Australasian Journal of Philosophy

ISSN: 0004-8402 (Print) 1471-6828 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajp20

Introduction to a Philosophy of Music

J. McKeown-Green

To cite this article: J. McKeown-Green (2003) Introduction to a Philosophy of Music,

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 81:3, 439-440

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713659688

Published online: 08 Apr 2010.

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 Vol. 81, No. 3; September 2003 439

Platonism is its commitment to a certain kind of objectivity in mathematics, not its commitment to
mathematical objects, where the relevant ‘objectivity’ is that every (mathematical) sentence has a
(determinate) truth value—even when the sentence is undecidable. An immediate upshot of Field’s
anti-Platonism is that current mathematical language exhibits indeterminacy. To what extent is
mathematical language indeterminate? That question is (in effect) the concern of the remaining
papers in Part 3. A crucial concern is whether there is a way to explain the determinacy of
(undecidable) sentences of number theory while none the less endorsing the indeterminacy of other
mathematical sentences. (Field includes an important postscript that responds to recent challenges
to his given project. I should mention that, unlike Parts 1 and 2, this part of the book, except for
Chapter 11, presupposes a bit of familiarity with mathematics and meta-logic.)
Those who know Field’s writings will know that this is a valuable (and timely) collection. Those
who do not know them will find the volume to be a nice point of entry.
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JC Beall University of Connecticut

Kivy, Peter, Introduction to a Philosophy of Music, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002, pp. xii + 283, £45
(cloth), £14.99 (paper).

Peter Kivy’s new Introduction is to a philosophy of music, namely, his. Nobody has contributed more
significantly over the last quarter century to the Philosophy of Music than Kivy. I welcome this
engaging, lucid, accessible distillation of the views he has urged and refined over those years. His
characteristic positions are each backgrounded historically, expounded, defended, and pitted against
alternative stances or lingering objections. It’s done rather swiftly; stones are left unturned and the
topics covered all receive fuller treatments from Kivy elsewhere. But this presentation has all the
freshness, clarity, and brevity you could want from an Introduction.
The first Kivy doctrine that we meet is his contour theory of emotional expression. Even when we
limit our focus to absolute music—instrumental music without descriptive title, associated text, or
dramatic function—it is sometimes correct to describe a musical passage as, say, cheerful. However,
to say that a piece of absolute music is cheerful is not to say that it is about cheerfulness or that it
means ‘cheerful’ or that it arouses cheerfulness in optimally-situated listeners. The music just is
cheerful. A simple emotion is perceivable in music whose sonic contour bears a recognizable
structural similarity to some perceivable way in which that emotion is customarily manifested.
(Jaunty music is typically cheerful because customarily, one skips jauntily when cheerful.)
Next we meet formalism about how music and its appreciation should be construed. Absolute
music lacks semantic and representational content; to appreciate it for what it is, one appreciates
audible features of its structure—repetition, contrast, tension, resolution, and so on—and of its
components—pitches, durations, timbres, and so on. While listening the appreciator, aided by an
implicit grasp of principles which govern musical construction, forms expectations about how the
music will continue. Much of the interest of absolute music is due to the subtle ways in which these
expectations are fulfilled or thwarted.
Enhanced formalism integrates Kivy’s contour theory into his formalism. The former says that
emotions in the music are audible properties of it, rather than powers to represent or arouse; the latter
says that audible properties and the relationships among them are what we appreciate. Together these
doctrines explain why the listener takes an interest in emotional expression for its own sake and
fastens onto it when she forms expectations about musical structure. Emotion may contribute to
structural features like patterns of repetition and contrast. (Example: there are two occurrences of the
cheerful section separated by a more sorrowful section.)
Kivy accepts that absolute music arouses emotions in the appreciative listener, but he thinks that
in general the aroused emotions are not the ones that the music expresses. Sad music does not in
general (tend to) make us sad. Rather, he argues, our experience of some musical passage may
encourage the belief that it is beautiful, and this belief might bring with it a feeling of exhilaration.
That’s the kind of emotional response that properly accompanies appreciation of the music’s features.
Beautiful music makes us feel exhilarated. The theory that music can arouse the emotions it expresses
faces a problem that Kivy’s alternative avoids. In ordinary life, I am sad only if I am sad about
something: the death of a pet, perhaps. If sad music makes me sad, what then am I sad about? On
Kivy’s story, the emotion aroused in appreciation is an exhilaration which is clearly about the beauty
of the music.
 440 Reviews

Most music is not absolute music. Kivy says a little about music that sets a text, particularly
opera. He regards opera as an attempt to adapt the resources that characterize absolute music to the
demands of the text. This results in a tension—the Problem of Opera. Formalism dictates that
absolute music is appreciated for its formal features, patterns of thematic or motivic repetitions and
contrasts chief among them; but drama unfolds without obvious repetitions. Dramatic flow is
inhibited when it is realized in closed musical forms (like rondos and sonata-form movements). Kivy
discusses the different ways in which Handel, Mozart, Gluck, and Wagner achieved success in the
face of this tension.
Kivy notes that formalism notwithstanding, much music, including much instrumental music, is
representational. A descending glissando sung to the word ‘fall’ or played by the violas can represent
falling. Music can represent when it is a vocal setting of descriptive words, or has a descriptive title
(‘Tragic Overture’), or has an attached commentary (‘Symphonie Fantastique’). A thorough apprecia-
tion of such music requires a grasp of its representational content.
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Kivy next asks what a musical work is, and answers with Platonism: it is an abstract object
without spatio-temporal location which cannot be created or destroyed. And what is a performance of
a work? At the very least, says Kivy, it is a sound event which complies with the instructions in the
work’s score. He thinks there is more to be said, though, and gestures at the idea that a performance
of a work is a kind of arrangement of it.
Finally Kivy speculates that one good reason for enjoying absolute music is that it liberates us
from ordinary life. Like mathematics, it offers an abstract world of its own, with its own exciting
aesthetic properties.
Although it is not a survey of the field, Kivy hopes that his book serves as an introduction to it.
Russell’s Problems of Philosophy is his model and borrowing its author’s machinery, he says, ‘[T]he
best way to be introduced to the subject of philosophy is not by description, which is the way a
textbook does it, but by direct acquaintance with the practice of philosophy at its best, in real
philosophical works that are accessible to the beginner’ [viii].
Kivy might be right about this and his Introduction certainly models the sort of philosophy he has
in mind here. In addition, he presupposes no knowledge of philosophy, musicology, music theory, or
repertoire and he skilfully introduces necessary technicalities on the fly without cluttering the
exposition. (He even opens with an outstanding chapter on the nature of philosophy.) Even so, this
book is not really a satisfactory introduction to the entire field, because Kivy’s is a philosophy of
Western concert and operatic music only. The philosophy of music also confronts the rest of music:
Western popular and folk music, music of non-Western cultures, improvisations, tape editing, and
computer programming when these count as music-making, musical performances which are not of
musical works, and works with no written score. Nowadays, we shouldn’t tacitly regard the ‘classical’
canon as the central case or even as a pedagogical point of departure.
By restricting himself, Kivy ducks many central questions: Are some traditions less artistically
valuable than others? Can the nature of music be characterized independently of the culture that
produces it? Is music truly a performing art (as Kivy claims without argument [200]) or does it only
seem like one because it used to be impossible to make music without performing it? Is listening to a
recording of Mahler’s 5th as artistically valuable as attending a performance of it? Are rock and
electronic works pieces of performance art? If not, how does this affect the story we tell about what a
musical work is? As well as striking a chord with funders and educators, these questions enthral
students and general readers from diverse backgrounds who take a thoughtful interest in music, but
are uncomfortable around the classics.
Now the questions Kivy tackles are central too: What does one appreciate when one appreciates
music? How does music represent? What is a musical work? What is a performance? Why should we
listen? But these questions arise for all music! An introduction to them should draw on a
representative variety, or discuss whether what goes for the scrutinized cases goes in general, or
explain why no general treatment is undertaken. Kivy sticks to the classics and does none of these
things.
His Introduction cannot therefore function as the primary resource for a starter course.
Nevertheless, it is invaluable, for a different reason. Seldom do we find a short, comprehensive guide
to the sophisticated arguments and doctrines of a major contemporary theorist, written by that theorist
with a general audience firmly in mind. Anybody with a serious interest in musical criticism,
performance practice, or aesthetics should read Peter Kivy. Henceforth, there is no excuse!

Jonathan McKeown-Green University of Auckland