Research Catalog

On music / Theodore Gracyk.

Title
On music / Theodore Gracyk.
Author
Gracyk, Theodore
Publication
New York : Routledge, 2013.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

StatusFormatAccessCall NumberItem Location
TextRequest in advance ML3800 .G6607 2013Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description
xiii, 156 pages; 21 cm.
Summary
What is music for? Is it the same in a Haydn symphony, the jazz fusion of Jaco Pastorius, a raga by Ravi Shankar, and an improvised song of grief in Papua New Guinea? This extremely concise book offers an opinionated and example-filled survey of some fundamental and longstanding debates about the nature of music. The central arguments and ideas are presented with the goal of making them as accessible as possible to general readers who have no background in philosophy. The emphasis is on instrumental music, but examples are drawn from many cultures as well as from Western classical, jazz, folk, and popular music. The views of historical figures--Plato, Kant, Hanslick, Schopenhauer, Wittgenstein--are compared with the views of leading contemporary philosophers of music--Stephen Davies, Peter Kivy, Kathleen Higgins, Malcolm Budd. Together, the four chapters in On Music show that music is a human universal that is culturally tailored to perform many different communicative functions. Performances of music are physically-embodied manifestations of human agency. Some performances express emotion. Some performances convey the mystical. Some just move our feet for dancing. But in every case, music speaks to us by drawing on both our innate musicality and our cultural traditions [Publisher description]
Series Statement
Thinking in action
Uniform Title
Thinking in action.
Subject
  • Music > Philosophy and aesthetics
  • Musik
  • Musikphilosophie
  • Musikästhetik
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references and index.
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
Contents
More than meets the ear : music and art -- With and without words : listening with understanding -- Music and emotion -- The siren voice of transcendence.
ISBN
  • 9780415807777 (hbk)
  • 0415807778 (hbk)
  • 9780415807784 (pbk)
  • 0415807786 (pbk)
  • 9780203145777 (ebk)
  • 0203145771 (ebk)
LCCN
^^2012045261
OCLC
  • 813540088
  • SCSB-10229087
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library