In recent issues of this journal, Roger Scruton and Malcolm Budd have debated the question whether hearing a melody in a sequence of sounds necessarily involves an ‘unasserted thought’ about spatial movement. According to Scruton, the answer is ‘yes’; according to Budd, the answer is ‘no’. The conclusion of this paper is that, while Budd may have underestimated the viability of Scruton's thesis in one of its possible interpretations, there is no good reason to assume that the thesis is true. (...) Very briefly, the argument for the second part of the conclusion is that we can account for all the data adduced by Scruton in favour of his hypothesis by means of hypotheses that are far less daring. (shrink)

" Guy Dammann, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, UK "This admirable volume will be welcomed by established philosophers of and especially - by those coming ...

There are two ways of dealing with Kant's derogatory position on music. Either it is claimed that Kant's opinion is a result of biographical factors, or Kant is regarded as a mere predecessor of a more successful music aesthetics. While the first way mistakes Kant's personal preferences for a philosophical argument about the nature of sound, the second approach underestimates the close connection between his music aesthetics and his whole philosophical system. Against these approaches the article defends the proposition that (...) Kant's (like any other) music aesthetics can only be understood with reference to the concepts of „time“ and „movement“ in order to elucidate the ontology of sound objects. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that it is productive to read Rancière’s theory of political practice – what he calls “disagreement” – with and against Kodwo Eshun’s theorization of hip hop. Thinking disagreement through hip hop helps flesh out how, exactly, disagreement works, particularly at the level of individual embodiment and consciousness. While Rancière himself gives us many examples of interruptions to the political body (the demos speaking, Jean Derion asserting the non-universality of “universal” man, etc.), I am interested in (...) examining how these interruptions work in, on, and through individual bodies. How is it that we become aware of the ways that distributions of sensibility – particularly hegemonic ones, which are most likely to be normalized and imperceptible by virtue of their ubiquity – structure our corporeal schemas? How does one’s corporeal schema reinforce or interrupt dominant distributions of sensibility? Can we stage an interruption of our own corporeal schemas, and if so, how? (shrink)

In this article I argue that a work of art provides the best interpretation of itself - more faithful than any other scholarly interpretative work.

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 that actual performances pose to overly rigid conceptions of music. Daniel Barenboim unannounced performance of Wagner in Israel in 2001 shows that the problem of the boundaries of musical relevance is no mere philosophical puzzle. It is a pressing problem in the musical public sphere. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers of music, including Lydia Goehr and Peter Kivy, maintain that the experience of music changed drastically in about 1800. According to the great divide hypothesis, prior to 1800 audiences often scarcely attended to music. At other times, music was appreciated as part of social, civic, or religious ceremonies. After the great divide, audiences began to appreciate music as an exclusive object of aesthetic experience. The great divide hypothesis is false. The musicological record reveals that prior to the (...) great divide music was often the exclusive object of aesthetic experience. (shrink)