Musical Aesthetics: The twentieth century

Download or read book Musical Aesthetics: The twentieth century written by Edward A. Lippman and published by Pendragon Press. This book was released on 1986 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Musical aesthetics in this century--like music itself--is distinguished by its concern with specifically musical forms and principles-with the interrelationships and transformation of motifs with the permutations of sets of tones with the characteristics of forms such as the fugue or sonata and with underlying or background structures that are not really audible themselves but that nevertheless are important determinants of the form and sense of the music. Thus music and musical thought i n this century have been significantly determined by a reaction against the predominating qualities and values of the 19th century; musical hermeneutics symbolism and semiotics having replaced the traditional problem of emotional content. This volume is the third of three which are designed to present the main trends of Western musical thought in the area of philosophy and aesthetics. Each section of the work presenting the fundamental statements of a given aesthetic issue has its own brief introduction defining and interrelating the relevant ideas; the various sections seek to clarify the underlying historical continuities of thought. Each also concludes with its own bibliography.