Musical Meaning and Expression - Couverture souple

Davies, Stephen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0801481511 ISBN 13 : 9780801481512

Editeur : Cornell University Press, 1994

Synopsis

We talk not only of enjoying music, but of understanding it. Music is often taken to have expressive import--and in that sense to have meaning. But what does music mean, and how does it mean?

Stephen Davies addresses these questions in this sophisticated and knowledgeable overview of current theories in the philosophy of music. Reviewing and criticizing the aesthetic positions of recent years, he offers a spirited explanation of his own position.

Davies considers and rejects in turn the positions that music describes (like language), or depicts (like pictures), or symbolizes (in a distinctive fashion) emotions. Similarly, he resists the idea that music's expressiveness is to be explained solely as the composer's self-expression, or in terms of its power to evoke a response from the audience. Music's ability to describe emotions, he believes, is located within the music itself; it presents the aural appearance of what he calls emotion characteristics. The expressive power of music awakens emotions in the listener, and music is valued for this power although the responses are sometimes ones of sadness. Davies shows that appreciation and understanding may require more than recognition of and reaction to music's expressive character, but need not depend on formal musicological training.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Stephen Davies teaches in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Auckland. He is the author of Musical Meaning and Expression, also from Cornell, Musical Works and Performances, Themes in the Philosophy of Music, and The Philosophy of Art. He is editor of Art and Its Messages and Art and Its Essence.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Cornell University Press
• Date d'édition: 1994
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0801481511
• ISBN 13: 9780801481512
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 400
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible