Music, essence and context

Zangwill, Nick

Abstract

I defend the application of the notion of essence to music. I appeal to the essences of events rather than objects, and I focus on functional events, such as handshakes, which have historical essences. Musical essences are like that. This allows us to clear up a number of worries about essences in music. I then celebrate and defend Hanslick’s appeal to musical-beauty, and make some interpretative points. I defend the appeal to pleasure in the musically-beautiful against Taruskin’s appeal to the sublime. Next, I turn to the notion of absolute music and characterize it in a certain way. I show how Hanslick can and does allow much non-absolute music. Nevertheless, absolute music retains a certain explanatory priority with respect to the other things that music does for us. Political criticisms of formalism about music are navigated in passing. Lastly, I diagnose Taruskin’s worry that talking about essence gets something wrong about the cultural dimensions of human life. In reply I show how essence is essential for understanding human action, and thus also for understanding cultural human action.

Citation

Zangwill, N. (2019). Music, essence and context. In R. Povilioniene, R. Stanevičiūtė, & N. Zangwill (Eds.), Of Essence and Context: Between Music and Philosophy (27-41). Springer Publishing Company

• Online Publication Date: Jun 1, 2019
• Publication Date: Jun 12, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 29, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 2, 2022
• Publisher: Springer Publishing Company
• Pages: 27-41
• Series Title: Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress
• Book Title: Of Essence and Context: Between Music and Philosophy
• Chapter Number: 2
• ISBN: 978-3-030-14470-8
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/562435
• Contract Date: Jan 29, 2018