory scene analysis under realistic musical conditions with diverse samples of listeners. This study probed the ability of younger normal-hearing listeners and older hearing-aid users in tracking individual musical voices or lines in JS Bach's The Art of the Fugue. Five-second excerpts with homogeneous or heterogenous instrumentation of 2–4 musical voices were presented from spatially separated loudspeakers and preceded by a short cue for (...) signaling the target voice. Listeners tracked the cued voice and detected whether an amplitude modulation was imposed on the cued voice or a distractor voice. Results indicated superior performance of young normal-hearing listeners compared to older hearing-aid users. Performance was generally better in conditions with fewer voices. For young normal-hearing listeners, there was interaction between the number of voices and the instrumentation: performance degraded less drastically with an increase in the number of voices for timbrally heterogeneous mixtures compared to homogeneous mixtures. Older hearing-aid users generally showed smaller effects of the number of voices and instrumentation, but no interaction between the two factors. Moreover, tracking performance of older hearing aid users did not differ when these participants did or did not wear hearing aids. These results shed light on the role of timbral differentiation in musical scene analysis and suggest reduced musical scene analysis abilities of older hearing-impaired listeners in a realistic musical scenario. (shrink)

Roger Scruton appears to have been the first to argue for and articulate an anti-realist theory of aesthetic properties. In the case of emotional qualities of music, his principal argument against realism is unsound and cannot, I believe, be repaired. Nevertheless an anti-realist view of emotional qualities of music is in my view correct and I defend Scruton's insight against a rival realist conception. However, I prefer a rather different form of anti-realism to Scruton's.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Lawrence Ferrara’s Chapter Four in R. Phelps, R. Sadoff, E. Warburton, and L. Ferrara, A Guide to Research in Music Education, 5th Edition (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005)Jack HellerIt is curious that Lawrence Ferrara disagrees with Jack Heller and Edward. J. P. O'Connor's view1 that "philosophy" is not "research," yet in the chapter headings in the book A Guide to Research in Music (...) Education, 5th Edition, Chapter 4 is labeled "Philosophical Inquiry," while other chapters are labeled "Qualitative Research," "Nonexperimental Research," "Quantitative Research," and "Historical Research" (italics added). Why not "Philosophical Research?" Maybe he, too, believes that philosophy is not research.In our Handbook Chapter2 we pointed out that research should be systematic and based on "empirical observation." To make things worse we said that research should try to provide "unbiased evidence." Ferrara ascribes to us a positivistic view that we did not make nor believe. That view, according to Ferrara is that the "key reason for their [our] dismissal of philosophical inquiry (notice inquiry not research) as a bona fide research design is the invariable criterion that they [we] assign to all research if it is indeed research: to present 'unbiased evidence.'" [End Page 89] We still believe that research should try to be as objective as possible while realizing that all observations are researcher dependent and have error. Research should strive to reduce error as much as possible.My reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions does not conflict with what was written in our Chapter. We did not claim that data are unbiased but rather that research should try to limit bias and try to interpret observations that can be supported by specific behavior.Philosophy, or more properly model building, should lead research. Assumptions that appear in a model are just that. They are assumptions. Not fact; not unbiased opinion. But these assumptions or philosophical conclusions should not be called research in music education because they do not provide any behavioral evidence as support. The deductive process used in philosophy (syllogistic reasoning, for example) should help to develop hypotheses that can be investigated by an inductive process (data collection). Philosophy is a time honored scholarly activity. We certainly do not mean to diminish its importance. All research should have a philosophical underpinning that should produce a theoretical model. This model then should be tested by research. Our Handbook Chapter takes this position. Philosophy is philosophy, not research.Ferrara paraphrases Rom Harre3 by stating thatthere are at least three realms of scientific research and theory: the first realm is marked by ordinary perception in which what is known is based on observable and empirically verifiable facts; in the second realm, perception may catch up with conception–there is a promise of technological development... through which researchers will eventually be able to 'observe' and empirically verify what they only conceived (as in philosophical inquiry) as the probable explanation; and in the third realm there are genuine theoretical acts of imagination... that will never be directly (italics added) perceived, for example, empirically observed or verified.Ferrara points out that this "positivist dictum [the Harre quote above]... is unrealistic in relation to actual (italics added) scientific research and practice."4 It is not clear to which "actual scientific research and practice" Ferrara refers. This entire view is misguided. Ferrara does not believe "the methodology of the natural sciences can appropriately be utilized in the human sciences and arts research, retaining the level of objectivity (italics added) achieved in the natural sciences." Who does Ferrara believes carries out natural science research? Are they not humans, constrained by the same problems of observation that all humans encounter? Are their observations more "objective" as Ferrara seems to believe? The natural scientist, like all other researchers, faces the issue of error in observing phenomena that all researchers face. (See the many examples of [End Page 90] this view in Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff.5 ) Neither philosophical inquiry, nor logical positivism, nor the "new realism" approach that Ferrara proposes for research is free from observational error. The role of all research is to minimize error.A quick romp through some... (shrink)

Realism about musical works is often tied to some type of Platonism. Nominalism, which posits that musical works exist and that they are concrete objects, goes with ontological realism much less often than Platonism: there is a long tradition which holds human-created objects (artifacts) to be mind-dependent. Musical Platonism leads to the well-known paradox of the impossibility of creating abstract objects, and so it has been suggested that only some form of nominalism becoming dominant in the ontology of (...) art could cause a great change in the field and open up new possibilities. This paper aims to develop a new metaontological view starting from the widely accepted claim that musical works are created. It contends that musical works must be concrete and created objects of some sort, but, nevertheless, they are mind-independent, and we should take the revisionary methodological stance. Although musical works are artifacts, what people think about them does not determine what musical works are. Musical works are similar to natural objects in the following sense: semantic externalism applies to the term ‘musical work’ because, firstly, they possess a shared nature, and, secondly, we can be mistaken about what they are. (shrink)

Listeners can attend to and track instruments or singing voices in complex musical mixtures, even though the acoustical energy of sounds from individual instruments may overlap in time and frequency. In popular music, lead vocals are often accompanied by sound mixtures from a variety of instruments, such as drums, bass, keyboards, and guitars. However, little is known about how the perceptual organization of such musical scenes is affected by selective attention, and which acoustic features play the most important role. (...) To investigate these questions, we explored the role of auditory attention in a realistic musical scenario. We conducted three online experiments in which participants detected single cued instruments or voices in multi-track musical mixtures. Stimuli consisted of 2-s multi-track excerpts of popular music. In one condition, the target cue preceded the mixture, allowing listeners to selectively attend to the target. In another condition, the target was presented after the mixture, requiring a more “global” mode of listening. Performance differences between these two conditions were interpreted as effects of selective attention. In Experiment 1, results showed that detection performance was generally dependent on the target’s instrument category, but listeners were more accurate when the target was presented prior to the mixture rather than the opposite. Lead vocals appeared to be nearly unaffected by this change in presentation order and achieved the highest accuracy compared with the other instruments, which suggested a particular salience of vocal signals in musical mixtures. In Experiment 2, filtering was used to avoid potential spectral masking of target sounds. Although detection accuracy increased for all instruments, a similar pattern of results was observed regarding the instrument-specific differences between presentation orders. In Experiment 3, adjusting the sound level differences between the targets reduced the effect of presentation order, but did not affect the differences between instruments. While both acoustic manipulations facilitated the detection of targets, vocal signals remained particularly salient, which suggest that the manipulated features did not contribute to vocal salience. These findings demonstrate that lead vocals serve as robust attractor points of auditory attention regardless of the manipulation of low-level acoustical cues. (shrink)

From artistic performances in the visual arts and in music to motor control in gymnastics, from tool use to chess and language, humans excel in a variety of skills. On the plausible assumption that skillful behavior is a visible manifestation of intelligence, a theory of intelligence—whether human or not—should be informed by a theory of skills. More controversial is the question as to whether, in order to theorize about intelligence, we should study certain skills in particular. My target is (...) the view that only a particular class/kind of skill (i.e., ‘theoretical’, or ‘intellectual’ skills, versus ‘practical’, or ‘embodied’ skills) manifests intelligence, or especially does so. I call this view ‘Intelligence Elitism’. Intelligence Elitism is pervasive in popular culture, in academic culture, as well as in psychometrics. It has, arguably, a long pedigree in philosophy (though explicit arguments for it are rare). But it is a substantive view which, if false, can promote unfairness. In this article, I defend Intelligence Socialism—the claim that intelligent behavior is everywhere skillful behavior is. I go on to isolate the best case for the further Elitist claim that, even if all skillful behavior is intelligent in some modest sense of ‘intelligence’, there is a principled difference in intelligence between theoretical, or intellectual, skills, on one side, and practical, or embodied skills, on the other, and I show it wanting. (shrink)

Ontological approaches to the arts have neglected art forms such as dance. This hinders analysis of the metaphysical similarities and differences between different art forms. In this paper, I develop a metaphysical realist ontological approach to dance and sport that is grounded in embodiment. I first examine the debate between descriptivism and metaontological realism in the philosophy of arts in the context of Thomasson’s descriptive approach and Dodd’s metaontological approach of folk-theoretic modesty. Following Dodd, I adopt a realist metaontological (...) approach to dance as an art form, drawing on philosophical debates within dance. I then review metaphysical approaches to sport and argue that most such approaches are based on abstract, top-down models. I therefore propose an ontological account of sport and dance based on metaontological realism and grounded in embodied movement knowledge. Drawing on Schaffer’s concept of ground functionalism, I use this approach to compare the aesthetic and bodily aspects of sport and dance in terms of elite-level movement knowledge. I describe how the embodiment of such movement knowledge through practice permits dancers and athletes to create expert movements. Drawing on findings from neuroscientific research, I argue that dancers and athletes, through the process of physiological plasticity, acquire embodied memories that are transformed into new bodily and behavioral dispositions. I believe that the metaphysical realist ontological approach presented here could help to broaden the focus in arts ontology to encompass movement disciplines such as sport and dance. This account may also engender cross-disciplinary research and encourage philosophers to explore the role of movement in arts such as music. (shrink)

"Francis Klingender died young, at the age of 48. He left behind a pioneer work: Art and the Industrial Revolution, and published a stimulating and original work of art criticism entitled Goya in the Democratic Tradition. His exhibition of English political caricature marked the starting point of a long overdue reappraisal of this wealth of English political art. This was only part of his contribution to Marxist thought. The essay reprinted here was first published in 1943."--.

Modernism is both a contested aesthetic category and a powerful political statement. Modernist music was condemned as degenerate by the Nazis and forcibly replaced by socialist realism under the Soviets. Sympathetic philosophers and critics have interpreted it as a vital intellectual defence against totalitarianism, yet some American critics consider it elitist, undemocratic, and even unnatural. Drawing extensively on the philosophy of Heidegger and Badiou, Quilting Points proposes a new dialectical theory of faithful, reactive, and obscure subjective responses (...) to musical modernism, which embraces all the music of Western modernity. (shrink)

In this article, I assume that musical works are abstract types, and I raise and address a new question concerning musical ontology that may take the types view at least a step further: When do musical works cease to exist? I then propound my view about musical works as types, which is somewhat like the Aristotelian Realist position concerning universals. Next, I address some objections to that view. Finally, I provide some grounds for rejecting alternative views that see Western classical (...) musical works before 1950 (the sorts of musical works the discussion here is restricted to) either as classes or else as kinds. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Temporal Registers in the Realist NovelIlya BernsteinIThere are two ways of thinking about time: in terms of sequences of events, and in terms of time-scales. In the first case, each event is conceived of as having a "before" and an "after": it is categorized as part of a sequence and distinguished from other events by its position in that sequence. In the second case, there is no "before" and (...) "after": events are conceived of as occupying different time-scales and distinguished from one another by being associated with durations of greater or lesser magnitude.1 Thus, the same situation may be categorized alternatively as an unfolding succession of events (event 1, event 2, event 3...) or as a progression of overlapping events on expanding time-scales (the second-event, the minute-event, the hour-event...). In what follows, I will argue that this distinction can shed light on narrative structure—as well as musical form—and that it has particularly interesting implications for literary realism.It may be claimed that this distinction between two ways of approaching time has been an explicit theme in the arts over the course of their history. Different musical forms, for instance, may be seen as being oriented toward one paradigm or the other. Thus, melody aesthetically suggests a sequential conception of time. Melodic forms are supposed to take listeners on a journey from point A to point B, by way of a succession of points in between. By contrast, a form such as the fugue addresses itself to discovering different degrees of density and intensity within the [End Page 173] same event, as it were. It adds layer upon layer, aesthetically dilating the event without moving away from it. The ideology of melody, we might say, thus leans toward a conception of time as a sequence, while the ideology of the fugue suggests a scaling notion of time.Echoes of the distinction between these two aesthetic alternatives may also be found in literature, as embodied in different approaches to narrative. Narrative, conceived of as a succession of episodes, suggests a sequential conception of time, oriented around a "before" and an "after." Yet within these parameters, a spectrum of tendencies may be identified. In some literary forms, the succession of episodes is organized to suggest the idea of a passage from one event to the next (Shakespearean drama, the realist novel), as the notions of "before" and "after" are projected onto ideas of past and future. In others, the succession of episodes represents the layer-by-layer assembly of some larger imaginative or conceptual construct (as is true, in different ways, of such texts as Plato's dialogues, the Divine Comedy, and any number of religious, philosophical, or allegorical narratives): "before" and "after" are interpreted not so much in terms of a past and a future, as in terms of premises and conclusions.Within this spectrum, the novel—and perhaps the realist novel in particular—would appear to be the literary form par excellence that embodies a sequential conception of time. It thematizes and dramatizes time's passage—the unknowability of the future and the irretrievability of the past—more exhaustively than any other narrative genre. Yet as I hope to show below, while the explicit themes of literary realism treat fictional events as a sequence (event 1, event 2, event 3...), its implicit organization is grounded in time-scales and directs readers' attention to differentiations among events taking place at different temporal registers (the sentence-event, the chapter-event, the novel-event...).III would like to begin exploring the theoretical distinction laid out above by going back to music and focusing on an empirical observation that has been made about a variety of musical forms. It has been pointed out that when people listen to a piece of music, they retain in their memory, at greater or lesser degrees of awareness, a certain segment of what they have just heard; this memory serves as a background for their perception of incoming sounds and as a frame of reference for their experience of them. Consequently, musical forms may be characterized, [End Page 174] compared, and distinguished from one another based... (shrink)

Between the two World Wars, in Belgrade and Serbia, seven musical journals were published:?Musical Gazette?,?Music?,?Herald of the Musical Society Stankovic?,?Sound?,?Journal of The South Slav Choral Union?,?Slavic Music? and?Music Review?. The influence of marxism can be observed in?Musical Herald?,?Sound? and?Slavic Music?. A Marxist influence is obvious through indications of determinism. Namely, some writers observed elements of musical art and its history as consequences of sociopolitical and economic processes. Still, journals published articles of domestic and foreign authors who (...) interpreted the relation between music, society and economy in a much more moderate and subtle manner. Editors and associates of these journals also had proscriptive ambitions - they recommended and even determined regulations for composers about what kind of music to write according to social goals and needs. According to tendencies in Marxism, there was a follow up of musical work in the Soviet Union. Editors tried not to be one-sided. There were writings about the USSR by left orientated associates as much as emigrants from that country, and articles of Soviet authors were translated. Also, there were critical tones about musical development in the first country of socialism. Serbian musical periodicals recognized the enormous threat from fascism. Also, there were articles about influence of Nazi ideology and dictatorship on musical prospects in Germany. Since Germany annexed Sudetenland in 1938,?Musical Herald? expressed support to musicians and people of that friendly country by devoting the October and November 1938 issue to Czechoslovak music, along with an appropriate introduction by the editor, Stana Djuric-Klajn. (shrink)

Introduction -- The type/token theory introduced -- Motivating the type/token theory : repeatability -- Nominalist approaches to the ontology of music -- Musical anti-realism -- The type/token theory elaborated -- Types I : abstract, unstructured, unchanging -- Types introduced and nominalism repelled -- Types as abstracta -- Types as unstructured entities -- Types as fixed and unchanging -- Types II : platonism -- Introduction : eternal existence and timelessness -- Types and properties -- The eternal existence of properties (...) reconsidered -- Types and patterns -- Defending the type/token theory I -- Unstructuredness and analogical predication -- Musical works as fixed and unchanging -- Abstractness and audibility (again) -- Works and interpretations -- Conclusion and resumé -- Defending the type/token theory II : musical platonism -- Platonism it is : replies to Anderson and Levinson -- The existence conditions of works of music -- Composition as creative discovery -- The nature of the compositional process : replies to objections -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : a reply to Levinson -- Composition and aesthetic appraisal : understanding, interpretation, and correctness -- Musical works as continuants : a theory rejected -- A theory introduced -- Explicating and motivating the continuant view -- The continuant view and repeatability -- Further objections to the continuant view -- Musical works as compositional actions : a critique -- Currie's action-type hypothesis -- Davies's performance theory -- Sonicism I : against instrumentalism -- Sonicism introduced -- Sonicism motivated : moderate empiricism -- Instrumentation : timbral sonicism introduced -- Scores -- Instrumentation, artistic properties, and aesthetic content -- Levinson's rejoinder -- Sonicism II : against contextualism -- Introduction : formulating contextualism -- Contextualist ontological proposals -- Levinson's doppelgänger thought-experiments -- Artistic, representational, and object-directed expressive properties -- Aesthetic and non-object-directed expressive properties -- Conclusion : the place of context. (shrink)

Political realists complain that much contemporary political philosophy is insufficiently attentive to various facts about politics yet some political philosophers insist that any critique of normative claims on grounds of unrealism is misplaced. In this paper I focus on the methodological position G.A. Cohen champions in order assess the extent to which this retort succeeds in nullifying the realist critique of contemporary political philosophy. I argue that Cohen’s work does not succeed in doing so because the political principles that we (...) are prepared to endorse are hostage to various fact-sensitive judgements about how they apply to the political domain. I then argue that this discredits various philosophical approaches to political theorising which begin by utilising non-political thought-experiments, such as Cohen’s own Why Not Socialism? (shrink)

Musical knowledge is largely implicit. It is acquired without awareness of its complex rules, through interaction with a large number of samples during musical enculturation. Whereas several studies explored implicit learning of mostly abstract and less ecologically valid features of Western music, very little work has been done with respect to ecologically valid stimuli as well as non-Western music. The present study investigated implicit learning of modal melodic features in North Indian classical music in a realistic and (...) ecologically valid way. It employed a cross-grammar design, using melodic materials from two modes that use the same scale. Findings indicated that Western participants unfamiliar with Indian music incidentally learned to identify distinctive features of each mode. Confidence ratings suggest that participants' performance was consistently correlated with confidence, indicating that they became aware of whether they were right in their responses; that is, they possessed explicit judgment knowledge. Altogether our findings show incidental learning in a realistic ecologically valid context during only a very short exposure, they provide evidence that incidental learning constitutes a powerful mechanism that plays a fundamental role in musical acquisition. (shrink)

Summary In the current cognitive theory of music, concepts of Gestalt psychology are referred to in various ways. For example, neurocognitive models of music perception address the formation of auditory Gestalts as a stage in the formation of meaning. However, this view runs counter to central premises of Gestalt psychology of Carl Stumpf’s school, which precisely did not describe Gestalts as synthesized phenomena. Nevertheless, it is argued here, borrowing from Gestalt concepts can promote current non-reductionist positions. They conceptualize (...) musical perception not in the ways of information theory, but of phenomenology and action theory. Here the theory of affordance developed by J.J. Gibson in close collaboration with his wife Eleanor J. Gibson stands out. It was explicitly introduced into musicological research by Eric Clarke, but without reference to its Gestalt psychological roots. The article explores theories of musical affordance with the help of further methodological tools, which can be assigned to the philosophical schools of direct realism and constructivism. They open up the possibility of a non-cognitivist and non-representational perspective on musical perception. It turns out that Gestalt psychological concepts also have a catalytic effect on the expansion of our understanding of musical perception in this constellation, although this connection has hardly been visible so far. (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.

Realism about types is the view that types are abstract and repeatable objects. Although type realists seem to agree that types, unlike properties, are objects in their own right, they argue that there is a metaphysically intimate tie between the existence conditions of types and properties. In particular, most type realists believe that types are, in a certain sense, determined by the properties that underlie them. I argue that this is a mistake, especially for those type realists who believe (...) that social and cultural types such as works of music and fiction or words are artifacts. I offer an alternative version of type realism where social and cultural types are dependent objects that should be understood in analogy with concrete artifacts. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Globalizing Music Education. A Framework by Alexandra Kertz-WelzelGeir JohansenAlexandra Kertz-Welzel, Globalizing Music Education. A Framework (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018)A recurring challenge for the scholarship of music education is that, in a time of information overflow, we still miss significant knowledge about each other’s work, disseminated across national and cultural borders. However, as such challenges are situated within larger, more general frames of cultural as (...) well as political forces and powers, we need systematic approaches to handling them, based on international and global perspectives.Alexandra Kertz-Welzel’s book Globalizing Music Education constitutes an excellent ground for such work. Her purpose is to provide a conceptual framework, entailing “a theoretical structure of categories and conceptual elements that can facilitate becoming a united and diverse global music education community”1 which is “culturally sensitive.”2 She constructs the framework by introducing its conceptual elements along with unfolding the argument within each chapter. For some readers, it might have been easier to achieve the framework structure if described explicitly, for example in a model. For others, it may be exciting to explore it gradually together with the author as she develops her narrative.Kertz-Welzel intends the book to be a guide “for people’s own scholarly journeys, as well as for the profession.”3 As her point of departure, she takes a [End Page 97] comprehensive perspective, drawing the readers’ attention to how “[g]lobalization and internationalization have shaped our lives in ways that we do not notice anymore.”4 Pointing to a variety of non-musical as well as musical examples and relating her overview to social anthropologist Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s5 eight dimensions of globalization, she demonstrates her comprehensive knowledge of relevant information within other fields along with the ability to utilize it in order to enrich her analyses. This attention to other fields represents a recurring trait within the book, significantly increasing its quality.Modestly and realistically, she states that the book “can only be a first attempt to start a professional discourse about the impact globalization and internationalization have on music education worldwide....”6 Here, one might be confused about whether ‘discourse’ points to ‘discussion’ or discourse theory,7 but the latter perspective is brought in more clearly as she moves along. Secondly, the attention towards ‘impact,’ occurring several times throughout the book, raises a question about the balance between a focus on coping with the consequences of globalization and emphasizing our agency in these matters. Bringing in the latter by statements such as “[w]e are actors, not victims”8 and increasing this balance when discussing policy in Chapter Three, Kertz-Welzel’s argument still reveals a potential for further discussion. Moreover, addressing the challenges of globalization, we need to “help [students] develop different kinds of musicianship connected to their personal music identities,”9 she holds. Again, a potential for further discussion emerges, this time about the weight on the personal and individual over the collective. This issue might be an interesting one to discuss further within a globalized music education community.What is globalizing music education about, then? A condensed version of Kertz-Welzel’s argument might include addressing the challenges we face today by uniting our efforts and using the multi-faceted strengths we have, across the globe, in order to arrive at a united yet diverse and culturally sensitive global music education community.The main body of the book contains three chapters. In Chapter One, Kertz-Welzel distinguishes between internationalization and globalization by connecting ‘international’ with relations between nations and national organizations, while globalization rests within a notion of a worldwide community, representing a new unity based on global visions and interests, constantly transformed and in search of its identity. “This notion of globalizing can concern areas such as music education,”10 she suggests. The chapter addresses the impact globalization and internationalization have on education, music, and language, making those concepts constitute cornerstones of the suggested framework.Addressing education, Kertz-Welzel holds that globalization and internationalization have changed education from being a clearly national endeavor [End Page 98] rooted in distinctive, national values and traditions to becoming a cultural project of the world society... (shrink)

This essay, written in memory of Erik Olin Wright, explores the possibility of liberal socialism. Wright sought to rescue both liberalism and socialism from their demonstrated capacity for depredation. His legacy challenges reformers to proceed with the audacity of real, and realistic, utopianism together with an awareness that, unfortunately, the obverse of an appealing utopianism always beckons.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Deeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and ArtSusan FeaginDeeper Than Reason: Emotion and Its Role in Literature, Music, and Art, by Jenefer Robinson; 516 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005, $35.00.Jenefer Robinson's lucid yet closely-argued book has four parts. The first part presents a theory of the emotions in general. The second part develops and defends the view that "some works of literature... (...) need to be experienced emotionally if they are to be properly understood" (p. 3) and draws some implications for other arts. Part Three develops a new theory of expression, and Part Four examines the expression of emotion in and listeners' emotional responses to music. Robinson applies her theory of emotions and how they arise and are expressed in response to individual works of art throughout, and the extended discussions of Edith Wharton's The Reef and one of the intermezzi from Brahms's Opus 117 set are not to be missed.Robinson's use of psychological research to develop a philosophical theory of emotion is characteristic of an increasingly popular practice in the philosophy of mind. Her descriptions of this often highly technical literature are among the best with respect to accuracy and clarity. On most accounts, emotions are mental states; on Robinson's, they are mental processes. These processes are always initiated by "an automatic 'affective appraisal' [that] induces characteristic physiological and behavioral changes and is succeeded by... 'cognitive monitoring' of the situation" (p. 3). The appraisal is also referred to as a 'non-cognitive' appraisal, which may sound like an oxymoron. Robinson explains: these appraisals are non-cognitive "in the sense that they occur without any conscious deliberation or awareness, and that they do not involve any complex information processing" (p. 45; see also p. 59). Appraisals have a valence, positive or negative, sufficient to induce a characteristic pattern of physiological and (roughly, involuntary) behavioral responses, such as alterations in galvanic skin response and movements of facial muscles. These changes are succeeded by cognitive monitoring of the situation, resulting in conceptually more sophisticated assessments of one's initial response with respect to its suitability to the circumstances and in relation to one's beliefs. Thus, cognitive monitoring generates the more cognitively complex emotions, and here she is in agreement [End Page 420] with the "judgment theorists" (p. 90) that these emotions are individuated by cognitions. Robinson seeks a univocal account of emotions for humans and other sentient creatures, though with humans it is possible for a "complex cognition" to trigger the process that constitutes having an emotion and cognitive feedback may occur in general throughout the process in ways that are not possible for creatures lacking the relevant complex mental capacities (p. 93).The fact that complex cognitions can constitute the initial stage of an emotion makes it possible to respond emotionally to literature. As in emotional situations in real life, emotions are initiated by automatic affective appraisals that have to do with one's own wants and interests, calling our attention to something important in the novel, which may lay down its own memory system, linked with bodily feelings, which is then subject to cognitive appraisal and reappraisal. Cognitive reflection facilitates the understanding of narratives as well as characters, and with respect to the latter, she argues, deploys the same mental systems that are engaged in understanding people. Further, it is not merely the beliefs that one may acquire as a result of the process that is educational, but the process of emotional understanding itself (p. 155). Indeed, Robinson endorses the strong claim that for at least some novels, those that are part of the "Great Tradition" of nineteenth-century realistic British and American literature, it is necessary to experience them emotionally to understand them.Part Three exposits a theory of the expression of emotion simpliciter and then makes adjustments to it to build a theory of expression in art, taking advantage of Romantic theories of expression developed in the works of, for example, Collingwood. Reflection on ordinary expression allows an artist to clarify and articulate "what it is like to go through the emotion process," which may be revealed both in the... (shrink)

The aesthetic realist interprets many descriptions of music as metaphorical descriptions of aesthetic properties of music. I argue that aesthetic realism requires that nonaesthetic words are used to express both aesthetic and nonaesthetic concepts. But having distinguished the concepts, some plausible account must be given of their relation. A causal account of the relation between the possession of aesthetic and nonaesthetic concepts provides this, since the concepts are distinct but connected. I explore and defend this account. I (...) consider the conditions of aesthetic concept possession and also the appropriation of nonaesthetic words in aesthetic descriptions. (shrink)

In “Sideways Music”, Ned Markosian presents the aesthetic value variance of sideways music as a case against what the Spacetime Thesis—the thesis that time is one of four similar dimensions that make up spacetime. Critics have already raised worries about the premises of his argument. In this paper, I focus on Markosian’s assumed aesthetic realism. I argue that there is a version of aesthetic realism—a version that admits aesthetic value gluts—that is consistent with both the Spacetime (...) Thesis and the aesthetic variance of sideways music. If this is right, then sideways music may simply be a non-issue for proponents of the Spacetime Thesis. (shrink)

Tippett is often cast as a composer with a strong visionary streak, but what does that mean for a twentieth-century artist? In this multi-faceted study, David Clarke explores Tippett's complex creative imagination - its dialogue between a romantic's aspirations to the ideal and absolute, and a modernist's sceptical realism. He shows how the musical formations of works such as The Midsummer Marriage, King Priam, and The Vision of Saint Augustine resonate with the aesthetic and theoretical ideas of key figures (...) in modern Western culture - some known to have been influential to the composer, others not usually associated with him. Analyses of late works such as the Triple Concerto and Byzantium also speculate on Tippett's sexuality as a critical element in his creative and political consciousness. (shrink)