Philosophy of music has flourished in the last thirty years, with great advances made in the understanding of the nature of music and its aesthetics. Peter Kivy has been at the center of this flourishing, and now offers his personal introduction to philosophy of music, a clear and lively explanation of how he sees the most important and interesting philosophical issues relating to music. Anyone interested in music will find this a stimulating introduction to some fascinating questions and ideas.

Music, Language, and Cognition is the third collection of Peter Kivy's seminal papers in the philosophy of music. In essays which span his earliest work in the field and his more recent contributions to journals, anthologies, and conference proceedings, Kivy considers the origin of music, the medium of expression in opera, the role of music in film, the nature of an "ideal" performance, and the question of whether absolute music has a meaning, among other issues. Rich with critical analysis and informed by the history of both philosophy and music, this volume will be of interest to anyone who...

Peter Kivy presents a selection of his new and recent writings on the philosophy of music--an area to which he has 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 of musical works, and the role of emotion in music, and does so in a way that will attract the interest of philosophical and musical readers alike. Most works are published here for the first time, each one unique and accessible, making this collection a delight both to followers of Kivy's work and to first-time...

This book provides a forum for leading scholars in organization theory to engage in meta-theoretical reflection on the historical development, present state and future prospects of organization theory as a scientific discipline. The central question explored is the epistemological status of organization theory as a policy science. This is a meta-theoretical question; the object of analysis and debate in this volume is not a set of organizational phenomena, but organization theory itself. By drawing attention to organization theory as a practical social activity, this book reviews and...

Peter Kivy is the author of many books on the history of art and, in particular, the aesthetics of music. This collection of essays spans a period of some thirty years and focuses on a richly diverse set of issues: the biological origins of music, the role of music in the liberal education, the nature of the musical work and its performance, the aesthetics of opera, the emotions of music, and the very nature of music itself. Some of these subjects are viewed as part of the history of ideas, others as current problems in the philosophy of art. A particular feature of the volume is that Kivy...

Since the beginning of the eighteenth century, the philosophy of art has been engaged in the project of defining fine arts by finding out what they have in common. Peter Kivy's purpose is to trace the history of that enterprise and argue that the definitional project has been unsuccessful, with absolute music as the continual stumbling block. His fruitful change of strategy entails exploring the differences among the arts instead of engaging in an obsessive quest for sameness. He presents five case studies in both literature and music.

The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics is the most authoritative survey of the central issues in contemporary aesthetics available. The volume features eighteen newly commissioned papers on the evaluation of art, the interpretation of art, and many other forms of art such as literature, movies, and music.

• Provides a guide to the central traditional and cutting edge issues in aesthetics today.
  
• Written by a distinguished cast of contributors, including Peter Kivy, George Dickie, Noel Carroll, Paul Guyer, Ted Cohen, Marcia Eaton, Joseph Margolis,...

"In his latest book on the aesthetics of music, Peter Kivy presents an argument not for authenticity but for authenticities of performance, including authenticities of intention, sound, practice, and the authenticity of personal interpretation in performance. . . . As usual, Kivy's work is beautifully written, well argued, and provocative." Notes"Kivy has provided a sorely needed framework for all future discussion of the authenticity matter. This is his best book, a major contribution to performance studies and to musical aesthetics; likely it will be studied and cited for generations."...

In his new concluding chapter, Peter Kivy advances his argument on behalf of a distinctive intellectual and musical character of opera before Mozart. He proposes that happy endings were a musical as opposed to a dramatic necessity for opera during this period and that Mozart's Idomeneo is properly enjoyed and judged only when listeners are attuned to its seventeenth and eighteenth-century forebears."

What makes a musical work profound? What is it about pure instrumental music that the listener finds attractive and rewarding? In addressing these questions, Peter Kivy continues his highly regarded exploration of the philosophy of musical aesthetics. He considers here what he believes to be the most difficult subject of all "just plain music; music unaccompanied by text, title, subject, program, or plot; in other words, music alone."