It seems self-evident that music plays more than just an aesthetic role in contemporary society. It is thus surprising that the subject of ethics is often neglected in discussions about music. Music and Ethics examines different ways in which music can contribute to theoretical discussions about ethics as well as concrete moral behaviour. Rather than offer a general musico-ethical theory, the book explores ethics as a practical concept, and demonstrates through concrete examples that the relation between music and ethics has never been absent.

Exegesis has ethical dimensions. This innovative essay collection, largely about Hebrew Bible/Old Testament texts, is written by an international team – all Doktorkinder of a pioneer in this area, Professor John Barton, whose 70th birthday this volume celebrates.

It seems self-evident that music plays more than just an aesthetic role in contemporary society. In addition, music's social, political, emancipatory, and economical functions have been the subject of much recent research. Given this, it is surprising that the subject of ethics has often been neglected in discussions about music. The various forms of engagement between music and ethics are more relevant than ever, and require sustained attention. Music and Ethics examines different ways in which music can 'in itself' - in a uniquely musical way - contribute to theoretical discussions about ethics as well as concrete moral behaviour. We consider music as process, and music-making as interaction. Fundamental to our understanding is music's association with engagement, including contact with music through the act of listening, music as an immanent critical process that possesses profound cultural and historical significance, and as an art form that can be world-disclosive, formative of subjectivity, and contributive to intersubjective relations. Music and Ethics does not offer a general musico-ethical theory, but explores ethics as a practical concept, and demonstrates through concrete examples that the relation between music and ethics has never been absent.

"This chapter outlines the intellectual history and conceptual framing that shapes the presentation of ethnographic cases in the subsequent chapters. After a review of the models of music and ethics that informed the author's prior assumptions, the chapter describes a four-cornered conceptual frame-ethics, goods, exchange, and musical meaning-that emerged over the course of fieldwork. Ethics is described as a mode of evaluative thought-feeling that helps members"--

I, You, and the Word “God” introduces the approach of lyrical ethics, inspired by Emmanuel Levinas’s ethical-phenomenological philosophy. Through the optics of lyrical ethics, the reader discovers how the ancient erotic poems of the Song of Songs bear ethical and theological significance for contemporary readers. Levinas’s intertwined concepts—oneself qua sensibility, otherness perceived through responsibility, and transcendence embodied in one’s love for the other—reveal themselves as lyrical colors woven into the fabric of Song 4:1–7, 5:2–8, and 8:6. More importantly, Levinas’s understanding that poetic language breaks the tautology of logocentric discourse and gestures to the outside of consciousness provides the theoretical ground for the listener to solicit meaningfulness from the Song. Through this lyrical reading of the selected poetic units, the book demonstrates that the traditional interpretive methods of representative description, narrative paraphrase, and thematic distillation fail to encounter the otherness of poetry. In contrast, lyrical ethics pays attention to that which transcends consciousness: the awakening of the reader’s subjectivity, the saying underlying the said, the sound of the sense, and the invisibility of the visible. The Song so caressed reveals in human love the purposelessly purposive encounter with God.