Philosophers on Music

Book excerpt: Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work presents significant new contributions to central issues in the philosophy of music, written by leading philosophers working in the analytic tradition. Music is an increasingly popular object of reflection for professional philosophers, as it raises special questions not only of relevance to music practitioners, theorists, and philosophers of art, but also of wider philosophical interest to those working in metaphysics, the philosophy of emotion, and the philosophy of language, among other areas. The wide range of contributors to this volume reflects this level of interest. It includes both well-known philosophers of music drawing on a wealth of reflection to produce new and often startling conclusions, and philosophers relatively new to the philosophy of music yet eminent in other philosophical fields, who are able to bring a fresh perspective, informed by that background, to their topic of choice. The issues tackled in this volume include what sort of thing a work of music is; the nature of the relation between a musical work and versions of it; the nature of musical expression and its contribution to musical experience; the relation of music to metaphor; the nature of musical irony; the musical status of electro-sonic art; and the nature of musical rhythm. Together these papers constitute some of the best new work in what is an exciting field of research, and one which has much to engage philosophers, aestheticians, and musicologists.