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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Socio-Musical Performing Artistry, Aron Edidin
Socio-Musical Performing Artistry, Aron Edidin
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Philosophical discussion of artistry in performance has focused on the relation of performers to musical works and to their instruments. But an important domain of musical artistry is social, relating musicians to their fellows in performing groups. This “socio-musical” artistry contributes to the artistic accomplishments of performing groups as a whole. I identify two distinct kinds of socio-musical artistry, and discuss some of the ways in which different forms of group organization articulate different possibilities for their exercise. Finally, I discuss at some length the extreme case of a performing role that is purely socio-musical, that of the orchestral conductor. …
Listening To Musical Performers, Aron Edidin
Listening To Musical Performers, Aron Edidin
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In the philosophy of music and in musicology, aprt from ethnomusicology, there is a long tradition of focus on musical compositions as objects of inquiry. But in both disciplines, a body of recent work focuses on the place of performance in the making of music. Most of this work, however, still takes for granted that compositions, at leas in Western art music, are the primary objects of aesthetic attention. In this paper I focus on aesthetic attention to the performing activity itself. I begin by roughly characterizing what is involve in attending to the performing activity of musical performers. I …
One Song, Many Works: A Pluralist Ontology Of Rock, Dan Burkett
One Song, Many Works: A Pluralist Ontology Of Rock, Dan Burkett
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
A number of attempts have been made to construct a plausible ontology of rock music. Each of these ontologies identifies a single type of ontological entity as the “work” in rock music. Yet, all the suggestions advanced to date fail to capture some important considerations about how we engage with music of this tradition. This prompted Lee Brown to advocate a healthy skepticism of higher-order musical ontologies. I argue here that we should instead embrace a pluralist ontology of rock, an ontology that recognizes more than one kind of entity as “the work” in rock music. I contend that this …
Pushing The Limits: Risk And Accomplishment In Musical Performance, David Clowney, Robert Rawlins
Pushing The Limits: Risk And Accomplishment In Musical Performance, David Clowney, Robert Rawlins
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Using examples from musical performance of several kinds, we argue that risk-taking, showing off, virtuosity, and other forms of musical showmanship are in many cases, though not in all, an integral and appropriate part of the music as performed on that occasion. We reflect on the difference between cases where this is so and cases where it is not, using insights from John Dewey’s aesthetics as articulated in Art as Experience.
Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, Erik Anderson
Sailing The Seas Of Cheese, Erik Anderson
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Memphis Elvis is cool; Vegas Elvis is cheesy. How come? To call something cheesy is, ostensibly, to disparage it, and yet cheesy acts are some of the most popular in popular culture today. How is this possible? The concepts of cheese, cheesy, and cheesiness play an important and increasingly ubiquitous role in popular culture today. I offer an analysis of these concepts, distinguishing them from nearby concepts like kitchy and campy. Along the way I draw attention to the important roles of cultural/historical context, background knowledge, and especially artist’s intentions as they are relevant to aesthetic assessments involving cheese and …
Performance Hero, Craig Derksen, Darren Hudson Hick
Performance Hero, Craig Derksen, Darren Hudson Hick
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The Guitar Hero series of video games and their spin-offs have provided millions with a new way to interact with music. These games are not only culturally significant but also philosophically significant. Based on the way that these games allow people to interact with music we must decide that either playing a song in one of these games can be a legitimate performance of that song or that our current accounts of performance are inadequate.
Musical Formalism And Political Performances, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Musical Formalism And Political Performances, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
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 …