Musical formalism is often portrayed as the enemy of artistic freedom. Its main representative, Eduard Hanslick, is seen as a purist who, by emphasizing musical rules, aims at restricting music criticism and even musical practices themselves. It may also seem that formalism is depriving music of its ability to have moral significance, as the semantic connection to the extramusical is denied by the formalistic view. In my paper, I defend formalism by placing Hanslick’s argument in (...) a Kantian framework. It is not hard to find Kantian elements in Hanslick’s work, such as his emphasis on the contemplative and disinterested nature of the aesthetic judgment, the nonconceptuality of music’s content, and his insistence that “beauty has no purpose.” I argue further that Hanslick’s formalism is in fact motivated by and manifests the Kantian conception of freedom as self-legislation. Thus understood, the kind of moral significance music may have rests upon its own autonomous rules. (shrink)

The article presents Hanslick’s aesthetic formalism as the starting point of the contemporary aesthetics of music. His book, written in the 19th century, is considered contemporary because it still proves to be influential and fruitful in the contemporary theoretical circles, especially in the modern analytic aesthetics of music, where it is widely cited and discussed. The article positions Hanslick’s book in relation to his nearest predecessors Kant and Herbart, and to the neighbouring area where the formalistic view appeared, (...) namely in Fidler’s visual formalism in fine arts. It is shown that by being the first piece of writing to attempt to systematically and comprehensively determine the essence and the content of music, and the criteria for evaluation of musical worth, Hanslick’s book sets the foundation for a rigorous examination of the aesthetics of music, and also breaks off with the widely ingrained preconceptions of music, which were in themselves an obstacle to establishing the aesthetics of music as a scientific discipline. (shrink)

I argue that Wittgenstein was no lifelong musical formalist. I further contend that the attribution of musical formalism obscures, while the break with it I propose explains, the role that music played in the development of his philosophy of language. What is more, I sketch a perspective on the later Wittgenstein’s remarks on the music and musical understanding that supports my claims. Throughout my discussion, rather than assimilating Hanslick’s and Wittgenstein’s views on music, I (...) point to similarities and differences between them, suggesting that taking snapshots and putting them side by side sheds more light on how they are related to each other. (shrink)

This article defends a formalist interpretation of Wittgenstein’s later thought on music by comparing it with Eduard Hanslick’s musical formalism. In doing so, it returns to a disagreement I have had with Bela Szabados who, in his book Wittgenstein as a Philosophical Tone-Poet, claims that the attribution of formalism obscures the role that music played in the development of Wittgenstein’s thought. The paper scrutinizes the four arguments Szabados presents to defend his claim, pertaining to alleged differences between (...) Wittgenstein and Hanslick on their accounts of theory, beauty, rules, and the broader significance of music. I will argue that in each case the similarities between Wittgenstein’s and Hanslick’s respective views outshine possible differences. Ultimately, I will argue that instead of rendering music a marginal phenomenon suited for mere entertainment, formalism –as presented by Hanslick and Wittgenstein, whom I read as influenced by Kant’s aesthetics– underscores music’s ability to show fundamental features of reality and our relation to it. Music does this precisely by being treated as a sensuous yet structured medium that is irreducible to any conceptually determined domain. (shrink)

The present work addresses the aesthetic philosophy of Eduard Hanslick in order to demarcate it as an epistemological approach to music and a paradigmatic case for musical autonomy. The epistemological assumptions that guided the work On the Musically Beautiful and its most likely influences were analyzed. We conclude by presenting musical idea as an epistemological formulation strongly influenced by positivism and as a qualifying principle of autonomous musical perception. We add to this conclusion a disambiguation (...) with Kant›s concept of aesthetic idea. (shrink)

The paper deals with the formalistic view on music presented in Eduard Hanslick’s treatise On the Musically Beautiful, which is taken to be the foundingwork of the aesthtetics of music. In the paper I propose an interpretation of Hanslick’s treatise which differs on many points from the interpretations displayed in the works of several most influential contemporary aestheticians of music. My main thesis is that Hanslick’s treatise is misunderstood and incorrectly presented by these authors. I try to (...) demonstrate this thesis by referring to Hanslick’s original formulations in the German edition and by showing that my interpretation renders Hanslick’s view far more coherent and his arguments successful in showing his main conclusions. Accepting this alternative interpretation should have further implications on many contemporary theories in the aesthetics of music that reckon on the failure of Hanslick’s arguments as presented by usual interpretations. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

This dissertation is comprised of two big essays. The first seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of music analysis writ large. I argue for adopting a conception of musical analysis as a practical activity oriented toward the having of what Dewey calls "integral experiences." I cash out this idea with help from Wittgenstein's notion of aspect perception ("seeing as"), whose musical applications I demonstrate in a discussion of Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. I then use (...) my model of music analysis to give a reading of David Lewin's analysis of Schubert's "Morgengruss." The second essay seeks to understand what is at stake in the project of Schenkerian musical analysis in particular. I offer an extended reconstruction of Schenker's theory of organic unity in response to objections to Schenker's "necessitarian" language, i.e. his penchant for claiming that a musical masterwork must be as it is (in some to-be-determined sense of "must"). I accomplish this by giving a normative reading of Schenker's theory of absolute music, a reading which understands Schenker's musical absolutism as at root a theory of the proper norms of musical hearing. I then argue that the observance of these norms induces one to explain musical structures teleologically. Schenker's necessitarian language, I contend, makes sense once it is situated within the context of Kant's theory of biological explanation, as set out in his Critique of Teleological Judgment, the second half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment. (shrink)

I try to indicate this special quality of classical intelligibility by linking it with the notion of "dual structure," a notion which should not be flattened to mean any sort of intelligibility to those listeners deemed "competent," especially if the term "competence" is used without qualification. Dual structure in music, as I construe it, is an intrastructural system of reference between pairs of discrete semiotic constructs both members of which are in some sense wholly embodied in a given (...) class='Hi'>musical structure. These constructs include a general ground of meaning and more particularized semiotic configurations derived from that ground; and because both are present in the musical structure, the relationship between them—the meaning of the music—can be retrieved directly, wholly, and on a general scale. No extrastructural mediating explanation or specialized information or training is needed; the interpreter need merely use the musical equivalent of reason. The archetype of such a system in music seems to be the relation of implication or self-generation that obtains between premise and conclusion within a pure system of logic, which, as described by Kant in his account of theoretical reason, would be universally intelligible. Rose Rosengard Subotnik, assistant professor of music at the University of Chicago, is the author of articles on nineteenth-century music. Her essay which prompted this exchange, "The Cultural Message of Musical Semiology: Some Thoughts on Music, Language, and Criticism since the Enlightenment," appeared in the Summer 1978 issue of Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Peter Kivy has said that the power of purely instrumental music remains an unexplained wonder. With this larger question in mind, I will consider: the issues in musical aesthetics that led to what Kivy termed his enhanced formalism, his conception of expressive properties in music and how a distinction between having and understanding an emotion can help clarify this issues here, and, most importantly for Kivy’s larger mystery, the way that counterpoint, in an often unrecognized way, can (...) present mimetic content of a kind that can explain the sense of musical profundity that it often awakens. It may turn out that absolute music’s profundity can be explained by the resonances this kind of layered and complex music has with the living, the ordering, the making sense, of a life. (shrink)

In this article, I consider whether a suitably stripped-down version of Kant's aesthetic theory could nevertheless provide philosophical foundations for musical formalism. I begin by distinguishing between formalism as a view about the nature of music and formalism as an approach to music criticism, arguing that Kant's aesthetics only rules out the former. Then, using an example from the work of musicologist and composer Edward T. Cone, I isolate the characteristics of formalist music criticism. With this (...) characterization in mind, I conclude by showing that even if Kant's aesthetic theory is reduced to its most fundamental claims, the logic of formalist music criticism precludes its practice within even a kantian perspective. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers of art have worried about whether Kant has a coherent theory of music on account of two perceived tensions in his view. First, there appears to be a conflict between his formalist and expressive commitments. Second (and even worse), Kant defends seemingly contradictory claims about music being beautiful and merely agreeable, that is, not beautiful. Against these critics, I show that Kant has a consistent view of music that reconciles these tensions. I argue that, (...) for Kant, music can be experienced as either agreeable or beautiful depending on the attitude we take toward it. Although it is tempting to think he argues that we experience music as agreeable when we attend to its expressive qualities and as beautiful when we attend to its formal properties, I demonstrate that he actually claims that we are able to judge music as beautiful only if we are sensitive to the expression of emotion through musical form. With this revised understanding of Kant's theory of music in place, I conclude by sketching a Kantian solution to a central problem in the philosophy of music: given that music is not sentient, how can it express emotion? (shrink)

Music's status as an art form was distrusted in the context of German idealist philosophy which exerted an unparalleled influence on the entire nineteenth century. Hegel insisted that the content of a work of art should be grasped in concepts in order to establish its spiritual substantiality (Geistigkeit), and that no object, word or image could accurately represent the content and meaning of a musical work. In the mid-nineteenth century, Friedrich Theodor Vischer and other Hegelian aestheticians kept insisting (...) on art's conceptual clarity, but they adapted the aesthetic system on which this requirement had been based. Their adaptations turned out to be decisive for the development of music criticism, to such an extent that music critics used them to point out musical content and to confirm music's autonomy as an art form. This book unravels the network of music critics and philosophers, including not only Hegel but also Franz Liszt, Franz Brendel, and Eduard Hanslick, whose works shaped public opinions of music."--Publisher's description. (shrink)

I argue for an enactive account of musical experience — that is, the experience of listening ‘deeply’(i.e., sensitively and understandingly) to a piece of music. The guiding question is: what do we do when we listen ‘deeply’to music? I argue that these music listening episodes are, in fact, doings. They are instances of active perceiving, robust sensorimotor engagements with and manipulations of sonic structures within musical pieces. Music is thus experiential art, and in Nietzsche’s (...) words, ‘we listen to music with our muscles’. This paper attempts to explicate and defend this claim. First, I discuss enactive approaches to consciousness and cognition generally. Next, I apply an enactive model of perceptual consciousness to the experience of listening to music. To clarify what is at stake, I use Peter Kivy’s ‘enhanced formalism’ as a philosophical foil. I then look at how the animate body shapes musical experience. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of musical arousal that takes into account key demands of formalist philosophers such as Peter Kivy and Nick Zangwill. Formalists prioritise our understanding and appreciation of the music itself. As a result, they demand that any feelings we have in response to music must be directed at the music alone, without being distracted by non-musical associations. To accommodate these requirements I appeal to a mechanism of contagion which I (...) synthesize with the expectation-based arousal mechanism proposed by Leonard Meyer. This account connects musical expressivity and arousal in a way that formalists have rejected, but I argue that it provides the best explanation of our observations of listener responses while also focusing on the music itself. (shrink)

The reflections on music are crucial in the philosophy of language and the mind of the second Wittgenstein. These reflections go around the comparisons Wittgenstein did between meaning and understanding language, and meaning and understanding music. Musical passages show a language as independent from reality, i.e. objects, events or mental states, centered instead in intonations, conclusions, parenthesis, confirmations, questions and answers, a phenomenon enough studied in musicology. Two interpretations on the signification of musical meaning are analyzed: (...) Ahonen’s formalist view [2005], based in the following of rules, and Scruton’s expressive view [2004], based on the comparison between the intuitive recognition of a mental state “hidden” behind the facial expressions. As a conclusion we arrive to a mixed argument: Either of the alternatives whether annulling the other, are possibly telling about Wittgenstein’s conception but do not elucidate the problem itself. (shrink)

In international philosophy of music education, there are some philosophers who are important points of reference. One of them is the German Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). While his philosophy is complex, an oversimplified understanding of his ideas turned him into the “bad guy” of international music education philosophy, being in favor for instance of art for its own sake. His assumed ideas are thought to be the foundation of aesthetic education, in opposition to music education concepts promoting praxis (...) and social change. The prominent role Kant plays leads to questions: Can an eighteenth-century philosopher be blamed for twentieth-century music education concepts and their supposed aberrations? And what did Kant really say? By addressing these and related questions, this paper offers fresh perspectives on Kant’s original concept and the role his assumed ideas play in international music education philosophy, aiming at revising some discourses around them. Furthermore, Kant as a case in point, can lead to general considerations about the function of philosophy in music education philosophy. (shrink)

In his article “Kant’s Musical Antiformalism” (Young 2020), with additional clarifications (Young 2021),1 James O. Young argues that Kant is an “antiformalist.”.

Hegel famously argued that Kantian Moralität is an empty formalism. This article offers a defense of Kant’s formalism and suggests that it is crucial to Hegel’s own idealism. My defense, however, depends on reading Kantian morality non-morally, as a theory of normative authority. Through a reading of the Grundlegung and Religion, the article delineates Kant’s hyperbolic formalism—the insistence on giving an account of the form of rational agency by isolating willing from all content. The article accordingly assesses Kant’s understanding of (...) autonomy as a matter of institution-subjection. It also critically engages Henry Allison’s groundbreaking work on Kant. Hegel follows Kant in arguing that determinacy is a matter of institution-subjection, and in the Logic provides a radically formalist justification of the role of normative authority in determinacy. Unlike Kant, who articulates institution-subjection as a matter of an isolated subject, Hegel shows that institution-subjection is a matter of social practices. (shrink)

This is an abridged, paperback edition of Peter le Huray and James Day's invaluable anthology of writings concerned with the role of music in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century aesthetics. This volume retains all the most important and significant items from the original hardcover edition. Over fifty writers are represented here, including such major figures as Rousseau, Kant, Schlegel, Schopenhauer and Hegel, and the useful introductions and biographical details of the original are also retained. The aesthetic literature of the period is (...) profuse but this carefully edited volume offers a balanced selection which illuminates the ways people experienced music and how they came to an understanding in particular of the new music of their day. (shrink)

This paper aims to show how philosophical debates about the nature of music as an art can throw light on one of the problems raised by Plato’s Euthryphro—how can human beings serve the gods?—and applies this to the use of music in worship. The paper gives a broad overview of expressivist, representationalist and formalist philosophies of music. Drawing in part on Hanslick, Nietzsche and Schleiermacher, it argues that formalism as a philosophy of sacred music can generate (...) an answer to Plato’s problem. (shrink)

Compilation of Andrade's writings on musical esthetics. Part of a series of publications edited by Flávia Camargo Toni aimed at making Andrade's collection available for study (for other works edited by Toni, see HLAS 52:5119 and HLAS 54:5167). This book undoubtedly adds to our understanding of Andrade's ideas, revealing his reliance on works by German musicologists such as Hugo Riemann and E. Hanslick"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

I discuss the social dimension of musical experience. I focus on the question of whether there is joint musical listening. One reason for this focus is that Adorno and those in his tradition give us little in the way of an understanding of what the social dimension of musical experience might be. We need a proper clear conception of the issue, which the issue of joint experience yields. I defend a radically individualistic view, while conceding that such (...) a view, inspired by Hanslick, may have political ramifications. I have two arguments. The first is a principled argument against joint musical listening from the impossibility of perceiving the aesthetic properties of music. I connect this with the privacy of our grounds for aesthetic judgements about music. The second argument accepts that joint listening could in principle span different sense modalities, but draws attention to the fact that the experiences on which aesthetic judgements are based cannot be willed in a way they would have to be if there was joint listening. Lastly, I consider two phenomena, of making music together and dancing together, which seem to involve joint listening, but in fact do not. I end by drawing an individualist conclusion about the nature of musical experience. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Music Education for the New Millennium: Theory and Practice Futures for Music Teaching and LearningSean PenderelMusic Education for the New Millennium: Theory and Practice Futures for Music Teaching and Learning, edited by David K. Lines. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2005, 150 pp., $34.95 paper.Music Education for the New Millennium is a 150-page collection of essays focused mainly upon philosophical introspection into the current condition (...) of the profession. Within this volume there are eight philosophic essays and one quantitative research article, by Alastair McPhee, Peter Stollery, and Ros McMillan. Other essays, beyond the work of the editor, were contributed by Thomas Regelski, Wayne Bowman, Robert Davis, Lucy Green, David Elliott, Constantijn Koopman, and Janet Mansfield. This collection contributes to our contemporary quandaries about aesthetics and praxialism in addition to adding pertinent questions for both philosophy and music education.The overall purpose of this volume is to stimulate thinking in ways not accounted for in the classroom or studio environments and expand upon the broader discourses impacting the profession and society (3). Given that Lines organized this volume as a collection about a specified theme, I will approach this review threefold. First, I will examine overall features that were promising and those that were disappointing. Second, each chapter's contributions will be examined in light of the aim of the volume. Lastly, each essay will also be examined for its contributions apart from the volume, due to the fact that all of the works can stand alone.Within this framework, six themes continually emerged throughout the essays. These themes involved the use and abuse of musical meaning; the construction of musical meaning and understanding; language used within advocacy; the difficulties presented by both aesthetics and praxialism; the problems posed by our focus upon psychology; and lastly, the "what works" mentality of efficient systems. These themes are incredibly relevant to the contemporary discussion surrounding music education in addition to benefiting the whole of the profession. In some fashion or another, each author confronts one to many of these issues efficiently and effectively, to the point that the volume and its aim is solidified within Bowman's essay, "Music Education in Nihilistic Times." As a negative point, however, an internal organization around these themes never seems to appear, and without this the volume lacks a certain flow; each chapter stands alone. Although internal organization is petty globally for this volume, it does affect its readability.Regelski's essay appears first and critiques both traditional aesthetics and praxial philosophy. Interestingly, he weighs the potential dangers posed by both and drifts toward the notion of praxis while maintaining a certain aesthetic influence within his philosophy. Through music education's abuse of aesthetics, Regelski chronicles the elevation of experience beyond societal values of participation, production, and the process of music creation. Due to this, the profession has been subject to a certain dependency upon the positive aesthetic experience rather than on the participatory process of education. Furthermore, he notes that aesthetics, when stretched to its philosophic extreme, has had a tendency to become exclusive and elitist. I liken [End Page 117] this to the Gnostic practices within early Christianity. This sect valued a spiritual/aesthetic experience and its resulting "enlightenment," which occurred during a state of ecstasy, to the point of elevating those who had experienced this moment beyond those who had not.To curb this movement, Regelski suggests redefining aesthetics in the tradition of Dewey and Wittgenstein rather than that of Kant. In the former, the aesthetics are tied directly to the using of the object, or the practice of doing and creating. In contrast, in the Kantian tradition, which has dominated music philosophy, the experience becomes removed from the practice and is elevated to a position of esteem, beyond that of understanding. Likewise, praxialism, when taken to its extreme, has the potential to suffer from breadth without depth, which may result in a loss of content and depth of understanding. Regelski suggests that what needs to occur is a balance of depth and breadth with a focus on the development of musicianship. If this occurs then the experience will become valued as a result of participation in the... (shrink)

It is often taken for granted that music, whatever else it is able to do, cannot articulate ideas. This paper aims to refute that formalist claim and present an anti-formalist one showing why thinking formalism true is based on a fallacy and involves a misunderstanding of ordinary language. By ‘idea’ is meant a view, and reflection on that view, which in the limiting case may be a worldview, a Weltanschauung. That in this sense ideas are articulated in music (...) is to say that they are, among other things, presented, conveyed and considered. This goes well beyond the usual anti-formalist claim that music may express emotions. The paper goes on to show how ideas may be articulated in music. This follows from properly understanding how it is that any idea may be articulated. Without music being able to include articulating ideas, the high artistic and cultural value we place upon music, as well as the way people actually talk about music, while being compatible with music having other features that we value, is inexplicable. In this sense the question is raised as to how it is possible to articulate ideas in music. (shrink)

Eduard Hanslick Eduard Hanslick was a Prague-born Austrian aesthetic theorist, music critic, and the first professor of aesthetics and history of music at the University of Vienna, who is commonly considered the founder of musical formalism in aesthetics. His seminal treatise Vom Musikalisch-Schönen of 1854 is one of the most … Continue reading Hanslick, Eduard →.

A recent surge of research has begun to examine music participation and well-being; however, a particular challenge with this work concerns theorizing around the associated well-being benefits of musical participation. Thus, the current research used Self-Determination Theory to consider the potential associations between basic psychological needs (competence, relatedness, and autonomy), self-determined autonomous motivation, and the perceived benefits to well-being controlling for demographic variables and the musical activity parameters. A sample of 192 Australian residents (17-85, Mage = (...) 36.95), who were currently participating in a musical activity at the time, completed an online questionnaire. Results indicated that females were more likely to perceive benefits to their well-being; and that how important an individual considers music in their life was positively related to perceived well-being. Importantly, the analyses also revealed that the basic needs of competency and relatedness were related to overall perceived well-being as well as specifically social, cognitive, and esteem dimensions of well-being. Autonomous motivation demonstrated significant associations with both an overall well-being score as well as four of five specific well-being subscales measured. Collectively, the findings indicate that Self-Determination Theory offers a useful theoretical framework to understanding the relationship between musical participation and well-being. Further, the pattern of findings reiterates the positive associations between musical participation and one’s psychosocial well-being, with broad implications for people involved in the facilitation of musical activity. (shrink)

This essay considers the music curriculum from a philosophical perspective, focusing on the tension between freedom (personal autonomy) and discipline (moral and ethical principles). The approach could be characterized as hermeneutical: the aim is to deepen our understanding through discussing the basic arguments for justifying the inclusion of music education in the curriculum. The essay considers if the view of a broad education that nurtures wisdom in pupils with an optimal balance between freedom and discipline could be (...) adapted to music education. A broad music curriculum supporting freedom and pluralist values and nurturing wisdom in pupils within the framework of moral and ethical principles may provide the justification for music education in our present society. (shrink)

New musicology's rejection of formalist precepts eclipses how the subjectivization of aesthetics institutes the schema of music's opposition to reality. Social Werktreue—fidelity to the work and to the faithful reproduction of an original intent—replaces ideals of aesthetic transcendence with analyses of a work's socially constructed meaning. Hence, absolute music's social demystification positions music criticism within a system of oppositions ratified by bourgeois culture. The power individual works exercise in contesting reality deconstructs formalist dogma and social Werktreue. The (...) temporality evinced when works address us in new situations attests to the work's independent afterlife. By confronting formalist criticism and social critique with the schema Kant initiated when he legitimated aesthetic judgment's transcendental function, this independent afterlife argues against transposing the principle of interpretive fidelity onto the social plane. Works reveal dimensions of experience in the midst of existing social and historical conditions, thereby opening new horizons for music criticism. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the nature of “meaning” and “meaningfulness” in the context of instrumental music education. By doing so, I propose to expand the ways in which instrumental music educators conceive their mission and the ways in which we may instill meaning in people’s lives. Traditionally, pursuits of philosophical deliberation have claimed that meaningfulness comes from either personal happiness (e.g., Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill) or an impersonal sense of duty (e.g., St. (...) Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Immanuel Kant). However, philosopher Susan Wolf (2010) criticizes these positions in favor of a broader perspective, one that arises from understanding that there is a third sort of value, namely “meaningfulness.” Rightly understanding meaningfulness may help us engage more fully with a greater sense and understanding of the full potentials of eudaimonia: a life of significance and value for oneself and one’s community. Therefore, this paper links meaningfulness to a 4-E (embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended) account of “sense-making” in/for instrumental music education. In doing so, I discuss the aims of public-school music education; aims that engage teachers and students in meaningfulness—a meaningfulness that is ethical, embodied, enacted, and extended—in, with, and through musics and, more directly, “instrumental” music making. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ästhetische Autonomie als Abnormität: Kritische Analysen zu Schopenhauers Ästhetik im Horizont seiner Willensmetaphysik by Barbara NeymeyrGünter ZöllerBarbara Neymeyr. Ästhetische Autonomie als Abnormität: Kritische Analysen zu Schopenhauers Ästhetik im Horizont seiner Willensmetaphysik. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1996. Pp. x + 430. Cloth, DM 250.00.Like a latter-day Janus, Schopenhauer faces the history of philosophy in two directions. As a self-proclaimed follower of Kant and one-time student of Fichte, he partakes (...) in the development of transcendental-idealist philosophy at the beginning of the nineteenth-century. When published in 1818, Schopenhauer’s four-part system of philosophy in The World as Will and Representation, consisting of an epistemology, a philosophy of nature, an aesthetics, and an ethics, was the first philosophical system of German idealism executed in detail. Yet with his orientation toward the natural sciences, from which he sought confirmation of his metaphysics, and through the delayed reception of his work, which began only in the 1850s, Schopenhauer seems to belong to the later nineteenth century, as an immediate precursor of Nietzsche. At the systematic level, the double orientation of [End Page 475] Schopenhauer’s philosophy finds expression in the concurrence of two types of philosophical theory in his work: a transcendental philosophy based on the correlation between a nonworldly subject of cognition and its world of objects, structured according to the basic forms of the principle of sufficient reason, and a metaphysics of the will based on the ultimate reality of everything and everyone as will.The systematic instability that threatens Schopenhauer’s double philosophy of transcendental idealism and voluntaristic metaphysics has prevented his work from being included in the canonical tradition of classical German philosophy and has resulted in a reductive and selective appropriation of parts and aspects of his work, especially focussing on his philosophy of music and his ethics of pity. But recently a number of authors have begun to explore and explain the overall, systematic dimension and potential of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. Rudolf Malter has argued forcefully and in great detail for the significance of Schopenhauer as a key figure in the transcendental tradition from Kant to Heidegger, and John Atwell has laid open the systematic ambition and scope of Schopenhauer’s philosophical project of an anthropomorphic cosmology.1Barbara Neymeyr’s thorough and well-informed reading of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics continues this trend toward a systematic Schopenhauer interpretation. The specific focus of her work, a revised doctoral dissertation that had been directed by Gerold Prauss (Freiburg i. Br.), is the systematic integrity, or lack thereof, of Schopenhauer’s metaphysics of the beautiful. The study soon widens to consider the background of Schopenhauer’s aesthetics in his overall metaphysics of the will. Neymeyr argues that the aesthetic in Schopenhauer occupies a decidedly abnormal systematic position. The norm from which the aesthetic seems to deviate in a radical way is the heteronomy of the intellect in the service of the all-powerful will. Normally, in the nonaesthetic attitude, the intellect is only a tool of the will, providing cognitive illumination to the latter’s originally blind striving. Abnormally though, in the aesthetic attitude, the intellect is supposed to achieve temporary freedom from the will. (Lasting emancipation is afforded only by the ethical, understood as ascetic denial of all willing.) Yet, as Neymeyr argues, in the absence of the will’s driving force, there is no positive basis for any self-determination and intentional activity on the part of the emancipated as well as emaciated aesthetic intellect. Moreover, the role of the will as ultimate reality in Schopenhauer suggests to Neymeyr that the apparent aesthetic emancipation of the intellect from the will is still a case of the will’s ultimate, although clandestine mastery over the intellect. The liberation of the aesthetic intellect from the will is at bottom, so Neymeyr, the cosmic will’s self-liberation from its manifestation as individual will. Thus for Neymeyr, aesthetic autonomy constitutes an inadmissable abnormality in Schopenhauer’s systematic philosophy.Exhibiting great ingenuity and extensive familiarity with the entire corpus of Schopenhauer’s writings, Neymeyr tracks the various levels and forms of inconsistency that [End Page 476] plague Schopenhauer’s aesthetic... (shrink)

Peter Kivy presents a fascinating critical examination of the two rival ways of understanding instrumental music. He argues against 'literary' interpretation in terms of representational or narrative content, and defends musical formalism. Along the way he discusses interpretations of a range of works in the canon of absolute music.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and (...) revolutionary like the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

Die Forschung zu Eduard Hanslicks Vom Musikalisch-Schönen (1854) ist in der deutschsprachigen Diskussion auf die historischen Hintergründe von Hanslicks Argument fokussiert. Während die frühesten Deutungen von Hanslicks Standpunkt seine systematischen Berührungspunkte mit dem ahistorischen Formalismus von Johann Friedrich Herbart konstatierten, akzentuierte die deutsche Forschung der 1970er und 1980er seinen starken Konnex mit Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Dahlhaus betonte speziell, dass Hanslicks Argument eine Bekanntschaft mit dem Hegelianismus als der »herrschenden Philosophie der 1830er und 1840er« nötig mache. Dahlhaus’ Hypothese wird bei (...) der gewissenhaften Rekonstruktion der österreichischen Hegelrezeption jedoch schwierig. Habsburgische Bildungsplaner befanden dagegen den Deutschen Idealismus für politisch untragbar, was die Entlassung von mehreren Professoren nach sich zog, die den ›gefährlichen‹ Hegelianismus propagierten. Diese Lage wird von uns als geeigneter Ansatzpunkt für die detailgetreue Untersuchung der hegelianischen Theorieelemente von Hanslicks Abhandlung benutzt, welche vor dem Hintergrund der ablehnenden Grundhaltung ›Österreichs‹ zum Deutschen Idealismus sorgsam erfolgen muss. Hanslicks VMSTraktat umfasst dennoch mehrere wichtige Elemente der hegelianischen Ästhetik-diskussion, die nicht einzig Hegels System, sondern ebenso hegelianische Kunsttheoretiker (Kahlert, Krüger, Vischer etc.) umfänglich einbeziehen muss. Hanslicks Standpunkt, der die ahistorische Ausrichtung des Herbart’schen Formalismus niemals aufgriff, ist vor allem durch Vischers Annahme zur historischen Entwicklung des musikalischen Grundmaterials geprägt worden. Wir sehen somit Hanslicks VMS-Traktat als die ›eklektische‹ Verschmelzung von heterogenen theoretischen Diskursfeldern, womit dieser Herbartianismus und Hegelianismus als ästhetische Gegenpole des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts miteinander ausgleichen konnte. German-speaking scholarship on Eduard Hanslick’s aesthetic treatise »On the Musically- Beautiful« (1854) is primarily concerned with the historical background of Hanslick’s argument. Whereas contemporary investigations into Hanslick’s aesthetics emphasised theoretical overlaps with Johann Friedrich Herbart’s ahistorical formalism, German scholars of the 1970s and 1980s highlighted similarities to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. In this respect, Dahlhaus specifically accentuated that Hanslick’s doctrine implies an exposure to Hegelianism as the »reigning philosophy of the 1830s and 1840s«. By reconstructing the historical reception of Hegel’s system in Austria, however, Dahlhaus’s premise becomes thoroughly problematic. Habsburg authorities considered German Idealism to be politically intolerable, thereby prompting numerous sackings of Austrian university lecturers on account of ›dangerous‹ Hegelianism. We take this historical framework as a suitable starting point for a comprehensive investigation of Hanslick’s Hegelian leanings that have to be carefully explored in the light of ›Austria’s‹ critical attitude towards speculative philosophy. »On the Musically-Beautiful«, however, comprises important elements of Hegelian aesthetics that are not limited to Hegel’s system but rather extend to Hegelian aesthetics in general (Kahlert, Krüger, Vischer etc.). Vischer’s hypothesis regarding the historical development of musical material particularly influenced Hanslick’s aesthetic outlook, who did not share the ahistorical conception of Herbartian formalism. Thus, we interpret Hanslick’s aesthetic treatise as an ›eclectic‹ fusion of diverse theoretical frameworks, ultimately reconciling Herbart and Vischer as the opposing extremes of mid-19th century aesthetics. (shrink)

A common tendency throughout the history of thought concerning the nature of music has been to attribute to it a peculiar power to represent the dynamic of the universe. The tradition has perhaps its most developed expression in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. The strict formalism present in Eduard Hanslick’s treatise, On the Musically Beautiful, clearly stands in stark opposition to such ways of thinking. And yet the book’s final paragraph ends with a paragraph in which music is (...) referred to as the ‘sounding image of the great motions of the universe’.The present paper examines the extent to which this apparently Schopenhaurian moment in Hanslick can be reconciled with the formalism promoted by the rest of the book. I argue, in opposition to differing claims to the contrary made by Mark Evan Bonds, and by Christopher Landerer and Nick Zangwill, that the original concluding paragraph is inconsistent with the rest of Hanslick’s argument. At the same time, the paragraph cannot simply be written off as a slip of the pen. Rather, it seems to reflect an anxiety on Hanslick’s part about musical formalism failing to provide any account of why the art of music is valuable. (shrink)

In his On the Musically Beautiful, Hanslick vigorously argued that musical beauty depends neither on the representation nor on the evocation of feelings. However, despite his formalism, Hanslick regards the performance of a musical work as a moment of emotional release. Given the tension between the formalist nature of Hanslick’s general theory and this expressionist drift in his conception of the performer, in this article I pursue two objectives: 1) to argue that there is, in fact, an important (...) internal inconsistency in Hanslick’s theory regarding the nature of performance, and 2) to deepen and render intelligible this perspective of performance. Although internally inconsistent, this perspective, in its search for a synergistic conciliation of the composer’s creativity with the performer’s expressivity, is worthy of analysis. (shrink)

Musical formalism, which strictly limits the type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is ill-equipped to account for contemporary performance practice. If performative interpretations are in a position to tell us something about musical works—that is if performance is a kind of description, as Peter Kivy argues—then we have to loosen the restrictions on notions of musical relevance to make sense of performance. I argue that musical formalism, which strictly limits the (...) type of thing any description of the music can tell us, is inconsistent with Kivy's quite compelling account of performance. This shows the difficulty that actual performances pose to overly rigid conceptions of music. Daniel Barenboim unannounced performance of Wagner in Israel in 2001 shows that the problem of the boundaries of musical relevance is no mere philosophical puzzle. It is a pressing problem in the musical public sphere. (shrink)

"Like Hanslick, Professor Payzant is both musician and philosopher; and he has brought the knowledge and insights of both disciplines to this large undertaking." --Gordon Epperson, _Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism_.

I develop Schopenhauerian musical formalism. First, I present a Schopenhauerian account of music with a background of his metaphysical framework. Then, I define meaningfulness as an analog to a Kantian notion of purposiveness and argue that, in light of Schopenhauer, music is meaningful as a direct manifestation of the universal will. Given the ineffable nature of what music points to, its form lacks any representation of meaning. Music is therefore the mere form of meaningfulness, and (...) it is precisely this mere form that gives rise to the infinite possibilities to ascribe it with a variety of musical meaning. (shrink)

In this article I propose a theory of musical meaning and experience which takes into consideration the dialectical relationship between musical text and context, and which is flexible enough to apply to a range of musical styles. Through this theory I examine the roles played by the school music classroom which, despite the multiplicity of musical styles now incorporated into schooling, continues to contribute to the reproduction of existing social relations in the wider society. I (...) consider how music itself can be understood to construct and communicate apparent ‘truths’ about ourselves and society and what role the classroom plays in perpetuating those ‘truths’. Finally I argue for a partial but necessary reinstatement of the much‐maligned notion of musical autonomy as a critical moment in any attempt to change things. (shrink)

Do psychological perspectives constitute the only way through which the role of musical creativity in education can be addressed, researched and theorised? This essay attempts to offer an alternative view of musical creativity as a deeply social and political form of human praxis, by proposing a perspective rooted in the thought of the political philosopher and activist Cornelius Castoriadis (1922–1997). This is done in two steps. First, an attempt is made to place the pursuit of the concept of (...) musical creativity within a larger educational and societal context of conflicting trajectories that run through (a) Modernity and (b) Education. Then, I revisit the issue of educational value of improvising and composing through creating conceptual links between the process of music-making through improvisation and composition and the project of political autonomy as conceived by Castoriadis. By foregrounding instituting imaginary over instituted imaginary, improvising and composing become active processes of positing new legitimacies, and of creating a music-making context that searches for its own foundations. It is in and through creative musical praxis that we can think about issues of hierarchies, musical values, social dimensions of different music-making processes, our relationship to past values and to historical dimensions of music. By arguing that improvisation and composition might be seen as ways of positing the issue of political autonomy in musical terms, this paper emphasises the role of improvisation and composition as a mode of potentially transformative educational practice that may foster the development of critical consciousness, linking music education to a larger project of re-discovering and at the same time re-defining democracy. (shrink)

Let us look first at poetry. It is well known that by the fifteenth century, lyric poetry had undergone a radical transformation; the early lyric fluidity and formal variability had hardened into the nonlyric and even, some maintain, antilyric forms fixes which characterize the poetic formalism of late medieval France. Dispensing with the details of how and why this occurred, the essential point is that by the end of the Middle Ages, the poet in France and Burgundy saw himself as (...) an artisan of words, not as a singer.6 He refers to himself as a craftsman , and it is plain, sometimes painfully so, to anyone who reads the works that the rhétoriqueur is, indeed, an artisan of forms—or, if you will, an architecte de la parole, a specialist in verbal matter. He works words, sounds, metric and strophic forms into intricate patterns and arranges his elaborate designs in blocks of exact and harmonious symmetry. He is, in fact, from Machaut on, a virtuoso of the verbal equivalent of the architectural art of carrelage which adorned the princely château in which he worked and lived. No one familiar with the period will avoid noticing the strikingly similar types of patters in the poet’s works and in his surroundings.I have gathered elsewhere the visual documentation which bears out Zumthor’s suggestions quoted above with respect to the meticulously constructivist mentality of the Franco-Burgundian artisan. But the analogies I found are much more than perceptual. It is true that the elaborate designs on the walls, floors, ceilings, windows, woodwork, and so forth of the early Renaissance château are, indeed, composed of intricate blocks of material; but their function is not merely decorative , it is also narrative, with emblematic motifs and allegorical figures arrayed in linear patterns of “visual” discourse—the invariable “discours de la gloire” which silently proclaims the magnificence of the patron prince and proprietor of the château .7 6. A summary of internal and external factors in the transformation of lyric to Rhetoric is provided in my review of Die musikalische Erscheinungsform der Trouvèrepoesie by Hans-Herbert S. Räkel , in Romance Philology 34 : 250-58.7. This following collage of fragments from ML was constructed ôto serve as commentary on photographs of tile designs compared with verbal texts, in an earlier version of this paper , from which the examples in figs. 1-4 are taken.Culte de l’objet subtilement travaillé, au-delà de toute fonctionnalité primaire *** primat du labeur ardu, patient, du difficile, de l’inattendu *** les mots mêmes semblent travaillés d’un besoin de scientificité fictive, d’anoblissement par le savoir *** les … mots ne sont plus que les particules d’une parole dont la seule signification est globale *** matériau émancipé des contraintes de la phrase, transposé sur un plan où le signe devient le nom vide de ce signe *** goût du bricolage plutôt que de l’industrie; … du bariolage plus que du fondu et de la nuance; de l’équilibre numéral des parties plus que de la synthèse; du multiple plus que de l’un. Outil forgé martelé d’ “aornures” sans fonction utilitaire; enchâssements cubiques, coniques, pyramidaux, cruciformes du bâtiment … meubles marquetés, forrés de tiroirs minuscules et secrets [and so forth].For the iconography of these examples , see Emile Amé, Less Carrelages émaillés du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance , pp. 61-108. Jonathan Beck is associate professor of French at the University of Arizona. He is the author of Théâtre et propaganda aux débuts de la Réforme , a sequel to his edition and study, Le Concil de Basle: Le Origines du theater réformiste et partisan en France. (shrink)

The founder of formalism, Eduard Hanslick compared listening to music to looking through a kaleidoscope. Unlike listening to a story, one can understand music without understanding what it is about. This contrast with language suggests a thought experiment that echoes John Searle′s Chinese Room. Instead of featuring a man who reliably manipulates Chinese symbols without knowing what they represent, consider a man who reliably manipulates sounds . Given formalism, the Turing Test should be an appropriate criterion of (...) class='Hi'>musical understanding. (shrink)