Music, aesthetics of

References and further reading

	Addis, L. (2004) Of Mind and Music, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Discusses emotional and other effects of sounds on listeners.)
	Adorno, T. (1948) Philosophie der neuen Musik;trans. A. Mitchell and W. Bloomster, The Philosophy of Modern Music, London: Sheed & Ward,1973. (Defends advanced modes of composition, and art music over popular music.)
	Alperson, P. (1984) ‘On Musical Improvisation’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43: 17–30. (Identifies the distinguishing features of improvised music.)
	Alperson, P. (1994) What is Music?, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. (A collection of essays with substantial introductions and bibliographies.)
	Alperson, P. (1998) Musical Worlds, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. (Collects essays on various central topics in musical aesthetics.)
	Alperson, P, Nguyen, C. B. and To Ngoc, T. (2007) ‘The Sounding of the World’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65: 11–20. (Philosophical reflections on traditional Vietnamese gong music.)
	Benson, B. (2003) The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Explores the phenomenology of music-making, emphasizing improvisation.)
	Brown, L. (1996) ‘Musical Works, Improvisation, and the Principle of Continuity’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54: 353–369. (Discusses some central features of improvised music.)
	Brown, L. (2000) ‘Phonography, Rock Records, and the Ontology of Recorded Music’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 58: 361–372. (Examines the ontology of rock music and recordings in Gracyk (1996).)
	Budd, M. (1985) Music and the Emotions, London: Routledge. (The classic survey of influential theories of musical expression and evocation.)
	Budd, M. (1995) Values of Art, London: Penguin. (Advances an important positive account of musical expressiveness.)
	Budd, M. (2008) Aesthetic Essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Contains essays on musical understanding, movement, expressiveness and metaphor.)
	Cage, J. (1961) Silence, Middletown, CT: Wesleyan Press. (Zen and chance-inspired reflections on music, noise, sound and silence by the influential avant-garde composer.)
	Caplan, B. and Matheson, C. (2004) ‘Can a Musical Work Be Created?’, British Journal of Aesthetics 44: 113–134. (Argues that views about musical ontology do not allow musical works both to be created and to persist.)
	Caplan, B. and Matheson, C. (2006) ‘Defending Musical Perdurantism’, British Journal of Aesthetics 46: 59–69. (Suggests that musical works are concrete objects that are fusions of performances.)
	Cavell, S. (1969) ‘Music Discomposed’, inMust We Mean What We Say?, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. (Charges that certain modern modes of music-making are artistically fraudulent.)
	Collingwood, R. (1938) The Principles of Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Contains important reflections on the creative process in art and the operation of imagination in expression.)
	Cone, E. (1974) The Composer’s Voice, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Develops a thesis about musical communication in terms of composers’ musical personae.)
	Cook, N. (1990) Music, Imagination and Culture, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A provocative defence of the primacy of the listener’s point of view over the composer’s.)
	Cooke, D. (1959) The Language of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Proposes that music is indeed the language of the emotions.)
	Copland, A. (1952) Music and Imagination, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (A composer’s view of the creation and appreciation of music.)
	Cox, R. (1985) ‘Are Musical Works Discovered?’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43: 367–374. (Gives interesting reasons for a negative answer to the question posed.)
	Dahlhaus, C. (1981) Esthetics of Music, trans. W. Austin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (A historically informed survey of the subject by the leading German musicologist-historian.)
	Davies, D. (2009) ‘The Primacy of Practice in the Ontology of Art’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67: 159–171. (Argues against Dodd (2007) that critical practice must be seriously consulted prior to doing musical ontology.)
	Davies, S. (1994) Musical Meaning and Expression, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (A comprehensive survey of its topics, with a focus on more recent work.)
	Davies, S. (2003) Themes in the Philosophy of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A collection of essays on musical ontology, performance, expressiveness and appreciation.)
	Davies, S. (2004) Musical Works and Performances, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Argues that musical works are not of a single ontological category but admit a variety, and considers their relation to performances, recordings, notations and musical traditions.)
	DeBellis, M. (1995) Music and Conceptualization, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Explores the nature of expert and nonexpert hearing of music, and the role of conceptualization in each; draws on cognitive psychology.)
	Dewey, J. (1934) Art as Experience, New York: Putnam. (Contains important discussions of the creative process applicable to musical composition.)
	Dodd, J. (2007) Works of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Advances a Platonist musical ontology that claims musical works are eternal and discovered, and that musical works are identical if they sound alike.)
	Elliott, R. K. (1966) ‘Aesthetic Theory and the Experience of Art’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 67: 111–126. (Illuminatingly contrasts experiencing music, ‘from within and, from without’.)
	Fisher, J. (1991) ‘Discovery, Creation, and Musical Works’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 49: 129–136. (Argues cogently for a creationist view of musical composition.)
	Godlovitch, S. (1998) Musical Performance, New York: Routledge. (Evaluates traditional musical performance and its value, and the fact that most people now listen to recordings more than live performance.)
	Goehr, L. (1992) The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Surveys with dissatisfaction accounts of musical ontology, proposes instead adoption of a historical-cultural method.)
	Goehr, L. (2008) Elective Affinities, New York: Columbia University Press. (Discusses links between philosophy and music from German classicism, romanticism and idealism to modernism.)
	Goldman, A. (1992) ‘The Value of Music’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50: 35–44. (Suggests that the central value of music is its presenting us with another world, removed from everyday life.)
	Goldman, A. (1995) ‘Emotions in Music: A Postscript’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 53: 59–69. (Assesses the debate between Kivy and Radford on musical arousal of emotion.)
	Goodman, N. (1968) Languages of Art, New York: Bobbs-Merrill. (Contains influential proposals regarding the relationship of works and performances and the nature of musical expression.)
	Gracyk, T. (1996) Rhythm and Noise, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (A groundbreaking study of the aesthetics of rock music.)
	Gracyk, T. (2001) I Wanna Be Me, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (Discusses the cultural significance of rock music, and its connection with the politics of identity.)
	Gracyk, T. (2007) Listening to Popular Music, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. (Defends the aesthetic value of popular music.)
	Gurney, E. (1880) The Power of Sound, New York: Basic Books, 1966. (An important contribution to nineteenth-century musical aesthetics.)
	Hanslick, E. (1891) Vom Musikalisch-Schönen,trans. G. Payzant, On the Musically Beautiful, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company,1986. (The classic statement of formalism about music.)
	Higgins, K. (1991) The Music of Our Lives, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (Argues for the ethical significance of music.)
	Howell, R. (2002) ‘Types, Indicated and Initiated’, British Journal of Aesthetics 42: 105–127. (Argues that musical works are created, temporally initiated types.)
	Ingarden, R. (1957) The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity,trans. A. Czerniawski, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press,1986. (Advances a view of the musical work as an intentional object, one culturally shaped and sustained, created in time and subject to dissolution.)
	Juslin, P. and Sloboda, J. (2001) Music and Emotion, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A multidisciplinary collection containing essays by psychologists, musicologists, music educators, and philosophers.)
	Kania, A. (2008) ‘The Methodology of Musical Ontology’, British Journal of Aesthetics 48: 426–444. (Investigates the view that musical ontology should be descriptive rather than revisionary.)
	Katz, R. and Dahlhaus, C. (1987) Contemplating Music, 4 vols, New York: Pendragon Press. (An immense compendium of source readings.)
	Kivy, P. (1984) Sound and Semblance, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A study of musical representation.)
	Kivy, P. (1988) Osmin’s Rage, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A philosophical study of opera.)
	Kivy, P. (1989) Sound Sentiment, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (A widely influential account of musical expressiveness; includes the author’s The Corded Shell, Princeton University Press, 1980.)
	Kivy, P. (1990) Music Alone, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (An account of the experience of ‘music alone’, focusing on the role of explicit, articulable cognitions in musical understanding.)
	Kivy, P. (1993) The Fine Art of Repetition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Contains essays on musical ontology and the curious status of music as an art.)
	Kivy, P. (1995) Authenticities, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (A philosophical analysis of ‘authentic performance’.)
	Kivy, P. (2002) Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Usefully sums up Kivy’s very influential views on a range of issues.)
	Krausz, M. (1993) The Interpretation of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A collection of essays by nineteen philosophers.)
	Krumhansl, C. (1997) ‘An Exploratory Study of Musical Emotions and Psychophysiology’, Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 51: 336–352. (Uses physiological and psychological experiments to argue that music can elicit emotions in listeners.)
	Langer, S. (1942) Philosophy in a New Key, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (Suggests music is a presentational rather than discursive symbol of feeling.)
	Lerdahl, F. and Jackendoff, R. (1996) A Generative Theory of Tonal Music, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Applies Chomskian generative linguistics and grammar to music.)
	Levinson, J. (1990) Music, Art, and Metaphysics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Contains six essays devoted to philosophy of music, covering the definition, ontology, meaning, performance and appreciation of music.)
	Levinson, J. (1992) ‘Composition, Musical’, in D. Cooper (ed.) A Companion to Aesthetics, Oxford: Blackwell. (Discusses what it is to compose a musical work, and what, if anything, characterizes the process of musical composition.)
	Levinson, J. (1996) The Pleasures of Aesthetics, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Contains essays on song, musical literacy, musical expressiveness and musical interpretation.)
	Levinson, J. (1998) Music in the Moment, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (A concatenationist account of musical understanding, inspired by Gurney.)
	Levinson, J. (2006) Contemplating Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Contains essays on musical expressiveness, narrative, film music, evaluating music, musical thinking and musical ‘chills’.)
	Levinson, J. and Alperson, P. (1991) ‘What Is a Temporal Art?’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 16: 439–450. (Details fourteen different notions of temporality in art, many applicable to music.)
	Lippman, E. (1994) A History of Western Musical Aesthetics, Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press. (A historical survey of the subject, spanning ancient thought to recent writers.)
	Matravers, D. (1998) Art and Emotion, Oxford: Clarendon Press. (Advances a moderate arousalism about musical expressiveness.)
	Maus, F. (1988) ‘Music as Drama’, Music Theory Spectrum 10: 54–73. (Proposes that musical discourse be conceived as an arena in which musical characters perform acts of various sorts.)
	McClary, S. (1991) Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. (A feminist reinterpretation of Western tonal music.)
	Mew, P. (1985) ‘The Expression of Emotion in Music’, British Journal of Aesthetics 25: 33–42. (Defends an evocation view of musical expressiveness.)
	Meyer, L. (1956) Emotion and Meaning in Music, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. (Advances Meyer’s psychologistic view, in which the notion of expectation figures prominently.)
	Meyer, L. (1967) Music, the Arts, and Ideas, Chicago,IL: University of Chicago Press. (Ranges beyond music to other arts, and reframes some of Meyer’s key ideas in terms of information theory.)
	Meyer, L. (1974) Explaining Music, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Highlights hierarchic levels of musical implication.)
	Newcomb, A. (1984) ‘Sound and Feeling’, Critical Inquiry 10: 614–643. (A critical discussion of Kivy.1984)
	Nietzsche, F. (1872) The Birth of Tragedy,trans. W. Kauffmann, New York: Vintage Books,1967. (Discusses the conflict of the Apollonian and the Dionysian at the heart of Greek tragedy, and its relation to ‘the spirit of music’.)
	Peretz, I. and Zatorre, R. (2003) The Cognitive Neuroscience of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Essays by leading neuroscientists on music and the brain.)
	Pratt, C. (1931) The Meaning of Music, New York: McGraw-Hill. (The work of an important psychologist of music, who advocated that music sounds the way emotions feel.)
	Putman, D. (1987) ‘Why Instrumental Music Has No Shame’, British Journal of Aesthetics 27: 55–61. (Argues music cannot express cognitively complex emotions.)
	Radford, C. (1989) ‘Emotions and Music: A Reply to the Cognitivists’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47: 69–76. (Replies to Kivy 1989, and argues for the power of music to induce simple emotions and moods in listeners.)
	Radford, C. (1991) ‘How Can Music Be Moral?’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 16: 421–438. (Suggests that musical works reflect morally relevant states of mind and traits of personality.)
	Raffman, D. (1993) Language, Music and Mind, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (Argues for three sorts of ineffability in connection with music.)
	Rantala, V., Rowell, L. and Tarasti, E. (1988) Essays on the Philosophy of Music, special issue ofActa Philosophica Fennica 48. (A collection of twenty essays, representing a variety of approaches.)
	Ridley, A. (1995) Music, Value and the Passions, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (Advances a moderate arousalism about musical expressiveness.)
	Ridley, A. (2005) The Philosophy of Music, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. (Discusses musical understanding, representation, expression, performance and profundity.)
	Robinson, J. (1997) Music and Meaning, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (A collection of ten essays by philosophers and music theorists.)
	Robinson, J. (2007) Deeper than Reason, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Argues that the emotions are noncognitive appraisals, and revives the Romantic theory of expression in discussing emotion in music and the other arts.)
	Said, E. (1991) Musical Elaborations, New York: Columbia University Press. (Three interrelated essays by a musically erudite cultural critic, focusing on performance.)
	Schoenberg, A. (1950) Style and Idea, New York: Philosophical Library. (Definitive statements by the founder of twelve-tone music.)
	Schopenhauer, A. ((1818,1844)) Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung,trans. E. F. J. Payne, The World as Will and Representation, 2 vols, New York: Dover Publications,1966. (Book 3 contains a powerful brief for the metaphysical significance of musical process.)
	Scruton, R. (1976) ‘Representation in Music’, Philosophy 51: 273–287. (Argues that music is incapable of representation in a robust sense.)
	Scruton, R. (1983) ‘Understanding Music’, inThe Aesthetic Understanding, London: Methuen. (Argues that musical understanding is a species of intentional understanding.)
	Scruton, R. (1987) ‘Analytical Philosophy and the Meaning of Music’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46: 169–176. (Argues that musical meaning is inseparable from the experience of music.)
	Scruton, R. (1999) The Aesthetics of Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A comprehensive discussion of musical sounds, tones, melody, harmony, rhythm, musical meaning, the moral significance of music and culture.)
	Serafine, M. (1987) Music as Cognition, New York: Columbia University Press. (A cognitive psychologist’s view of music.)
	Sessions, R. (1950) The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Illuminatingly offers what its title suggests.)
	Shusterman, R. (1991) ‘Moving Truth’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57: 221–233. (Discusses emotion and authenticity in country musicals.)
	Sloboda, J. (1985) The Musical Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (A valuable survey of the cognitive psychology of music.)
	Sloboda, J. (2005) Exploring the Musical Mind, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Essays on music cognition, music and emotion, musical ability and the functions of music.)
	Stock, K. (2007) Philosophers on Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Essays by ten analytic philosophers on musical ontology, meaning, expression and experience.)
	Storr, A. (1992) Music and the Mind, New York: Free Press. (Genial meditations by a psychotherapist on the origin, power and beauty of music.)
	Stravinsky, I. (1956) Poetics of Music, New York: Vintage Books. (Reflects an extreme formalism about music, arguably inconsistent with the composer’s own practice.)
	Sullivan, J. W. N. (1927) Beethoven: His Spiritual Development, London: Jonathan Cape. (Suggests that some music, such as Beethoven’s late works, embodies and communicates spiritually and cognitively valuable states of mind.)
	Tanner, M. (1985) ‘Understanding Music’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplement 59: 215–232. (Emphasizes a hierarchy of levels of understanding music.)
	Thom, P. (1993) For an Audience: A Philosophy of the Performing Arts, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. (Advances a naturalistic understanding of works in the performing arts.)
	Thom, P. (2009) The Musician as Interpreter, University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. (Argues that transcribing music, writing variations and realizing music are varieties of musical interpretation.)
	Tormey, A. (1971) The Concept of Expression, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A seminal philosophical analysis, containing a devastating attack on the expression theory of music.)
	Tormey, A. (1974) ‘Indeterminacy and Identity in Art’, Monist 58: 203–215. (Explores the sort of ontology of music suggested by certain modes of avant-garde composition.)
	Trivedi, S. (2001) ‘Expressiveness as a Property of the Music Itself’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59: 411–420. (Argues that music is imagined in various ways in order to be expressive, and especially that we often treat the music as animate in projecting life and mental states onto it.)
	Trivedi, S. (2006) ‘Imagination, Music, and the Emotions’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie 60: 415–435. (Develops an imagination-based view of musical expressiveness.)
	Trivedi, S. (2008) ‘Music and Metaphysics’, Metaphilosophy 39: 124–143. (Argues that musical works may cease to exist under certain conditions.)
	Walton, K. (1988) ‘What Is Abstract about the Art of Music?‘Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46: 351–364. (Explores the role of make-believe in musical experience and expressiveness.)
	Walton, K. (1994) ‘Listening with Imagination’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 52: 47–61. (Develops the make-believe view in relation to musical expressiveness, representation and understanding.)
	Wolterstorff, N. (1980) Works and Worlds of Art, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (Arguably the best defence of a Platonist musical ontology.)
	Zuckerkandl, V. (1956) Sound and Symbol: Music and the External World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (A wide-ranging examination of the phenomenon of music.)