New Essays On Musical Understanding

Description:
Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music, a subject to which he has for many years been one of the most eminent contributors. In his distinctively elegant and informal style, Kivy explores such topics as musicology and its history, the nature of musical works, and the role of emotion in music, in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike. Most of the essays are published here for the first time, all of them are accessible and self-standing, and so there is much here to delight both followers of Kivy's work and those who are new to it.

Review:
Kivy's discussions are useful and thought-provoking. Times Literary Supplement Lives up to Kivy's reputation as a leading philosopher of music ... there are many interesting passages and the book is, as ever, written in a pleasant style. This is a book that cannot fail to be of interest to philosophers of music. British Journal of Aesthetics

Table of Contents:
I SOME HISTORY (AND ITS AFTERMATH); 1. Note-for-Note: Work, Performance, and Early Notation; 2. Music, Will, and Representation; 3. On Hanslick's Inconsistency; 4. Making the Codes and Breaking the Codes: Two Revolutions in Twentieth-Century Music; II MUSIC AND THE EMOTIONS (YET AGAIN); 5. Auditor's Emotions: Contention, Concession, Compromise; 6. Experiencing the Musical Emotions; 7. The Arousal Theory of Musical Expression: Rethinking the Unthinkable; III MORE ABOUT MUSIC; 8. Absolute Music and the New Musicology; 9. Movements and 'Movements'; 10. Music in Memory and Music in the Moment; 11. How to Forge a Musical Work; Bibliography, Index