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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Autographic And Allographic Imitation: Revisiting Counterfeit In Linguistic And Musical Arts, Jeremy Orosz
Autographic And Allographic Imitation: Revisiting Counterfeit In Linguistic And Musical Arts, Jeremy Orosz
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Imitation within sonic arts, linguistic, musical, or otherwise, broadly defined, is a heterogeneous set of practices ranging from comical impersonation to outright counterfeit or forgery. This paper provides a taxonomy of imitation and mimicry within both language and music, dividing each into two respective categories, autographic imitation and allographic imitation, the terms for which are repurposed from Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art.
Autonomania: Music And Music Education From Mars, Thomas A. Regelski
Autonomania: Music And Music Education From Mars, Thomas A. Regelski
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Traditional aesthetic theory has posited an account of music, and the other arts, as autonomous of social meanings, relevance, and conditions. In the case of music, “absolute music” is sequestered from social and other roots that bring music into being in the first place. The typical claim, thus, is that classical music is music for its own sake, divorced from the many and highly evident social dimensions that it serves. It ignores all other genres of music, most of which are more appreciated than can be accounted for by the theory of autonomania. This aesthetic theory of music, one of …
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 …
Reflections On Music And Propaganda, Luis Velasco Pufleau
Reflections On Music And Propaganda, Luis Velasco Pufleau
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
In general, the concept of propaganda refers to a method as well as the symbolic object mobilized by it. Propaganda equally constitutes a particular type of communication that involves not only the mobilization of objects, but also of discourse, places, acts, and rituals. This essay employs the writings of Max Weber, Paul Ricœur, Jacques Ellul, and Jacques Rancière to analyze propaganda as a particular type of symbolic political dispositif linked to a specific performance and utterance context. I examine humanitarian songs as a propaganda tool in democracy, and show the conditions and the limits of their mobilization through their contextualization. …
Musical Ontology: Critical, Not Metaphysical, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Musical Ontology: Critical, Not Metaphysical, Jonathan A. Neufeld
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
The ontology of musical works often sets the boundaries within which evaluation of musical works and performances takes place. Questions of ontology are therefore often taken to be prior to and apart from the evaluative questions considered by either performers as they present works to audiences or an audience’s critical reflection on a performance. In this paper I argue that, while the ontology of musical works may well set the boundaries of legitimate evaluation, ontological questions should not be considered as prior to or apart from critical evaluation. Rather, ontological claims are a type of critical evaluation made within musical …
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.
Musical Presence: Towards A New Philosophy Of Music, Charles Ford
Musical Presence: Towards A New Philosophy Of Music, Charles Ford
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Most recent writings about the philosophy of music have taken an analytic or linguistic approach, focusing on terms such as meaning, metaphor, emotions and expression, invariably from the perspective of the individual listener or composer. This essay seeks to develop an alternative, phenomenological framework for thinking about music by avoiding these terms, and by extrapolating from the writings of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. On the basis of discussions of musical time, its multiple levels of matter, and its internal dialectics, the essay presents a particular understanding of “style” as the primary basis for mediation between production and reception. It concludes …
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 …
Sensation As Civilization: Reading/Riding The Taxicab, Monique Roelofs
Sensation As Civilization: Reading/Riding The Taxicab, Monique Roelofs
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Aesthetics, race, and nation are densely imbricated with one another. This essay examines their interactions in a newspaper column that describes an aesthetic confrontation between a presumably Arab taxi driver and his passenger, a white European-Dutch columnist. In this column, taste engenders acts of identification and abjection, transmits projections of fear, and underwrites a division of labor and virtue. It thereby serves as a racial border patrolling technology and institutes racial boundaries. To clarify the racial power of aesthetic constellations in the taxicab case, the paper turns to the dualities and integrations that theorists such as Addison, Baumgarten, Schiller, and …
Gesture, Pulsion, Grain: Barthes' Musical Semiology, Michael Szekely
Gesture, Pulsion, Grain: Barthes' Musical Semiology, Michael Szekely
Contemporary Aesthetics (Journal Archive)
Although Barthes is perhaps best known as a semiotician, he is paradoxically always in search of precisely that which defies the constraints of language, whether art, signs or, in fact, language itself. Enter the relevance of music for Barthesian aesthetics. Barthes called for a "second semiology," in contrast to the classical semiology, which would explore "the body in a state of music." In this essay, I explore Barthes' musical semiology in terms of key concepts, including gesture, pulsion, grain, and jouissance. I extend the relevancy of Barthes' concepts, often articulated within the context of the Western classical musical tradition, to …