The Musician As Philosopher

An insightful look at how avant-garde musicians of the postwar period in New York explored the philosophical dimensions of music’s ineffability. The Musician as Philosopher explores the philosophical thought of avant-garde musicians in postwar New York: David Tudor, Ornette Coleman, the Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell. It contends that these musicians—all of whom are understudied and none of whom are traditionally taken to be composers—not only challenged the rules by which music is written and practiced but also confounded and reconfigured gendered and racialized expectations for what critics took to be legitimate forms of musical sound. From a broad historical perspective, their arresting music electrified a widely recognized social tendency of the 1960s: a simultaneous affirmation and crisis of the modern self.

Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work presents significant new contributions to central issues in the philosophy of music, written by leading philosophers working in the analytic tradition. Music is an increasingly popular object of reflection for professional philosophers, as it raises special questions not only of relevance to music practitioners, theorists, and philosophers of art, but also of wider philosophical interest to those working in metaphysics, the philosophy of emotion, and the philosophy of language, among other areas. The wide range of contributors to this volume reflects this level of interest. It includes both well-known philosophers of music drawing on a wealth of reflection to produce new and often startling conclusions, and philosophers relatively new to the philosophy of music yet eminent in other philosophical fields, who are able to bring a fresh perspective, informed by that background, to their topic of choice. The issues tackled in this volume include what sort of thing a work of music is; the nature of the relation between a musical work and versions of it; the nature of musical expression and its contribution to musical experience; the relation of music to metaphor; the nature of musical irony; the musical status of electro-sonic art; and the nature of musical rhythm. Together these papers constitute some of the best new work in what is an exciting field of research, and one which has much to engage philosophers, aestheticians, and musicologists.

Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, it provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, the Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Susanne Langer, Bloch, Adorno, and many others. Recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions. A fascinating idea which recurs throughout the book is that philosophers allow for a sort of a secret kinship between music and philosophy, as means to reveal complementary aspects of truth.

We often say that music is ineffable, that it does not refer to anything outside of itself. But if music, in all its sensuous flux, does not mean anything in particular, might it still have a special kind of philosophical significance? In Deep Refrains, Michael Gallope draws together the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ernst Bloch, Theodor Adorno, Vladimir Jankélévitch, Gilles Deleuze, and Félix Guattari in order to revisit the age-old question of music’s ineffability from a modern perspective. For these nineteenth- and twentieth-century European philosophers, music’s ineffability is a complex phenomenon that engenders an intellectually productive sense of perplexity. Through careful examination of their historical contexts and philosophical orientations, close attention to their use of language, and new interpretations of musical compositions that proved influential for their work, Deep Refrains forges the first panoptic view of their writings on music. Gallope concludes that music’s ineffability is neither a conservative phenomenon nor a pious call to silence. Instead, these philosophers ask us to think through the ways in which music’s stunning force might address, in an ethical fashion, intricate philosophical questions specific to the modern world.

Musical Understandings presents an engaging collection of essays on the philosophy of music, written by Stephen Davies—one of the most distinguished philosophers in the field. He explores a range of topics in the philosophy of music, including how music expresses emotion and what is distinctive to the listener's response to this expressiveness; the modes of perception and understanding that can be expected of skilled listeners, performers, analysts, and composers and the various manners in which these understandings can be manifest; the manner in which musical works exist and their relation to their instances or performances; and musical profundity. As well as reviewing the work of philosophers of music, a number of the chapters both draw on and critically reflect on current work by psychologists concerning music. The collection includes new material, a number of adapted articles which allow for a more comprehensive, unified treatment of the issues at stake, and work published in English for the first time.

In this book, Campbell explores the relationships of music, philosophy and intellectual culture in the work of Pierre Boulez.

This is the first comprehensive book-length introduction to the philosophy of Western music that fully integrates consideration of popular music and hybrid musical forms, especially song. Its author, Andrew Kania, begins by asking whether Bob Dylan should even have been eligible for the Nobel Prize in Literature, given that he is a musician. This motivates a discussion of music as an artistic medium, and what philosophy has to contribute to our thinking about music. Chapters 2-5 investigate the most commonly defended sources of musical value: its emotional power, its form, and specifically musical features (such as pitch, rhythm, and harmony). In chapters 6-9, Kania explores issues arising from different musical practices, particularly work-performance (with a focus on classical music), improvisation (with a focus on jazz), and recording (with a focus on rock and pop). Chapter 10 examines the intersection of music and morality. The book ends with a consideration of what, ultimately, music is. Key Features Uses popular-song examples throughout, but also discusses a range of musical traditions (notably, rock, pop, classical, and jazz) Explains both philosophical and musical terms when they are first introduced Provides publicly accessible Spotify playlists of the musical examples discussed in the book Each chapter begins with an overview and ends with questions for testing comprehension and stimulating further thought, along with suggestions for further reading

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is an outstanding guide and reference source to the key topics, subjects, thinkers and debates in philosophy and music. Over fifty entries by an international team of contributors are organised into six clear sections: general issues emotion history figures kinds of music music, philosophy and related disciplines The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music is essential reading for anyone interested in philosophy, music and musicology.