Musical Concerns: Essays in Philosophy of Music

by Jerrold Levinson

Overview

This volume presents a new collection of essays, all of them dealing with music, by Jerrold Levinson, one of the most prominent philosophers of art today. It follows in the line of Levinson's earlier collections, Music, Art, and Metaphysics (1990), The Pleasures of Aesthetics (1996), and Contemplating Art (2006), and is representative of the most stimulating work being done under the rubric of analytic aesthetics. The essays, which are wide-ranging, should appeal to aestheticians, philosophers, musicologists, music theorists, music critics and music lovers of all kinds. Three of the twelve essays comprising the volume have not previously been published, and in somewhat of a departure for Levinson, four of the essays focus on music in the jazz tradition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199669660
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	06/09/2015
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jerrold Levinson is Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland and past president of the American Society for Aesthetics, 2001-2003. He is the author of three collections of essays, Music, Art, and Metaphysics (Cornell University Press, 1990; 2nd edn OUP, 2010), The Pleasures of Aesthetics (Cornell University Press, 1996), and Contemplating Art (OUP, 2006); a monograph, Music in the Moment (Cornell University Press, 1998); the editor of Aesthetics and Ethics (CUP, 1998), Oxford Handbook of Aesthetics (OUP, 2003), and Suffering Art Gladly (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2013); and co-editor of Aesthetic Concepts (OUP, 2001) and Art and Pornography (OUP, 2012).

Table of Contents

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction1. Philosophy and Music2. The Aesthetic Appreciation of Music3. Concatenationism, Architectonicism, and the Appreciation of Music4. Indication, Abstraction, and Individuation5. Musical Beauty6. Values of Music7. Shame in General and Shame in Music8. Jazz Vocal Interpretation: A Philosophical Analysis9. Popular Song as Moral Microcosm: Life Lessons from Jazz Standards10. The Expressive Specificity of Jazz11. Instrumentation and Improvisation12. What Is a Temporal Art?, with Philip AlpersonIndex

Editorial Reviews

"...Levinson has written so many important essays in aesthetics and his reputation is so secure — he is well established as one of our leading philosophers of art — that any new book from him merits attention it is refreshing to find multiple essays discussing songs and singing instead of composed works in the classical tradition. The value for newcomers to Levinson's work — or even newcomers to philosophy of music or to philosophy of art — is that it is organized so that the initial chapters consist of clear, straightforward exposition of his views on the nature of music appreciation, the value of music, and the nature of musical works."
— Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews Online

"Perhaps the most important attribute of this book to observe is that Levinson is an impressively clear writer. He has a strong preference for a plain-speaking style; and, when he ventures into obscure areas, he tends to be excellent at shining just the right amount of light to allow the reader to negotiate the unfamiliarity. Equally important is that Musical Concerns can be read without having to draw upon the earlier volumes as sources of prerequisite knowledge. Each of the twelve essays in this book is firmly situated in the present, and references to past work are always given due background explanation." — Examiner.com

From the Publisher