Musical Understandings presents an engaging collection of essays by Stephen Davies on the philosophy of music. He explores a range of topics, including how music expresses emotion, modes of perception, and musical profundity. The volume includes original material, newly revised articles, and work published in English for the first time.

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music, a subject to which he has for many years been one of the most eminent contributors. In his distinctively elegant and informal style, Kivy explores such topics as musicology and its history, the nature ofmusical works, and the role of emotion in music, in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike. Most of the essays are published here for the first time, all of them are accessible and self-standing, and so there is much here to delight both followers of Kivy'swork and those who are new to it.

Table of contents

We talk not only of enjoying music, but of understanding it. Music is often taken to have expressive import--and in that sense to have meaning. But what does music mean, and how does it mean? Stephen Davies addresses these questions in this sophisticated and knowledgeable overview of current theories in the philosophy of music. Reviewing and criticizing the aesthetic positions of recent years, he offers a spirited explanation of his own position. Davies considers and rejects in turn the positions that music describes (like language), or depicts (like pictures), or symbolizes (in a distinctive fashion) emotions. Similarly, he resists the idea that music's expressiveness is to be explained solely as the composer's self-expression, or in terms of its power to evoke a response from the audience. Music's ability to describe emotions, he believes, is located within the music itself; it presents the aural appearance of what he calls emotion characteristics. The expressive power of music awakens emotions in the listener, and music is valued for this power although the responses are sometimes ones of sadness. Davies shows that appreciation and understanding may require more than recognition of and reaction to music's expressive character, but need not depend on formal musicological training.

Ideal for introductory music education, philosophy and psychology of music education, and music education methods courses, Teaching for Musical Understanding explains current research-based theories of how students learn in order to show prospective and practicing music teachers how to teach effectively. Author Jackie Wiggins draws on her twenty-two years of experience teaching K-12 music and twenty years of teaching in higher education to demonstrate how theory applies to music education. The text is deeply grounded in the work of social constructivist theorists and researchers in both education and music education. The third edition takes a cultural psychology perspective, giving more attention to sociocultural influences and to the roles of learner agency in learning process. It includes in-depth examples of assessment practices in music classrooms, stories "from the trenches," and more extensive use of endnotes and citations.

Musical Understanding is an outcome of the Symposium on Musical Understanding held in Victoria, BC on February 22-23, 2001. This collection of essays is not a typical report of proceedings. The book features chapters that examine musical understanding from a number of perspectives while addressing theoretical and practical considerations. The topics discussed by established teachers and teacher educators from Canada and the United States include: constructivism, multicultural music education, impact of cognition and culture, mind/body dualism, movement and music, and listening to music.

Everyone knows music is big business, but do you really understand how ideas and inspiration become songs, products, downloads, concerts and careers? This textbook guides students to a full understanding of the processes that drive the music industries. More than just an expose or ′how to′ guide, this book gives students the tools to make sense of technological change, socio-cultural processes, and the constantly shifting music business environment, putting them in the front line of innovation and entrepreneurship in the future. Packed with case studies, this book: • Takes the reader on a journey from Glastonbury and the X-Factor to house concerts and crowd-funded releases; • Demystifies management, publishing and recording contracts, and the world of copyright, intellectual property and music piracy; • Explains how digital technologies have changed almost all aspects of music making, performing, promotion and consumption; • Explores all levels of the music industries, from micro-independent businesses to corporate conglomerates; • Enables students to meet the challenge of the transforming music industries. This is the must-have primer for understanding and getting ahead in the music industries. It is essential reading for students of popular music in media studies, sociology and musicology.

The genre of mélodrame à grand spectacle that emerged in the boulevard theatres of Paris in the 1790s - and which was quickly exported abroad - expressed the moral struggle between good and evil through a drama of heightened emotions. Physical gesture, mise en scène and music were as important in communicating meaning and passion as spoken dialogue. The premise of this volume is the idea that the melodramatic aesthetic is central to our understanding of nineteenth-century music drama, broadly defined as spoken plays with music, operas and other hybrid genres that combine music with text and/or image. This relationship is examined closely, and its evolution in the twentieth century in selected operas, musicals and films is understood as an extension of this nineteenth-century aesthetic. The book therefore develops our understanding of opera in the context of melodrama's broader influence on musical culture during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This book will appeal to those interested in film studies, drama, theatre and modern languages as well as music and opera.

Examining the intersection of music, psychology, and neuroscience, this text surveys the rapidly growing field of music cognition and explores its most interesting questions. Assuming minimal background in music or psychology, the book begins with an overview of the major theories on how and when music became a widespread aspect of human behavior. Now in its second edition, the text includes enhanced coverage of music therapy, the most recent theory and research, and improved pedagogy, including enhanced definitions of key terms and a reworked organization of topics.