Aesthetics of music
Encyclopedia
Traditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment (plaisir and jouissance
) of music. The origin of this philosophic sub-discipline is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten
in the 18th century, followed by Kant
. Through their writing, the ancient term 'aesthetics', meaning sensory perception, received its present day connotation. In recent decades philosophers have tended to emphasize issues besides beauty and enjoyment. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy; however, many musicians, music critics
, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music.
It is often thought that music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect
, and psychology
; it can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. The philosopher Plato
suggests in the Republic that music has a direct effect on the soul. Therefore, he proposes that in the ideal regime music would be closely regulated by the state. (Book VII)
It is commonly believed that human responses to music are culturally influenced - for instance, musical passages by Beethoven that sounded highly dissonant to his contemporaries do not sound dissonant to listeners today. As such, music's aesthetic appeal seems dependent upon the culture in which it is practiced. However, there is a physical background which defines sound being proper or improper. Proper sound is perceived as gentle sound while improper sound is more or less considered nice sounding depending on what the listener is used to listening to. Harry Partch
and some other musicologists like for instance Kyle Gann
therefore have studied and tried to popularize microtonal music
and the usage of alternate musical scale
s. Also many modern composers like Lamonte Young, Rhys Chatham
and Glenn Branca
paid much attention to a scale called just intonation
.
There has been a strong tendency in the aesthetics of music emphasizing the paramount importance of compositional structure; however, other issues concerning the aesthetics of music include lyricism
, harmony
, hypnotism, emotiveness
, temporal dynamics, resonance
, playfulness, and color (see also musical development
).
's treatise, The Analysis of Beauty
. He considered dance
beautiful (closing the treatise with a discussion of the minuet), but treated music important only insofar as it could provide the proper accompaniment for the dancers. However, by the end of the century, the topic of music and its own beauty came to be distinguished from cases in which music is part of a mixed media, as it is in opera and dance. Immanuel Kant
, whose Critique of Judgment is generally considered the most important and influential work on aesthetics in the 18th century, argued that instrumental music is beautiful but ultimately trivial - compared to the other fine arts, it does not engage the understanding sufficiently, and it lacks moral purpose. In order to display the combination of genius and taste that combines ideas and beauty, respectively, music must be combined with words, as in song and opera.
in music, some composers and critics argued that music should and could express ideas, images, emotions, or even a whole literary plot. Challenging Kant's reservations about instrumental music, in 1813 E. T. A. Hoffman argued that music was fundamentally the art of instrumental composition. Five years later, Arthur Schopenhauer
's The World as Will and Representation
argued that instrumental music is the greatest art, because it is uniquely capable of representing the metaphysical organization of reality. Although the Romantic movement accepted the thesis that instrumental music has representational capacities, most did not support Schopenhauer's linking of music and metaphysics. The mainstream consensus endorsed music's capacity to represent particular emotions and situations. In 1832, composer Robert Schumann
stated that his piano work Papillons
was "intended as a musical representation" of the final scene of a novel by Jean Paul
, Flegeljahre. The thesis that the value of music is related to its representational function was vigorously countered by the formalism
of Eduard Hanslick
, setting off the "War of the Romantics." This fight divided the aesthetics into two competing groups: On one side are formalists (e.g., Hanslick), who emphasize that the rewards of music are found in appreciation of musical form or design, while on the other side are the anti-formalists, such as Richard Wagner
, who regarded musical form as a means to other artistic ends.
By the end of the 19th century, psychologist William James
gave the auditory and optical sensations equal billing in his discussion of aesthetics, but he also took a detached view of the classical/romanticist disputes. James wrote that "Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic." He stated that the "classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage."
writers in the early 20th century (including the poet Ezra Pound
) believed that music was essentially pure because it didn't represent anything, or make reference to anything beyond itself. In a sense, they wanted to bring poetry closer to Hanslick's ideas about the autonomous, self-sufficient character of music. (Bucknell 2002) Dissenters from this view notably included Albert Schweitzer
, who argued against the alleged 'purity' of music in a classic work on Bach
. Far from being a new debate, this disagreement between modernists and their critics was a direct continuation of the 19th-century debate about the autonomy of music.
Among 20th century composers, Igor Stravinsky
is the most prominent composer to defend the modernist idea of musical autonomy. When a composer creates music, Stravinsky claims, the only relevant thing "is his apprehension of the contour of the form, for the form is everything. He can say nothing whatever about meanings." (Stravinsky 1962, p. 115) Although listeners often look for meanings in music, Stravinsky warned that these are distractions from the musical experience.
The most distinctive development in the aesthetics of music in the 20th century was that attention was directed at the distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' music, now understood to align with the distinction between art and popular music
, respectively. Theodor Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life. False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness. Thus, those who are trapped in the false notions of beauty according to a capitalist mode of thinking, are only capable of hearing beauty in dishonest terms.
Beginning with Peter Kivy
's work in the 1970s, analytic philosophy
has contributed extensively to the aesthetics of music. Analytic philosophy pays very little attention to the topic of musical beauty. Instead, Kivy inspired extensive debate about the nature of emotional expressiveness in music. He also contributed to the debate over the nature of authentic performances of older music arguing that much of the debate was incoherent because it failed to distinguish among four distinct standards of authentic performance of music (1995).
(2004, p. 17-9) argues that, "'bad music' is a necessary concept for musical pleasure, for musical aesthetics." He distinguishes two common kinds of bad music: the Worst Records Ever Made type, which include "Tracks which are clearly incompetent musically; made by singers who can't sing, players who can't play, producers who can't produce," and "Tracks involving genre confusion. The most common examples are actors or TV stars recording in the latest style." Another type of "bad music" is "rock critical lists," such as *"Tracks that feature sound gimmicks that have outlived their charm or novelty" and "Tracks that depend on false sentiment (...), that feature an excess of feeling molded into a radio-friendly pop song."
Frith gives three common qualities attributed to bad music: inauthentic, [in] bad taste (see also: kitsch
), and stupid. He argues that "The marking off of some tracks and genres and artists as 'bad' is a necessary part of popular music pleasure; it is a way we establish our place in various music worlds. And 'bad' is a key word here because it suggests that aesthetic and ethical judgements are tied together here: not to like a record is not just a matter of taste; it is also a matter of argument, and argument that matters." (p. 28)
Frith's analysis of popular music is based in sociology.
to Bing Crosby
. He attacked popular music claiming that it is simplistic and repetitive, and encourages a fascist mindset (1973, p. 126). However good or bad it sounds to its audience, he believed that music is genuinely good only if it fulfills a positive political function. In his opinion, although many popular musicians seem to superficially oppose the political status quo, the use of familiar song forms and the artist's involvement in capitalism results in music that ultimately encourages the audience accept things as they are - only genuinely experimental music can encourage audiences to become critical of prevailing society. However, the mass media cannot handle the confrontational nature of good music, and offers instead a steady diet of recycled, simplified and politically ineffective music.
Besides Adorno, Theodore Gracyk provides the most extensive philosophical analysis of popular music. He argues that conceptual categories and distinctions developed in response to "art" music are systematically misleading when applied to popular music (1996).
In Germany, the musicologist Ralf von Appen (2007) has published a book on the aesthetics of popular music that focuses on everyday judgments of popular records. He analyzes the structures and aesthetic categories behind judgments found on amazon.com concerning records by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Eminem, Queens of the Stone Age etc. In a second step, von Appen interprets these findings on the basis of current theoretical positions in the field of philosophical aesthetics.
0226768376
Jouissance
The term jouissance, in French, denotes "pleasure" or "enjoyment." The term has a sexual connotation lacking in the English word "enjoyment", and is therefore left untranslated in English editions of the works of Jacques Lacan. In his Seminar "The Ethics of Psychoanalysis" Lacan develops his...
) of music. The origin of this philosophic sub-discipline is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten was a German philosopher.-Biography:Baumgarten was born in Berlin as the fifth of seven sons of the pietist pastor of the garrison, Jacob Baumgarten and his wife Rosina Elisabeth....
in the 18th century, followed by Kant
KANT
KANT is a computer algebra system for mathematicians interested in algebraic number theory, performing sophisticated computations in algebraic number fields, in global function fields, and in local fields. KASH is the associated command line interface...
. Through their writing, the ancient term 'aesthetics', meaning sensory perception, received its present day connotation. In recent decades philosophers have tended to emphasize issues besides beauty and enjoyment. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy; however, many musicians, music critics
Music criticism
See also Music journalism for reporting on classical and popular music in the media.The Oxford Companion to Music defines music criticism as 'the intellectual activity of formulating judgments on the value and degree of excellence of individual works of music, or whole groups or genres'. In this...
, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music.
It is often thought that music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect
Intellect
Intellect is a term used in studies of the human mind, and refers to the ability of the mind to come to correct conclusions about what is true or real, and about how to solve problems...
, and psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
; it can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. The philosopher Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
suggests in the Republic that music has a direct effect on the soul. Therefore, he proposes that in the ideal regime music would be closely regulated by the state. (Book VII)
It is commonly believed that human responses to music are culturally influenced - for instance, musical passages by Beethoven that sounded highly dissonant to his contemporaries do not sound dissonant to listeners today. As such, music's aesthetic appeal seems dependent upon the culture in which it is practiced. However, there is a physical background which defines sound being proper or improper. Proper sound is perceived as gentle sound while improper sound is more or less considered nice sounding depending on what the listener is used to listening to. Harry Partch
Harry Partch
Harry Partch was an American composer and instrument creator. He was one of the first twentieth-century composers to work extensively and systematically with microtonal scales, writing much of his music for custom-made instruments that he built himself, tuned in 11-limit just intonation.-Early...
and some other musicologists like for instance Kyle Gann
Kyle Gann
Kyle Eugene Gann is an American professor of music, critic and composer born in Dallas, Texas. As a critic for The Village Voice and other publications he has been a supporter of progressive music including such Downtown movements as postminimalism and totalism.- As composer :As a composer his...
therefore have studied and tried to popularize microtonal music
Microtonal music
Microtonal music is music using microtones—intervals of less than an equally spaced semitone. Microtonal music can also refer to music which uses intervals not found in the Western system of 12 equal intervals to the octave.-Terminology:...
and the usage of alternate musical scale
Musical scale
In music, a scale is a sequence of musical notes in ascending and descending order. Most commonly, especially in the context of the common practice period, the notes of a scale will belong to a single key, thus providing material for or being used to conveniently represent part or all of a musical...
s. Also many modern composers like Lamonte Young, Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham
Rhys Chatham is an American composer, guitarist, and trumpet player, primarily active in avant-garde and minimalist music. He is best known for his "guitar orchestra" compositions...
and Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca
Glenn Branca is an American avant-garde composer and guitarist known for his use of volume, alternative guitar tunings, repetition, droning, and the harmonic series. In 2008 he was awarded an unrestricted grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.-Beginnings: 1960s and early 1970s:Branca...
paid much attention to a scale called just intonation
Just intonation
In music, just intonation is any musical tuning in which the frequencies of notes are related by ratios of small whole numbers. Any interval tuned in this way is called a just interval. The two notes in any just interval are members of the same harmonic series...
.
There has been a strong tendency in the aesthetics of music emphasizing the paramount importance of compositional structure; however, other issues concerning the aesthetics of music include lyricism
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
, harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, hypnotism, emotiveness
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
, temporal dynamics, resonance
Resonance
In physics, resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate at a greater amplitude at some frequencies than at others. These are known as the system's resonant frequencies...
, playfulness, and color (see also musical development
Musical development
In European classical music, musical development is a process by which a musical idea is communicated in the course of a composition. It refers to the transformation and restatement of initial material, and is often contrasted with musical variation, which is a slightly different means to the same...
).
18th century
In the 18th century, music was considered to be so far outside the realm of aesthetic theory (then conceived of in visual terms) that music was barely mentioned in William HogarthWilliam Hogarth
William Hogarth was an English painter, printmaker, pictorial satirist, social critic and editorial cartoonist who has been credited with pioneering western sequential art. His work ranged from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like series of pictures called "modern moral subjects"...
's treatise, The Analysis of Beauty
The Analysis of Beauty
The Analysis of Beauty is a book written by William Hogarth and published in 1753, which describes Hogarth's theories of visual beauty and grace in a manner accessible to the common man of his day....
. He considered dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
beautiful (closing the treatise with a discussion of the minuet), but treated music important only insofar as it could provide the proper accompaniment for the dancers. However, by the end of the century, the topic of music and its own beauty came to be distinguished from cases in which music is part of a mixed media, as it is in opera and dance. Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, whose Critique of Judgment is generally considered the most important and influential work on aesthetics in the 18th century, argued that instrumental music is beautiful but ultimately trivial - compared to the other fine arts, it does not engage the understanding sufficiently, and it lacks moral purpose. In order to display the combination of genius and taste that combines ideas and beauty, respectively, music must be combined with words, as in song and opera.
19th century
In the 19th century, the era of romanticismRomanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in music, some composers and critics argued that music should and could express ideas, images, emotions, or even a whole literary plot. Challenging Kant's reservations about instrumental music, in 1813 E. T. A. Hoffman argued that music was fundamentally the art of instrumental composition. Five years later, Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the four separate manifestations of reason in the phenomenal...
's The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation
The World as Will and Representation is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in December 1818, and the second expanded edition in 1844. In 1948, an abridged version was edited by Thomas Mann....
argued that instrumental music is the greatest art, because it is uniquely capable of representing the metaphysical organization of reality. Although the Romantic movement accepted the thesis that instrumental music has representational capacities, most did not support Schopenhauer's linking of music and metaphysics. The mainstream consensus endorsed music's capacity to represent particular emotions and situations. In 1832, composer Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
stated that his piano work Papillons
Papillons
Papillons, Op. 2, is a suite of piano pieces written in 1831 by Robert Schumann. Meaning 'butterflies', Papillons is meant to represent a masked ball and was inspired by the novel Flegeljahre by Jean Paul....
was "intended as a musical representation" of the final scene of a novel by Jean Paul
Jean Paul
Jean Paul , born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, was a German Romantic writer, best known for his humorous novels and stories.-Life and work:...
, Flegeljahre. The thesis that the value of music is related to its representational function was vigorously countered by the formalism
Formalism (music)
In music theory and especially in the branch of study called the aesthetics of music, formalism is the concept that a composition's meaning is entirely determined by its form.-Aesthetic theory:Leonard B...
of Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick
Eduard Hanslick was a Bohemian-Austrian music critic.-Biography:Hanslick was born in Prague, the son of Joseph Adolph Hanslick, a bibliographer and music teacher from a German-speaking family, and one of his piano pupils, the daughter of a Jewish merchant from Vienna...
, setting off the "War of the Romantics." This fight divided the aesthetics into two competing groups: On one side are formalists (e.g., Hanslick), who emphasize that the rewards of music are found in appreciation of musical form or design, while on the other side are the anti-formalists, such as Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...
, who regarded musical form as a means to other artistic ends.
By the end of the 19th century, psychologist William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
gave the auditory and optical sensations equal billing in his discussion of aesthetics, but he also took a detached view of the classical/romanticist disputes. James wrote that "Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic." He stated that the "classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage."
20th century
A group of modernistModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
writers in the early 20th century (including the poet Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
) believed that music was essentially pure because it didn't represent anything, or make reference to anything beyond itself. In a sense, they wanted to bring poetry closer to Hanslick's ideas about the autonomous, self-sufficient character of music. (Bucknell 2002) Dissenters from this view notably included Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer OM was a German theologian, organist, philosopher, physician, and medical missionary. He was born in Kaysersberg in the province of Alsace-Lorraine, at that time part of the German Empire...
, who argued against the alleged 'purity' of music in a classic work on Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
. Far from being a new debate, this disagreement between modernists and their critics was a direct continuation of the 19th-century debate about the autonomy of music.
Among 20th century composers, Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
is the most prominent composer to defend the modernist idea of musical autonomy. When a composer creates music, Stravinsky claims, the only relevant thing "is his apprehension of the contour of the form, for the form is everything. He can say nothing whatever about meanings." (Stravinsky 1962, p. 115) Although listeners often look for meanings in music, Stravinsky warned that these are distractions from the musical experience.
The most distinctive development in the aesthetics of music in the 20th century was that attention was directed at the distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' music, now understood to align with the distinction between art and popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
, respectively. Theodor Adorno suggested that culture industries churn out a debased mass of unsophisticated, sentimental products which have replaced the more 'difficult' and critical art forms which might lead people to actually question social life. False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness. Thus, those who are trapped in the false notions of beauty according to a capitalist mode of thinking, are only capable of hearing beauty in dishonest terms.
Beginning with Peter Kivy
Peter Kivy
Peter Kivy is a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University. He studies aesthetics and the philosophy of art, particularly the philosophy of music....
's work in the 1970s, analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...
has contributed extensively to the aesthetics of music. Analytic philosophy pays very little attention to the topic of musical beauty. Instead, Kivy inspired extensive debate about the nature of emotional expressiveness in music. He also contributed to the debate over the nature of authentic performances of older music arguing that much of the debate was incoherent because it failed to distinguish among four distinct standards of authentic performance of music (1995).
Bad music
Simon FrithSimon Frith
Simon Frith is a British sociologist, and former rock critic, who specializes in popular music culture. He is currently Tovey Chair of Music at University of Edinburgh.-Background:...
(2004, p. 17-9) argues that, "'bad music' is a necessary concept for musical pleasure, for musical aesthetics." He distinguishes two common kinds of bad music: the Worst Records Ever Made type, which include "Tracks which are clearly incompetent musically; made by singers who can't sing, players who can't play, producers who can't produce," and "Tracks involving genre confusion. The most common examples are actors or TV stars recording in the latest style." Another type of "bad music" is "rock critical lists," such as *"Tracks that feature sound gimmicks that have outlived their charm or novelty" and "Tracks that depend on false sentiment (...), that feature an excess of feeling molded into a radio-friendly pop song."
Frith gives three common qualities attributed to bad music: inauthentic, [in] bad taste (see also: kitsch
Kitsch
Kitsch is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognized value. The concept is associated with the deliberate use of elements that may be thought of as cultural icons while making cheap mass-produced objects that...
), and stupid. He argues that "The marking off of some tracks and genres and artists as 'bad' is a necessary part of popular music pleasure; it is a way we establish our place in various music worlds. And 'bad' is a key word here because it suggests that aesthetic and ethical judgements are tied together here: not to like a record is not just a matter of taste; it is also a matter of argument, and argument that matters." (p. 28)
Frith's analysis of popular music is based in sociology.
Philosophical aesthetics of popular music
Theodor Adorno was a prominent philosopher who wrote on the aesthetics of popular music. A Marxist, Adorno was extremely hostile to popular music. His theory was largely formulated in response to the growing popularity of American music in Europe between World War I and World War II. As a result, Adorno often uses "jazz" as his example of what he believed was wrong with popular music; however, for Adorno this term included everyone from Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
to Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby
Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby was an American singer and actor. Crosby's trademark bass-baritone voice made him one of the best-selling recording artists of the 20th century, with over half a billion records in circulation....
. He attacked popular music claiming that it is simplistic and repetitive, and encourages a fascist mindset (1973, p. 126). However good or bad it sounds to its audience, he believed that music is genuinely good only if it fulfills a positive political function. In his opinion, although many popular musicians seem to superficially oppose the political status quo, the use of familiar song forms and the artist's involvement in capitalism results in music that ultimately encourages the audience accept things as they are - only genuinely experimental music can encourage audiences to become critical of prevailing society. However, the mass media cannot handle the confrontational nature of good music, and offers instead a steady diet of recycled, simplified and politically ineffective music.
Besides Adorno, Theodore Gracyk provides the most extensive philosophical analysis of popular music. He argues that conceptual categories and distinctions developed in response to "art" music are systematically misleading when applied to popular music (1996).
In Germany, the musicologist Ralf von Appen (2007) has published a book on the aesthetics of popular music that focuses on everyday judgments of popular records. He analyzes the structures and aesthetic categories behind judgments found on amazon.com concerning records by musicians such as Bob Dylan, Eminem, Queens of the Stone Age etc. In a second step, von Appen interprets these findings on the basis of current theoretical positions in the field of philosophical aesthetics.
See also
- List of aesthetic principles of music
- Music theoryMusic theoryMusic theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...
- Reception of country music
Further reading
- Alperson, Philip (ed.), What is Music?. New York, NY: Haven, 1987.
- Bowman, Wayne D. Philosophical Perspectives on Music. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
- Budd, Malcolm. Music and the Emotions: The Philosophical Theories. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1985.
- Davies, Stephen. Musical Meaning and Expression, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994.
- Davies, Stephen. Musical Works and Performances: A Philosophical Exploration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
- Goehr, Lydia. 'The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. An Essay in the Philosophy of Music' Oxford, 1992/2007.
- Gracyk, Theodore. "Adorno, Jazz, and the Aesthetics of Popular Music," The Musical Quarterly 76 no. 4 (Winter 1992): 526-42.
- Gracyk, Theodore. Listening to Popular Music: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Led Zeppelin. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007.
- Hanslick, Eduard (1885/1957). Vom Musikalisch-Schönen. Tr. The Beautiful In Music. Bobbs-Merrill Co (June 1957). ISBN 0672602113.
- Higgins, Kathleen M. The Music of Our Lives. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1991.
- Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra. "The Magic of Music: Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in Aesthetics." Philosophy of Music Education Review 13 no. 1 (Spring 2005): 77-94.
- Kertz-Welzel, Alexandra. "In Search of the Sense and the Senses: Aesthetic Education in Germany and the United States." Journal of Aesthetic Education 39 no. 3 (Fall 2005): 104-116.
- Kivy, Peter. New Essays on Musical Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 9780198250838.
- Lippman, Edward. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. University of Nebraska Press, 1992.
- Scruton, Roger. The Aesthetics of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997. ISBN 9780198167273.
- Sorgner, S. L./Fuerbeth, O. (ed.) "Music in German Philosophy: An Introduction". Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2010. ISBN:
0226768376