Music Aesthetics and Meaning
How music means, moves, and is judged — the philosophy and criticism of musical experience.
Definition
The philosophical and critical study of music's nature, value, expressive power, and meaning, together with the practices through which music is judged and received.
Scope
Covers the philosophical and critical study of music's nature and value: the philosophy of music (what music is and what makes it beautiful), how music expresses and arouses emotion, theories of musical meaning and signification (semiotics), and the practices of music criticism and reception. Distinguished from the technical theory of harmony and form by its focus on meaning, value, and experience.
Sub-topics
Core questions
- What kind of thing is a musical work, and what makes it beautiful?
- How can purely instrumental music express or arouse emotion?
- Does music carry meaning, and if so, of what kind?
- How are musical value and the canon constructed by criticism and reception?
- Is musical value objective, or relative to listeners and cultures?
Key theories
- Formalism (autonomy of musical beauty)
- Hanslick argued that the beauty of music lies in its 'tonally moving forms' themselves, not in any emotions it might represent, founding the formalist position that music's value is intrinsic to its sonic structure rather than its expressive content.
History
Modern music aesthetics crystallized in the nineteenth-century debate between Hanslick's formalism and expressivist views; the twentieth century brought Meyer's information-theoretic account of meaning, Adorno's critical sociology, and the analytic philosophy of music developed by Kivy and others.
Debates
- Formalism versus expressionism
- A central and enduring debate asks whether music's value and meaning reside in its abstract sonic forms (formalism) or in its capacity to express and arouse emotion and represent extramusical content (expressionism).
Key figures
- Eduard Hanslick
- Leonard B. Meyer
- Peter Kivy
- Theodor W. Adorno
Related topics
Seminal works
- hanslick1986
- meyer1956
- kivy2002
Frequently asked questions
- Can instrumental music without words really express emotion?
- This is one of the field's core questions. Formalists are skeptical, while expressionists hold that music can express or arouse emotions through its dynamic, gestural resemblance to feeling, even without words.
- Is music meaningful in the way language is?
- Most theorists hold that music's meaning is not propositional like language. Accounts range from Meyer's idea of meaning arising from fulfilled and thwarted expectation to semiotic theories of musical signs.