What do you think?
Rate this book
Aesthetics and Music
The Continuum Aesthetics Series looks at the aesthetic questions and issues raised by all major art forms. Stimulating, engaging and accessible, the series offers food for thought not only for students of aesthetics, but also for anyone with an interest in philosophy and the arts. Aesthetics and Music is a fresh and often provocative exploration of the key concepts and arguments in musical aesthetics. It draws on the rich heritage of the subject, while proposing distinctive new ways of thinking about music as an art form.
The book looks at:
The experience of listening
Rhythm and musical movement
What modernism has meant for musical aesthetics
The relation of music to other 'sound arts'
Improvisation and composition as well as more traditional issues in musical aesthetics such as absolute versus programme music and the question of musical formalism.
Thinkers discussed range from Pythagoras and Plato to Kant, Nietzsche and Adorno. Areas of music covered include classical, popular and traditional music, and jazz. Aesthetics and Music makes an eloquent case for a humanistic, democratic and genuinely aesthetic conception of music and musical understanding. Anyone interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say about music as an art form will find this thought-provoking and highly enjoyable book required reading.
The book looks at:
The experience of listening
Rhythm and musical movement
What modernism has meant for musical aesthetics
The relation of music to other 'sound arts'
Improvisation and composition as well as more traditional issues in musical aesthetics such as absolute versus programme music and the question of musical formalism.
Thinkers discussed range from Pythagoras and Plato to Kant, Nietzsche and Adorno. Areas of music covered include classical, popular and traditional music, and jazz. Aesthetics and Music makes an eloquent case for a humanistic, democratic and genuinely aesthetic conception of music and musical understanding. Anyone interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say about music as an art form will find this thought-provoking and highly enjoyable book required reading.
- GenresMusicPhilosophy
258 pages, Paperback
First published June 29, 2007
3 people are currently reading
70 people want to read
About the author
Andy Hamilton
9 books6 followersAndy Hamilton teaches Philosophy, and also History and Aesthetics of Jazz, at Durham University, UK. He was also until recently Adjunct Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Western Australia, Perth, and has taught music aesthetics at Hong Kong University.
He specialises in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, J.S. Mill and Wittgenstein, and has published Aesthetics and Music (Continuum, 2007), Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (University of Michigan Press, 2007), The Self In Question: Memory, the Body and Self-Consciousness (Palgrave, 2013), and Scruton's Aesthetics, edited with Nick Zangwill (Palgrave, 2011).
The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and "On Certainty" will appear in 2014, and The Aesthetics of Rhythm, edited with Max Paddison, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. At the moment he is working on monographs on The Autonomy of Art, and on books of conversations with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and improvising pianist Steve Beresford.
He is a long-standing contributor to "The Wire", "Jazz Review" and "International Piano" magazines, interviewing and writing features on jazz and classical musicians and composers such as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Elliott Carter, Kaija Saariaho and Christian Wolff.
He specialises in aesthetics, political philosophy, philosophy of mind, J.S. Mill and Wittgenstein, and has published Aesthetics and Music (Continuum, 2007), Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (University of Michigan Press, 2007), The Self In Question: Memory, the Body and Self-Consciousness (Palgrave, 2013), and Scruton's Aesthetics, edited with Nick Zangwill (Palgrave, 2011).
The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Wittgenstein and "On Certainty" will appear in 2014, and The Aesthetics of Rhythm, edited with Max Paddison, is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. At the moment he is working on monographs on The Autonomy of Art, and on books of conversations with cellist Frances-Marie Uitti, and improvising pianist Steve Beresford.
He is a long-standing contributor to "The Wire", "Jazz Review" and "International Piano" magazines, interviewing and writing features on jazz and classical musicians and composers such as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Elliott Carter, Kaija Saariaho and Christian Wolff.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 24, 2008
Well, plenty of people told me before I started reading this, and Andy Hamilton just confirmed it: philosophers of aesthetics have their damn heads up their asses. Seriously! This one spends too much time debating over utterly pointless topics like what constitutes the "acousmatic experience," and pretty much fails to address reality. A few passages made me skeptical of his supposed musical background or credibility. His discussion of rhythm was so ham-fisted, it made me laugh out loud on the subway. While attempting to describe what rhythm/meter/time signature is, he says:
"These are cumbersome descriptions of phenomena that every musician, professional or amateur, knows well, and it is interesting how hard it is to capture them in words."
What the fuck, dude? It's neither hard nor interesting! You can find a concise, accurate explanation of meter in a first-grader's music class! Jesus! I mean, he never claims to be a musician and I don't care if he is or not, but some people just *don't* have rhythm, and if he has that much problem describing it, then what is he doing writing a book about the aesthetics of music?
OK, OK. Maybe it's not that big of a deal. But he also seems to suffer from the same elitism that he actually criticizes Adorno for:
"...pop music that largely constitutes muzak, or the toneless hiss of rock or funk rhythms that emanates from personal stereos or iPods."
Come oooon. Look, we all have our criticisms of "pop" music, but "toneless hiss?" "Muzak?" I'm LOLing again!
Anyway, the bottom line is, Andy didn't deliver what I was looking for. However, it did help me refine what that is--which, I think, as of now, is a scientific study of why and how we are able to take pleasure in beauty. THAT is what the study of aesthetics means to me, and I don't think that's what the traditional philosophy of aesthetics ever had in mind. Debate about the meanings/implications of words like "art" and "music" is also interesting to me, but I acknowledge that those inquiries lie in the domain of linguistics, and in my opinion, ultimately neural networks (I have a neural approach to traditional philosophical problems in mind, but that'll take some work!).
I invite debate, too, regardless of whether you've read this particular book, as I don't recommend reading it in the first place.
"These are cumbersome descriptions of phenomena that every musician, professional or amateur, knows well, and it is interesting how hard it is to capture them in words."
What the fuck, dude? It's neither hard nor interesting! You can find a concise, accurate explanation of meter in a first-grader's music class! Jesus! I mean, he never claims to be a musician and I don't care if he is or not, but some people just *don't* have rhythm, and if he has that much problem describing it, then what is he doing writing a book about the aesthetics of music?
OK, OK. Maybe it's not that big of a deal. But he also seems to suffer from the same elitism that he actually criticizes Adorno for:
"...pop music that largely constitutes muzak, or the toneless hiss of rock or funk rhythms that emanates from personal stereos or iPods."
Come oooon. Look, we all have our criticisms of "pop" music, but "toneless hiss?" "Muzak?" I'm LOLing again!
Anyway, the bottom line is, Andy didn't deliver what I was looking for. However, it did help me refine what that is--which, I think, as of now, is a scientific study of why and how we are able to take pleasure in beauty. THAT is what the study of aesthetics means to me, and I don't think that's what the traditional philosophy of aesthetics ever had in mind. Debate about the meanings/implications of words like "art" and "music" is also interesting to me, but I acknowledge that those inquiries lie in the domain of linguistics, and in my opinion, ultimately neural networks (I have a neural approach to traditional philosophical problems in mind, but that'll take some work!).
I invite debate, too, regardless of whether you've read this particular book, as I don't recommend reading it in the first place.
April 20, 2023
This was my first go at a book about aesthetics. I'm glad I did it. I started reading this at my daughter's softball games and it took me about all of last summer to work through it. Not that it's a particularly long book, but it's got big ideas.
I know love is a strong word for a book, so I won't say it. But I really really liked this book. It's just got fascinating ideas. The aesthetics of music is a field that really not that many scholars have contributed to. So the fact that this book exists and the fact that Hamilton does a great job introducing the big ideas to the reader makes me happy.
Nearly all of the book is written from an analytic philosophy perspective. That means Hamilton spends a lot of time asking the question what does music mean? And what do related concepts of music, like rhythm, improvisation, form/expression mean? This is definitely not part of my training, so it's a new style that took some getting used to. I've been treating the book as my practice course before I tackle that massively important tome, Roger Scruton's Aesthetics of Music. Clearly Hamilton sees Scruton as an intellectual sparring partner, so he investigates lots of Scruton's claims here. One major difference between them is the high/low culture divide. Scruton is famously a classical music snob--I say that with the utmost respect. Hamilton, on the other hand, is a huge jazz fan and even plays in a jazz group, if I recall correctly. His personal passion, then, leads him to writing an entire chapter here on the art of improvisation, or what he calls "an aesthetics of imperfection." I found it fascinating.
At one point, Hamilton departs the analytical philosopher perspective and dedicates a whole chapter to Theodor Adorno (more closely associated with continental philosophy). I'm so glad he did this. While people like Max Paddison and Robert Hullot-Kentor are better known scholars of Adorno and his ideas, Hamilton includes a whole chapter on him because he's the most important philosopher of music in the 20th century. As an Adorno fan myself, I felt invested in Hamilton's takes on the composer and philosopher. I've read a lot on Adorno, and I found Hamilton's summary of Adorno to be among my favorites.
To be short, this book was a fascinating read. I am hoping it will be my springboard to reading more on this topic. I feel better prepared now to do so.
I know love is a strong word for a book, so I won't say it. But I really really liked this book. It's just got fascinating ideas. The aesthetics of music is a field that really not that many scholars have contributed to. So the fact that this book exists and the fact that Hamilton does a great job introducing the big ideas to the reader makes me happy.
Nearly all of the book is written from an analytic philosophy perspective. That means Hamilton spends a lot of time asking the question what does music mean? And what do related concepts of music, like rhythm, improvisation, form/expression mean? This is definitely not part of my training, so it's a new style that took some getting used to. I've been treating the book as my practice course before I tackle that massively important tome, Roger Scruton's Aesthetics of Music. Clearly Hamilton sees Scruton as an intellectual sparring partner, so he investigates lots of Scruton's claims here. One major difference between them is the high/low culture divide. Scruton is famously a classical music snob--I say that with the utmost respect. Hamilton, on the other hand, is a huge jazz fan and even plays in a jazz group, if I recall correctly. His personal passion, then, leads him to writing an entire chapter here on the art of improvisation, or what he calls "an aesthetics of imperfection." I found it fascinating.
At one point, Hamilton departs the analytical philosopher perspective and dedicates a whole chapter to Theodor Adorno (more closely associated with continental philosophy). I'm so glad he did this. While people like Max Paddison and Robert Hullot-Kentor are better known scholars of Adorno and his ideas, Hamilton includes a whole chapter on him because he's the most important philosopher of music in the 20th century. As an Adorno fan myself, I felt invested in Hamilton's takes on the composer and philosopher. I've read a lot on Adorno, and I found Hamilton's summary of Adorno to be among my favorites.
To be short, this book was a fascinating read. I am hoping it will be my springboard to reading more on this topic. I feel better prepared now to do so.
March 8, 2023
Never read such an interesting book that was so dry
April 18, 2011
Used it for a class, but this is both an historical and topic book on music. Well worth reading!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews