Who's better? Billie Holiday or P. J. Harvey? Blur or Oasis? Dylan or Keats? And how many friendships have ridden on the answer? Such questions aren't merely the stuff of fanzines and idle talk; they inform our most passionate arguments, distil our most deeply held values, make meaning of our ever-changing culture. In Performing Rites, one of the most influential writers on popular music asks what we talk about when we talk about music. What's good, what's bad? (...) What's high, what's low? Why do such distinctions matter? (shrink)

Edification 教化 is one of the central concepts of Confucianism. The metaphysical basis of the Confucian edification is the “philosophical theory” in the sense of rational humanism rather than the “religious doctrine” in the sense of pure faith. Confucianism did not create a system of ceremony and propriety owned by Confucians only. The system of ceremony and propriety on which Confucians depend to carry out their social edification is that of “rites and music,” the common life style of (...) ancient China. After continual metaphysical explanation and elevation, the system of ceremony and propriety and that of rites and music have undergone a sort of ever-evolving historical fluctuation, and evinced a sort of openness and forgiveness comparable to that of any other religious form. Compared with typical religious practices, whose ceremonies and rituals that have their own special fixity and exclusivity, Confucian ceremonies and rituals are fundamentally different. The edification of Confucianism can be labeled as “edification in the sense of philosophy.” As a “philosophy”, Confucianism’s vision did not focus on cognition but on completion and realization. (shrink)

Phenomenology, New Materialism, and Advances In the Pulsatile Imaginary: Rites Of Disimagination brings together scholars from art history and image theory, literary studies and philosophy. Chapters of this volume engage with the overarching theme of imagination as a pulsatile force embedded in words, images, and all imaginative modes of instantiation of the work of art in their elemental aspects, expressed in visual arts, and literature, as well as bodily schemata of choreographic and musical performances. The papers employ contrasting and (...) complementing methods from literary studies and image theory, especially phenomenology and new materialism, such as G. Bachelard and M. Merleau-Ponty, G. Bataille, J. Kristeva, P. Lacoue-Labarthe and J. Sallis, G. Didi-Huberman, H. Belting and A. Warburg, J. Bennett and Jason M. Wirth, as well as performance studies. Chapters in this volume inquire into the imaginative forces that disrupt and disinhibit the traditional habits of imagination to create pulsatile imaginaries, i.e., a dynamic process of “emergence-resurgence” of image manifested in the act of creation and in perception. This process does not properly imply a destruction of image, but rather a withdrawal of image from the realm of representation to give way to new images and new imaginative experiences. The newly coined term “rite of disimagination” points out to this operation, consecutively implying imagining and disimaging that both denies, as well as validates image – it valorizes matter. The affirmation of the materiality of image is “the re-incarnation of image.”. (shrink)

From its dissonant musics to its surrealist spectacles (the urinal is a violin!), Modernist art often seems to give more frustration than pleasure to its audience. In Untwisting the Serpent, Daniel Albright shows that this perception arises partly because we usually consider each art form in isolation, even though many of the most important artistic experiments of the Modernists were collaborations involving several media--Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a ballet, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts is an (...) opera, and Pablo Picasso turned his cubist paintings into costumes for Parade. Focusing on collaborations with a musical component, Albright views these works as either figures of dissonance that try to retain the distinctness of their various media (e.g. Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tiresias ) or figures of consonance that try to lose themselves in some total effect (e.g. Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung ). In so doing he offers a fresh picture of Modernism, and provides a compelling model for the analysis of all artistic collaborations. Untwisting the Serpent is the recipient of the 2001 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship of the Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. (shrink)

Edification 教化 is one of the central concepts of Confucianism. The metaphysical basis of the Confucian edification is the “philosophical theory” in the sense of rational humanism rather than the “religious doctrine” in the sense of pure faith. Confucianism did not create a system of ceremony and propriety owned by Confucians only. The system of ceremony and propriety on which Confucians depend to carry out their social edification is that of “rites and music,” the common life style of (...) ancient China. After continual metaphysical explanation and elevation, the system of ceremony and propriety and that of rites and music have undergone a sort of ever-evolving historical fluctuation, and evinced a sort of openness and forgiveness comparable to that of any other religious form. Compared with typical religious practices, whose ceremonies and rituals that have their own special fixity and exclusivity, Confucian ceremonies and rituals are fundamentally different. The edification of Confucianism can be labeled as “edification in the sense of philosophy.” As a “philosophy”, Confucianism’s vision did not focus on cognition but on completion and realization. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or (...) watching TV, as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

From our first social bonding as infants to the funeral rites that mark our passing, music plays an important role in our lives, bringing us closer to one another. In _The Music between Us_, philosopher Kathleen Marie Higgins investigates this role, examining the features of human perception that enable music’s uncanny ability to provoke, despite its myriad forms across continents and throughout centuries, the sense of a shared human experience. Drawing on disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, (...) musicology, linguistics, and anthropology, Higgins’s richly researched study showcases the ways music is used in rituals, education, work, healing, and as a source of security and—perhaps most importantly—joy. By participating so integrally in such meaningful facets of society, Higgins argues, music situates itself as one of the most fundamental bridges between people, a truly cross-cultural form of communication that can create solidarity across political divides. Moving beyond the well-worn takes on music’s universality, _The Music between Us_ provides a new understanding of what it means to be musical and, in turn, human. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and (...) revolutionary like the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

This paper explores the idea that wellbeing and healthy development should be the central goal of school music programs. After establishing a framework of student wellbeing, the metaphor of rites of passage experiences is employed—through Joseph Campbell's hero's journey and Jane McGonigal's analysis of the benefits of online gaming—as one way to think about high school music programs as potential sites for contributing to optimal adolescent wellbeing. Writing at the nexus of practice and theory the authors analyze (...) two rites of passage examples from their high school music classrooms. Musicking experiences that offer students openings for embarking upon rites of passage hold potential for addressing students' needs for autonomy, relatedness, and competence—needs Richard Ryan and Edward Deci document as predictive of psychological wellbeing in all cultures and that Dissanayake argues are evolved psychobiological needs. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The “Magic” of Music:Archaic Dreams in Romantic Aesthetics and an Education in AestheticsAlexandra Kertz-WelzelO, then I close my eyes to all the strife of the world—and withdraw quietly into the land of music, as into the land of belief, where all our doubts and our sufferings are lost in a resounding sea....1Music serves many different functions in human life, accompanying everyday activities such as working, shopping, or (...) watching TV, as well as creating an individual world of sounds in which to relax, to enjoy life, or just to escape into one's dreams. Tia DeNora describes this personal use of music as a technology for the self and quotes Mireille, a contract cleaner, who thinks that "everybody should listen to music. It helps you to be calm, relaxed, to see your life differently."2This desire to change minds or moods and perhaps to be personally transformed by music also motivates adolescents to listen to their music giving them a strong feeling of self-identity and helping to relieve boredom, get through difficult times, or reduce tension.3 Although this obviously everyday use of music is usually different from the life-changing strong experiences with music which Robert Panzarella4 or Alf Gabrielsson5 investigate in their research, it nevertheless shows the natural human desire to use music to transform emotions or experience life more intensively. Certainly, adolescents do have different kinds [End Page 77] of intensive and even ecstatic experiences with music; for example, while attending a rock concert with its pseudo-religious implications, or a Friday night dance party with friends, or while making music in a band. Gabrielsson quotes the description of a young woman, attending an outdoor concert of Prince:One feels so free somehow. At concerts one can dance, jump, scream and sing as much as one wants. You are like a part of it all, not just a spectator. Throughout the whole concert the audience was in total ecstasy. It was only one thing that mattered: the music! You are filled with the wonderful feeling that everything is all right, that you are living only for what is happening 'right now.' You are in a way 'intoxicated with joy."... You don't think about what you are doing. You do what you feel like, without even thinking about it.6This desire for intensive or even ecstatic experiences through music is not only an aspect of individual life, it is also an important issue in the history of music and aesthetics from ancient times. One origin of music and art can be found in the relationship of music with religion and ritual, using sound's emotional and ecstatic power to connect the world of human beings and the sacred. Music as magic and a means of ecstasy was a frequent conceptualization in ancient Egypt, as well as in Greece, in the rites of ancient Celts and early Christians, and also in non-Western religions today.7 Priests or shamans among the Australian Aborigines, Native Americans, and West-African tribes use the emotional power of music to evoke trance in their contemporary practices.Unfortunately, the aesthetics of Western European art music, especially since the eighteenth century, tends to eliminate this sensual "magic"8 of music only to replace an ecstatic way of experiencing music with a more intellectual approach. The idea of absolute music or the aesthetics of formalism attempts to establish a "pure" approach to listening without feeling, imagination, or sensuality. It is a claim to elitism which might be one reason why it is difficult for students to be affected by Western European art music, since it appears to be far away from their own world of intensive music experience. Not only the way of listening and performing Western European art music, but also the music itself may prevent students from further involvement in "classical" music and having the kind of intensive experiences their "own" music offers them. If a goal of music education is not only to involve students in art music but also to deepen and enhance their lives through aesthetic experiences, it may be reasonable to start with their musical experiences and to... (shrink)

Dans quasi toute son histoire, la philosophie a volontiers cultivé son affinité native avec les arts plastiques mais elle s'est en revanche employée à négliger voire mépriser la musique. Un tel bâillon parle et trahit la fascination apeurée que l'art musical, comme un chant de sirènes, produit chez le philosophe. C'est que, loin d'être, comme tour art du reste mais plus radicalement, un divertissement agréable, la musique déploie un autre sens du sens et de la vérité que ceux définis philosophiquement (...) : si elle n'a pas de sens, c'est parce qu'elle est sens. Dans cet essai, l'auteur propose de se mettre à l'écoute de ce sens, autant que le travail du langage et du concept le permet. Porter le langage à sa limite revient ici à dessaisir le sujet de sa position cartésienne de souveraineté pour reconnaître en son tréfonds, sa constitution de vivant respirant d'un souffle qu'il ne peut que recevoir. La respiration porte le rythme qui anime la musique. Par l'analyse de la différenciation rythmique, on pourra comprendre comment le silence, cet indifférencié absolu, est lieu de provenance de toute musique. Les références faites en chemin aux compositeurs, essentiellement Jean-Sébastien Bach, Robert Schumann, Olivier Greif et Henri Dutilleux conduisent par-delà la diversité des siècles et des styles, à ce même creuset d'absolu dont éclôt toute musique. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist NarrativeRandall Everett AllsupEric Prieto, Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative ( Lincoln NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002)Modernism. The Interpretation of Dreams, the assembly line, The Rite of Spring, the Panama Canal. The modernist sensibility is characterized above all by the "willful big idea"—history as text, a manifesto in conflict with itself and its past. Hopeful and (...) revolutionary like the writings of Karl Marx or progressive and corrupt like the Manhattan Project, such events-as-manifesto had a way of feeding off each other. Through collaboration, conflict, and competition, modernists from Robert Moses to Elliott Carter raced to explain and exemplify, often deliberately creating conflict as if crisis were its own rationale, its own sine qua non. One could hypothesize that this arms race of complexity collapsed—exhausted—about the same time that Communism did. Its failure to sustain its ideas (rather than outpace them one after another) may be one reason we live in an anti-dialectical world, an unmodern place of fundamentalisms and easy freedoms.Author Eric Prieto is at home in the modern world more so than the present; his heroes are French intellectuals after all, those lovers of complexity. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, he investigates late modernist authors who looked to music as a way to exemplify the inward nature of mind [End Page 93] and the outward nature of place. To understand this book, we must revisit some formal aesthetic theories, namely that music's value resides in its ability to name without signifying, that musical properties like intervallic distance, dynamic contrast, and the space-time component that is rhythm put us in touch with the Kantian a priori—the-thing-in-itself, the Schopenhauerian will. Music as sound-in-itself (to riff on Kant and Schopenhauer) becomes a metaphor for the noumenal world or is mimetic at the very least of the abstract and non-linear nature of thought. Prieto argues that "wherever a music model is present [among his examples] it always serves to further this inwardly directed mode of mimesis I call 'listening in,' where the primary object of representation is not the outside world but the subtly modulating interactions between consciousness and world."1Prieto's book is highly consistent. He masterfully captures the spirit of cooperation from modernist writer to musician to thinker and back. Concentrating on three authors, Robert Pinget, Michel Leiris, and Samuel Beckett, Prieto cites the influences of composers like Bach and Beethoven, as well as philosophers like Wittgenstein and Schopenhauer on their literary works. He brings in thinking from Nelson Goodman and Ferdinand de Saussure. The result is literary criticism as manifesto. Reader beware, this is a book for an elevated audience, those rare folk who are comfortable with structural linguistics, nineteenth-century music aesthetics, specialized academic scholarship, and word puzzles. To explain for example why an author like Beckett is inspired by music to create abstract or associative narratives rather than traditional stories of cause and effect, Prieto writes:In music, this progression necessarily takes place on the level of audible resemblances, but in literature, by virtue of the properties of the two-tiered linguistic sign, analogical progression may take place either on the level of the signifier (via the principle of paronomasia), on the level of the signified (via metaphorical substitutions, as in the association of ideas), or between the two levels (punning, "imitative harmony").2This density of language and concept speak well of Prieto's intellect and one is likewise impressed by his broad understanding of music and letters, yet it is the musical scholar who gets the short end of the deal. Paronomasia? "Audible resemblance" is not a musical term I have heard used. In Listening In: Music, Mind, and the Modernist Narrative, music serves as starting point, an inspiration, not as an equal partner. This holds true for Beckett and Pinget as well as for Prieto. The result can be disconcerting, even to readers like me for whom the cross-disciplinary study of music and literature is a fascinating endeavor.Difficulty, nonetheless, has its rewards and this is one lesson of... (shrink)

From the perspective of perceptual ontology, Laozi criticizes the unnatural state in which the body is concealed in the perceptual social power and ethical relations, and advocates the perceptual liberation of the body. According to different subjects of the body, the covered body should be divided into people’s body and monarchs’ body. The body of the people is concealed in the rites and music, and could be liberated by resuming production; the body of the monarchs is covered in (...) the excessive exercise of power, and could be liberated in the restraint of power. The body is not only in the ethical relationship of the different order pattern, but also in the power relationship of the same structure of family and country. The power, body and ethics form the internal structure of trinity. The perceptual existence of the body is the basis of power and ethics, and the perceptual liberation of the body is the purpose of power and ethics. (shrink)

La musique constitue un terrain privilégié permettant d'explorer de nouvelles émotions et de vivre les échanges humains sous de nouveaux modes de communication.

Un admirable récit-reportage (1938) où l'auteur, qui a pris part à la guerre civile espagnole dans les rangs des milices anarchistes du POUM, raconte la lutte anti-franquiste mais aussi et surtout l'annihilation du POUM par les communistes espagnols. De ces événements devaient surgir le pessimisme de Orwell et sa hantise du totalitarisme, traits marquants de la suite de son oeuvre (##La ferme des animaux##, ##1984##).

This biography of the court scholar Xun Xu explores central areas of intellectual life in third-century China — court lyrics, music, metrology, pitch systems, archeology, and historiography. It clarifies the relevant source texts in order to reveal fierce debates. Besides solving technical puzzles about the material details of court rites, the book unfolds factional struggles that developed into scholarly ones.

The Chinese character, he (和), “harmony,” occurs more than 100 times in the Liji (禮記; the Book of Rites). This accounts for over one‐third of the term's total number of occurrences in the 13 pre‐Qin Confucian classics. In this study, we engage with existing scholarship on the concept of “harmony” in Chinese culture and contribute to the discussion by analyzing the variety of senses that “harmony” has in the pre‐Qin Confucian classics, especially the Liji. We find that usages of (...) the term “he” (“harmony”) in the Liji fall into six categories, namely, self, external things, music, human relations, politics, and the universe. We hold that the ways in which harmony features in the Liji and other Confucian classics can help us understand the Chinese cultural presupposition that there exists “only one world,” meaning that this world encompasses both the natural and the supernatural, and that human beings are a holistic blend of body and heart‐mind, which does not give rise to any dualistic tension between body and mind. Based on our understanding of the unique Chinese worldview and the corresponding view on life, this study aims to give an account for the importance of harmony as a guideline within various areas of Chinese life. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council, taking into account the modern needs of mankind, called for the mutual tolerance of denominations, reforms and compromise in church traditions and practices. This was a response to the practical life of the Ukrainian church in the diaspora. For the Eastern Churches, the Council adopted a separate Decree "The Constitution for the Eastern Churches" 1, on the basis of which a conference of the UCP bishopric, led by the Supreme Archbishop Joseph Slipy, was convened on December (...) 14, 1966 in Rome. It discussed a number of issues, including the case of Divine Liturgy, the liturgical language, the introduction of the Ukrainian spoken language, some reductions in the Service of God, and the reformation of church singing. It was for this purpose that the dioceses established Liturgical Commissions, in particular at the Chicago Department in the United States, which included the musicologist, composer, and musical culture activist of the Diaspora Myron Fedorov. One of the tasks of the commission was to preserve the traditional self-made singing, so that he "did not disappear, but he lived and developed under different kinds: single-handed, double-voiced or in choral works, which most would be out of the richness and beauty of our rite". (shrink)

The Digital Humanities project ‘CANTUS NETWORK. Libri ordinarii of the Salzburg metropolitan province’ undertakes research around the liturgy and music of the churches and monasteries of the medieval ecclesiastical province of Salzburg. Key sources are the liturgical ‘prompt books’, called libri ordinarii, which include a short form of more or less the entire rite of a diocese or a monastery. The workflow of the project is set in an environment called GAMS, a humanities research data repository built for long-term (...) storage and presentation of data coming from the humanities. Digital editions of the libri ordinarii of the province were generated with the aim of enabling a comparative analysis of the various different traditions. As a first step, the books were transcribed with strict rule-based tags in Microsoft Word and transformed to TEI using the community’s XSLT stylesheets and a Java-based script. Subsequently, Semantic Web technologies were deployed to foster graph-based search and analysis of the structured data. Possible future work on the topic is facilitated by the dissemination of content levels as Linked Open Data. Further analysis is conducted with the help of Natural Language Processing methods in order to find text similarities and differences between the libri ordinarii. (shrink)

Yuejiao was the primary form of education ever since the time of Emperors Yao and Shun. This tradition of valuing Yue over Li lasted till the Three Dynasties period. After the Spring and Autumn Period, Lijiao became the dominant form, but it still consisted of a lot of yue. Seeing the declining of this tradition, Confucius claimed to “follow upon Zhou”. That is, he wanted to recover and inherit this ideology that engages primarily in music cultivation supplemented by ritual (...) normalization. His statement: “Let a man be first incited by the Songs, then given a firm footing by the study of ritual, and finally perfected by music,” also shows his emphasis on Yue. More proofs can be found in Confucian classics such as Analects and the Record of Rites, in which discourses on/ about beauty and goodness are characterized by the juxtaposition of Li and Yue to serve a higher purpose for the pre-Qin Confucians. However, this ideology was not inherited by later Confucians. And the consequence is with the increasing status and impact of Confucianism in China in the past 2500 years, such a tradition of valuing Yue over Li gradually turned into a tradition of valuing Li over Yue. This, however, is inconsistent with both Confucius’ ideology of Li and Yue and the real characteristic of Chinese cultural tradition. (shrink)

The aggressive foreign policy of the Soviet Union and insufficient dynamic development of Soviet culture of the late 70's of XX century led to a slowdown in the British-Soviet cultural relations, including the prohibition of exchange visits between Ministers of Culture of both countries and bilateral tours of theatre, ballet and opera groups. In order to otrengthen cultural relations between the UK and the Soviet Union, the leadership of both countries established centers of cultural developments like the British Association "Great (...) Britain - USSR" and the Soviet Society "USSR - United Kingdom ". Top priority areas of bilateral relations between the leadership of the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union were literary industry which included publishing scientific literature, expansion of book exchange between Soviet and British libraries, exhibitions of works of literature, such as the exhibition of the works of British authors, published on the territory of the Soviet Union in 1984; theatrical sphere, which included exchange visits of the UK and the USSR theater personalities to study the trends of Performing Arts and review of countries' repertoire; contacts in the field of historical sciences by creating among States bilateral commission of historians of the USSR and the UK; research work done by Soviet specialists in the territorial waters of the United Kingdom with the permission of the British government; cooperation in the field of cinema presented directors and actors exchange visits of both countries carrying out the Soviet television Week in 1984 in the National theater of Great Britain; and constructive cooperation in the field of music, which demonstrated the International Music Festival in May 1981 in Moscow and performances of the Moscow Philharmonic, "Music of Russian rites and festivals" and "Tradition of ancient Russian music" in the early 1980's in UK. British-soviet system of contacts in the sphere of culture was a tool for establishing successful diplomatic relations between Great Britain and the Soviet Union. (shrink)

How to inculcate virtue in the citizens of Magnesia by means of the dance component ofchoreiaconstitutes one of the principal concerns in theLaws(=Leg.), revealing Plato's evolving ideas about the expediency of music andpaideiafor the construction of his ideal city since theRepublic. Indeed, a steady stream of monographs and articles on theLawshas enriched our understanding of how Plato theorizes the body as a site of intervention and choral dance as instrumental in solidifying social relations and in conditioning the ethical and (...) political self. As one scholar has aptly put it: ‘a city and its sociopolitical character [are] effectively danced into existence.’ Drawing on this recent work, I focus on an enigmatic passage inLawsBook 7 that merits more attention than it has received, in which Plato curiously singles out Bacchic dances from those that are ‘without controversy’ (815b7–d4):τὴν τοίνυν ἀμφισβητουμένην ὄρχησιν δεῖ πρῶτον χωρὶς τῆς ἀναμφισβητήτου διατεμεῖν. τίς οὖν αὕτη, καὶ πῇ δεῖ χωρὶς τέμνειν ἑκατέραν; ὅση μὲν βακχεία τ᾽ ἐστὶν καὶ τῶν ταύταις ἑπομένων, ἃς Νύμφας τε καὶ Πᾶνας καὶ Σειληνοὺς καὶ Σατύρους ἐπονομάζοντες, ὥς φασιν, μιμοῦνται κατῳνωμένους, περὶ καθαρμούς τε καὶ τελετάς τινας ἀποτελούντων, σύμπαν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰρηνικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὡς πολεμικὸν οὔθ᾽ ὅτι ποτὲ βούλεται ῥᾴδιον ἀφορίσασθαι: διορίσασθαι μήν μοι ταύτῃ δοκεῖ σχεδὸν ὀρθότατον αὐτὸ εἶναι, χωρὶς μὲν πολεμικοῦ, χωρὶς δὲ εἰρηνικοῦ θέντας, εἰπεῖν ὡς οὐκ ἔστι πολιτικὸν τοῦτο τῆς ὀρχήσεως τὸ γένος, ἐνταῦθα δὲ κείμενον ἐάσαντας κεῖσθαι, νῦν ἐπὶ τὸ πολεμικὸν ἅμα καὶ εἰρηνικὸν ὡς ἀναμφισβητήτως ἡμέτερον ὂν ἐπανιέναι.So, first of all, we should separate questionable dancing far from dancing that is without controversy. Which is the controversial kind, and how are the two to be distinguished? All the dancing that is of a Bacchic kind and cultivated by those who indulge in intoxicated imitations of Nymphs, Pans, Sileni and Satyrs (as they name them), when performing certain rites of expiation and initiation—this entire class of dancing cannot easily be marked off either as pacific or as warlike, nor as of any one particular kind. The most correct way of defining it appears to me to be this—to place it away from both pacific and warlike dancing, and to pronounce that this type of dancing is οὐ πολιτικόν; having thus set aside and dismissed it, we will now return to the warlike and pacific types, which without controversy belong to us. (shrink)

"The scholarship of Michael Spitzer's new book is impressive and thorough. The writing is impeccable and the coverage extensive. The book treats the history of the use of metaphor in the field of classical music. It also covers a substantial part of the philosophical literature. The book treats the topic of metaphor in a new and extremely convincing manner."-Lydia Goehr, Columbia University The experience of music is an abstract and elusive one, enough so that we're often forced to (...) describe it using analogies to other forms and sensations: we say that music moves or rises like a physical form that it contains the imagery of paintings or the grammar of language. In these and countless other ways, our discussions of music take the form of metaphor, attempting to describe music's abstractions by referencing more concrete and familiar experiences. Michael Spitzer's Metaphor and Musical Thought uses this process to create a unique and insightful history of our relationship with music--the first ever book-length study of musical metaphor in any language. Treating issues of language, aesthetics, semiotics, and cognition, Spitzer offers an evaluation, a comprehensive history, and an original theory of the ways our cultural values have informed the metaphors we use to address music. And as he brings these discussions to bear on specific works of music and follows them through current debates on how music's meaning might be considered, what emerges is a clear and engaging guide to both the philosophy of musical thought and the history of musical analysis, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Spitzer writes engagingly for students of philosophy and aesthetics, as well as for music theorists and historians. (shrink)

Contents.--The theme.--What is music?--Music in nature.--Wherefore?--Law in music.--Correlations of music.--The beautifier of time.--The power of music.--Musico-therapy.--Design in design.--The altruistic art.--The social art.--The religious art.--Music and immortality.--The God of music.

The basic aim of this research study is to describe the Applications of the fusion of aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television music production. This research study depends upon primary data analysis for measuring the research study to generate different questions related to the aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy to determine the research study used smart PLS and run different results related to the variables. Modern philosophy of art includes the philosophy of film as a well-established (...) subfield. Although philosophers were among the first academics to write studies of the new art form in the early decades of the twentieth century, the area did not enjoy considerable development until the 1980s, when a resurgence began. The rapid expansion of this sector can be attributed to a wide variety of factors. Let it be enough to state that the evolution of philosophy as a discipline and the growing importance of cinema in popular culture has made it crucial for philosophers to view the film as an art form on par with literature, music, and the visual arts. The overall research study found that there are negative and some positive relations between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in music production. The result found that significant relationship between aesthetic philosophy and practical philosophy in film and television. (shrink)

The ancient practice of metzitzah b'peh, direct oral suction, is still practiced by ultra-Orthodox Jews as part of the religious rite of male newborn circumcision. Between 2000 and 2011, 11 children have died in New York and New Jersey, following infection by herpes simplex virus, presumably from infected practitioners. The City responded by requiring signed parental consent before oral suction, with parents being warned of the dangers of the practice. This essay argues that informed consent is not an appropriate response (...) to this problem. An outright ban would a better response to a practice that is dangerous to children, but might prove unconstitutional under New York State law. (shrink)

The notion that music’s expressive force is the spring of its affective power calls for a consideration of the language music speaks. Hermann Kretzschmar’s effort to set out a method for explicating music’s affects through discursive means falls short in this regard. Conversely, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reflections on the language of art opens the way to a hermeneutical consideration of music’s affective significance. Gadamer’s critique of Kant’s subjectivization of aesthetics disabuses us of the romantic conceit that (...) class='Hi'>music is a “language beyond language.” Rather, music’s power to speak inheres in the communicability of the experiences occasioned by it. The hermeneutics of music I set out draws on Gadamer’s analysis of the phenomenon of play. Martin Heidegger’s reflections on the origin of the work of art complement Gadamer’s phenomenological account of the work of art’s mode of being. The truth expressed by a work, I accordingly argue, is one that it alone exemplifies. For a phenomenological hermeneutics of music, music’s communicability of feelings and moods to which it gives voice is consequently the spring of its worlding power. (shrink)

In international philosophy of music education, there are some philosophers who are important points of reference. One of them is the German Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). While his philosophy is complex, an oversimplified understanding of his ideas turned him into the “bad guy” of international music education philosophy, being in favor for instance of art for its own sake. His assumed ideas are thought to be the foundation of aesthetic education, in opposition to music education concepts promoting praxis (...) and social change. The prominent role Kant plays leads to questions: Can an eighteenth-century philosopher be blamed for twentieth-century music education concepts and their supposed aberrations? And what did Kant really say? By addressing these and related questions, this paper offers fresh perspectives on Kant’s original concept and the role his assumed ideas play in international music education philosophy, aiming at revising some discourses around them. Furthermore, Kant as a case in point, can lead to general considerations about the function of philosophy in music education philosophy. (shrink)

A pioneering study that illuminates the connection of music, poetry, mystical praxis and social history underlying the ceremony of the Mevlevi Dervishes. Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi, whose life and mystical poetry provided the inspiration for the Mevlevi Sufi order, is one of the world's best-known poets, yet the centuries-long musical tradition cultivated by the Mevleviye remains much less known. In this deeply researched book, renowned scholar Walter Feldman traces the historical development of Mevlevi music and brings to light the (...) remarkable musical and mystical aesthetics of the Mevlevi ayin - the instrumental and vocal accompaniment to the sublime ceremony of the 'Whirling' Dervishes. (shrink)

Are there qualities of sound and the experience of listening that educators can extrapolate to inform the philosophy and practice of music education? In this essay, I imagine a music education where sound—how it behaves and how we experience it—serves not only as the subject of study, but generates the framework of the pedagogy. A sonic music education is not automatic because ocularcentrism privileges the vision and influences the listening and educational experiences, often in unrecognized ways. I (...) explore two qualities of sounds: they are, first, impermanent and continually changing and, second, diffuse—seemingly inside and outside our bodies. These qualities contrast with the visual experience, which makes objects appear permanent, fixed, and separate from our bodies. Pedagogies based on sound might present truth as impermanent and their aims as multidirectional and might employ social constructivist epistemologies and democratic education. A music education based on sounds may be a corrective to ocularcentric banking pedagogies where knowledge is fixed and progress is unidirectionally measured. (shrink)

When Chinese literary thought is put in a global context, it is often characterized by its disinterest in mimesis and its correlative faith in the legibility of direct lyrical expression, both of which features would derive from a general epistemic optimism common to all schools of Chinese thought. Early writing on music, however, attests to a distrust of the art and to a consequent urge for reform. Suspicious mimesis, linked with the promotion of moral exemplars, is shown in this (...) historical essay to be the ground of aesthetics in the Confucian tradition. (shrink)

The Postlude, written for this edition, looks back at the predictions made more than twenty-five years ago and speculates about what the coming decades may hold ...

Beethoven is a classic study of the composer's music, written by one of the most important thinkers of our time. Throughout his life, Adorno wrote extensive notes, essay fragments and aides-memoires on the subject of Beethoven's music. This book brings together all of Beethoven's music in relation to the society in which he lived. Adorno identifies three periods in Beethoven's work, arguing that the thematic unity of the first and second periods begins to break down in the (...) third. Adorno follows this progressive disintegration of organic unity in the classical music of Beethoven and his contemporaries, linking it with the rationality and monopolistic nature of modern society. Beethoven will be welcomed by students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines - philosophy, sociology, music and history - and by anyone interested in the life of the composer. (shrink)

The Book Seeks To Weigh Some Basic Facts And Concepts Of Hindustani Sangeet (Music, Rhythm And Kathak Dance) Against The Art Theories Of Susanne K. Langer, An Eminent Aesthetician Of The Recent Past, Incorporating Numerous Illustrative References To Hindustani Sangeet.

This is a long-awaited reissue of Jerrold Levinson's 1990 book which gathers together the writings that made him a leading figure in contemporary aesthetics. These highly influential essays are essential reading for debates on the definition of art, the ontology of art, emotional response to art, expression in art, and the nature of art forms.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:700 BOOK REVIEWS certain violations of justice can be appreciated without " any back· ground of social conventions" (p. 95). The cases he cites-racial and gender bias and the failure to return kindness-may he unproblematic for us, hut is this not because we have been tutored by the institutions of modern liberalism? A strong case can be made, moreover, that our general agreement vanishes when it comes to particular (...) cases. This raises a larger question: can character ethics-with its repudiation of impersonal decision procedures-provide a basis for even limited universalism? A less impersonal route would be that of Thomistic natural law, but Kupperman's meager attention to personhood and his emphasis upon the self as a " metaphysical term of art" makes this an unlikely route. Kupperman seems intent on securing limited universalism as a nee· essary framework for pluralism; the view is central to his thesis that moral education cannot substitute values clarification for absolutism, at least not in its initial stage (pp. 174-78). It is not clear, however, that the primacy of the language of " values " is compatible with an emphasis on strength of character. Kupperman concedes that an "antiphony of values " may make the achievement of strong character more difficult. He fails, however, to entertain seriously the possibility that the pluralism of post-modern liberalism might well generate a society of Nietzsche's last men, with no more than a " qualified loyalty to anything " (p. 137). While the argument of Character may not he fully persuasive, it nonetheless marks an important contribution to recent Hterature attempting to show that liberalism need not be indifferent to questions of the good and of human excellence. THOMAS s. HIBBS Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts The Magic of Ritual: Our Need for Liberating Rites that Transform Our Lives and Our Communities. By TOM F. DRIVER. San Francisco : Harper, 1991. Pp. 270. $19.95. Tom Driver, former theater critic and author of hooks about theater and religion, is Paul Tillich Professor of Theology and Culture at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He is also an active leader in the Ritual Studies section of the American Academy of Religion. This engagingly written book reflects all of these vocations and interests. When he writes compellingly that we suffer from a void of ritual that could give shape and meaning to human life he critiques the view that BOOK REVIEWS 701 Christianity is primarily about theology and doctrine as well as the shape and content of the liturgy as presently celebrated in many Christian churches. On the one hand, this book is an apologia for the role of ritual in Christian life; on the other, it is a trenchant critique of what and how liturgical churches ritualize their faith. In the Introduction he states that by design this work is about the " deep human longing for ritual; to interpret it in the light of our physical, social, polemical, sexual, moral, aesthetic, and religious existence; and to urge a reform of our ritual life, especially in religion, so that our longing for ritual and our longing for freedom may come together " (4). He poignantly observes that the book is a response to "ritual boredom" (7) and that much Christian liturgical practice " has become moribund " (ll). The book's fairly evenly distributed three parts concern "ritual pathways," a cursory survey of animal, human and church ritual behavior (chapters l to 3), " modalities of performance," relating ritual to theater and reflecting on ritual's relationship to confession and ethics (chapters 5 and 6), and" ritual's social gifts," reflecting on the results of ritual: order, community and transformation of participants (chapters 7 to 9). In many ways the book's Conclusion and two Appendices betray Driver's slant on the state of contemporary Christian liturgy and ritual studies by offering critiques of the celebration of some Christian liturgies (Conclusion and Appendix A) and of the work of the ritual theorist Victor Turner (Appendix B). While there is nothing really new in this last part of the book, these sections offer a particularly clear view of where Driver stands, what his prejudices are, and how current his scholarship really is. Reading these last sections first would... (shrink)

Aesthetics, hermeneutics, criticism -- Social Werktreue and the subjectivization of aesthetics -- From musike to metaphysics -- Formalist aesthetics and musical hermeneutics -- Deconstructing the disciplinary divide -- The question of metaphor -- Mimesis and the hermeneutics of music -- Political critique and the politics of music criticism -- Toward a hermeneutics of music criticism.