Adorno, Theodor. “Late Style in Beethoven.” Trans. Susan Gillespie. Raritan 13:1 (1993):102-06.

A reinterpretation of the meaning of stylistic qualities in Beethoven’s late works.

Adorno, Theodor. “Mahler Today.” Essays on Music: Theodor Adorno. Ed. Richard  Leppert. Trans. Susan
Gillespie. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002.

Advances the claim that Mahler’s deviation from the thematic techniques of tonal harmony should
be understood as an artistic subversion of the Bourgeois order.

Bauer, George Howard. Sartre and the Artist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.

An analysis of Sartre’s use of art and artists to convey his conception of the difference between being
and existence as it relates to art.

Beardsley, Monroe. “Understanding Music.” On Criticizing Music: Five Philosophical  Perspectives. Ed. K. Price.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.

Extends Goodman’s concept of exemplification to music.

Budd, Malcolm. Music and the Emotions. London: Routledge, 1985.

A penetrating critical examination of influential theories of emotion in music, including those

of Hanslick, Gurney, Schopenhauer, Cooke, Langer, and Meyer.

Budd, Malcolm. “Musical Movement and Aesthetic Metaphors.” British Journal of Aesthetics 43:3 (2003): 209–
23.

Argues against Scruton’s account of musical motion in terms of spatial metaphors

understood  metaphorically, suggesting it is favorable to conceive of musical motion in terms of a
purely temporal Gestalt.

Budd, Malcolm. “Response to Christopher Peacocke’s ‘The Perception of Music: Sources of Significance.’”
British Journal of Aesthetics 49:3 (2009): 289-92.

An evaluation of Peacocke’s conception of the role of metaphor in music.

Budd, Malcolm. Values of Art. London: Penguin, 1995.

Compliments his earlier work with the addition of a “basic and minimal” conception of emotion in
music as well as an exploration of the value of music as an art form.

Carroll, Noël. "Art and Mood: Preliminary Notes and Conjectures." The Monist 86:4 (2003): 521-555.

Explores the possibility that musical moods can offer a solution to the debate between formalist
and arousalist positions.

Clifton, Thomas. Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1983.

Considers the experience of music from a phenomenological perspective.

Cochrane, Tom. “Music, Emotions and the Influence of the Cognitive Sciences.”  Philosophy Compass 5:11
(2010): 978–88.

Suggests that psychology and neuroscience can provide additional support for one theory of
our  experience of music over another, as well as in some cases allow us to reframe and
synthesize traditionally distinct positions.

Cone, Edward T. The Composer's Voice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974.

Argues for a theory of musical communication based on the composer’s musical personae.

Cook, Nicholas. Music, Imagination, and Culture. Oxford: Clarendon, 1990.

Examines music from the point of view of the composer and the listener, arguing that the role of the
listener is of primary importance.

Cooke, Deryck. The Language of Music. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Seeks to show that certain recurrent patterns present in the music have specific emotional
meanings, making it possible to construct a basic emotional vocabulary of classical music.

Dahlhaus, Carl. The Idea of Absolute Music. Trans. Roger Lustig. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989.

A hermeneutical inquiry into the history of our conception of absolute music.

Davies, Stephen. Musical Meaning and Expression. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

A comprehensive discussion of major issues in musical aesthetics, including a presentation of

his mirroring response theory of musical expression.

Davies, Stephen. Musical Works and Performances. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.

An in-depth exploration of the nature of musical works and of authenticity in musical performances.

Davies, Stephen. Musical Understandings and Other Essays on the Philosophy of Music. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011.

A collection of essays addressing the listener’s response to the expression of emotion in music, the
role of the listener in the perception and understanding of music, as well as other central issues in
musical aesthetics.

DeBellis, Mark. “Music.” The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Ed. Berys Gaut and  Dominic McIver Lopes.
New York: Routledge, 2001.

An overview of major topics in musical aesthetics.

Dilthey, Wilhelm. Selected Works, Vol. 3: The Formation of the Historical World in the  Human Sciences. Ed. Rudolf
Makkreel and Frithjof Rodi. Princeton: Princeton Univeristy Press, 2002.

Contains Dilthey’s late hermeneutical approach to musical aesthetics in the essay “The
Understanding of Other Persons and Their Manifestations of Life.”
Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works. Oxford: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1994.

Offers a genealogy of the concept of a musical work from antiquity onward, arguing that no
analytic  method can succeed in defining musical works and that before 1800 compositions and
performances were not governed by the work concept.

Goldman, Alan. “The Value of Music.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 50:1 (1992): 35–44.

Argues that music presents us with another world, separate from everyday life.

Goodman, Nelson. Languages of Art. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968.

Highly influential work exploring the nature of musical expression and the relationship between
works and performances.

Gracyk, Theodore and Andrew Kania, eds. The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Music. New York:
Routledge, 2011.

A comprehensive guide to major topics and thinkers in musical aesthetics.

Gurney, Edmund. The Power of Sound. New York: Basic Books, 1966.

A monumental study drawing on evolutionary theory to analyze the nature of musical expression.

Hanslick, Eduard. On the Musically Beautiful. Trans. Geoffrey Payzant. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1986.

Classic treatise in musical aesthetics, arguing that aesthetic value in music is purely formal in nature.

Herzog, Patricia. “Music Criticism and Musical Meaning.” Journal of Aesthetics and Arts Criticism 53: 3 (1995):
299-312.

Makes the case for content of a profound human significance in classical music.

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Judgement. Trans. J.H. Bernard. New York: Hafner, 1951.

A foundational text in aesthetics; evaluates whether music is a proper object of aesthetic judgements.

Kivy, Peter. The Corded Shell. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.

Presents the author’s contour theory of musical expressiveness, supplemented by a convention theory

that accounts for our responses to those aesthetic qualities not addressed by the contour theory.

Kivy, Peter. "Mood and Music: Some Reflections for Noël Carroll." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,
64:2 (2006): 271-281.

Assesses Carroll’s account of the evocation of moods in classical instrumental music.

Kivy, Peter. Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1990.

Considers the experience of textless instrumental music, clarifying and defending the
author’s cognitivist position.

Kivy, Peter. New Essays on Musical Understanding. Oxford: Clarendon, 2001.

A collection of essays addressing historical topics, emotional expression, and concatenationism

vs. architectonicism.

Langer, Susanne K. Philosophy in a New Key. New York: Mentor, 1956.

Argues that works of music should be understood as unconsummated presentational symbols and
as such symbolize.

Levinson, Jerrold. Music, Art, and Metaphysics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990.

An influential work containing six essays on musical aesthetics and covering topics such as
the definition, ontology, meaning, performance, and appreciation of music.

Levinson, Jerrold. “Music as Narrative and Music as Drama.” Mind and Language 19:4 (2004): 428-441.

Argues that that it is natural to hear music as drama and that doing so benefits from the
introduction  of an imagined persona, while attempting to hear it as narrative poses significant
problems.

Levinson, Jerrold. Music in the Moment. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Presents a sustained argument for concatenationism.

Lippman, Edward. A History of Western Musical Aesthetics. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992.

A thorough survey of influential figures, with an emphasis in its 20th century coverage on
continental aesthetics.

Lippman, Edward. Musical Aesthetics: A Historical Reader. 3 vols. New York: Pendragon Press, 1986.

An excellent source book in musical aesthetics.

Meyer, Leonard B. Emotion and Meaning in Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961.

A foundational inquiry into musical meaning, focusing on expectation generated by antecedent-

consequent relationships.

Meyer, Leonard B. Music, the Arts, and Ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

Reworks central aspects of the theory presented in Emotion and Meaning in Music.
Narmour, Eugene. The Analysis and Cognition of Basic Melodic Structures. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1990.

A further development of the basic approach established by Meyer.

Nattiez,  Jean-Jacques.  Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1990.

Argues that music possesses a syntax and thus can be interpreted similarly to any other system
of signs.

Peacocke, Christopher. “The Perception of Music: Sources of Significance.” British  Journal of Aesthetics 49:3
(2009): 257-275.

An influential paper arguing that in listening to music metaphor is “exploited in the perception,
rather than being represented.”

Ridley, Aaron. Music, Value, and the Passions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.

Focuses on the melismatic gesture as a central component of musical expressiveness.

Robinson, Jenefer. Deeper than Reason: Emotion and its Role in Literature, Music, and Art. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.

Drawing on the author’s own theory of emotion, offers an account of musical expression and of
the capacity for music to arouse emotions in the listener.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. The Psychology of Imagination. New York: Citadel, 1991.

Sartre’s early account of music as presenting ideal beauty.

Sartre, Jean-Paul. Situations. Trans. Hazel E. Barnes. New York: George Braziller, 1965.

Contains the essay, “The Artist and His Conscience,” which argues that music captures a
historical milieu and additionally that music can be a transformational force used to further human
freedom.

Schenker, Heinrich. Free Composition. Trans. and ed. Ernst Oster. New York: Longman,

Classic treatise in musical analysis emphasizing the architectonic aspects of musical compositions.

Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Representation. Trans. E.F.J. Payne.  Indian Hills, Col.: Falcon's
Wing Press, 1958.

Presents Schopenhauer’s philosophy of music as having the privileged status of being a

direct presentation of the will, which is the thing-in-itself or underlying metaphysical reality.

Scruton, Roger. The Aesthetics of Music. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

A thorough and insightful discussion of many of the major issues in musical aesthetics,
including spaciality, ontology, expression, understanding, content, and both experiential and cultural
value.
Scruton, Roger. “Musical Movement: A Reply to Budd.” British Journal of Aesthetics 44:2 (2004): 184–7.

Argues for the indispensability of metaphor in the listening experience.

Serafine, Mary Louise. Music as Cognition: The Development of Thought in Sound. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1988.

Identifies twelve cognitive processes that are components of musical cognition and
assesses  experiments on people of different ages intended to shed light on how these processes
develop.

Walton, Kendall. “What is Abstract about the Art of Music?” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 46:3 (1988):
351-364.

Argues that music’s reference to extra-musical realities such as unnameable feelings and the
dynamics  of emotions, though imprecise, is important to explaining the power of music as an art
form.

Zangwill, Nick. “Music, Metaphor, and Emotion.” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 65:4 (2007): 391–400.

Argues against emotion theorists, claiming that what we experience in response to music is in some
ways similar, but not equivalent to, actual emotion, and that instead of taking emotional descriptions
of music literally, we should instead understand them as aesthetic metaphors.

Zuckerkandl, Victor. Sound and Symbol. Tr. Willard Trask. New York: Princeton University Press, 1956.

An influential early study investigating our experience of tone, motion, time, and musical space.