Understanding Music

The Nature and Limits of Musical Cognition

Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, translated by Richard Evans

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754666127
• eBook ISBN: 9781351538084
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

In an age when our patterns of music consumption are changing rapidly, musical understanding has never been more relevant. Understanding Music provides readers with an ideal entry point to the topic, addressing 'both the music lover who has made listening to music an important part of his life and at the same time is willing to reflect on music and his encounter with it, as well as the more academically-minded enthusiast and the thoughtful expert.' Its author, Hans Heinrich Eggebrecht, was one of the most influential German musicologists of the twentieth century and yet he is almost unknown to English readers. His published work stretches from one end of the musicological spectrum to the other, with research on historical topics in early music, Bach, Beethoven reception, Mahler and music aesthetics all featuring. Understanding Music summarizes Eggebrecht's thoughts on the relationship between music and cognition. As he says in his preface, the purpose of his book is 'to direct the reader towards the fundamental issues and processes implied in understanding music. What does understanding mean when applied to music? How is the process to be described? What different kinds of understanding are to be distinguished here? What other concepts are implicit in and related to the concept of understanding? How is the relationship between music and the listener who understands it to be articulated? What might correct understanding of music mean given music's multiplicity of meaning and effect? Where are the limits of understanding and what lies beyond? What role do language and history play?'. Eggebrecht's answers to these and other questions amount to a compelling account of how the mind grasps the sounds of music in themselves and what other factors contribute to music's meaning so much to us as listeners.

Index

References to music examples are in bold

absorption 69, 78, 137

and aesthetic contemplation 67

and aesthetic identification 61, 62, 63

Adorno, Theodor

on the emotional listener 43

Introduction to the Sociology of Music 43

aesthetic

appropriateness 23

meaning 8

aesthetic cognition 4, 69, 70, 76, 109

see also aesthetic understanding

aesthetic contemplation

and absorption 67

Schopenhauer on 60–1, 67, 128

aesthetic effect, timbre 34

aesthetic experience 16–20, 107, 108

and cognitive understanding 16–17

see also aesthetic understanding

aesthetic identification 59–60, 64

and absorption 61, 62, 63

barriers to 66, 139

and beauty 62, 67

definition 57, 58

and understanding 62

aesthetic understanding 46, 70, 107

and atonal music 50–1

and beauty in music 95, 97

characteristics 9, 69

cognitive understanding

relationship 69–70, 71–7, 108, 109

superiority of 83

concept 7–9

examples 1–2, 9

importance of 83

‘Little Bird’ 13

pre-subjective 21–3

principles 13–14

see also aesthetic cognition; cognitive understanding

Ansermet, Ernest 48

art

endurance of 89

framework of 61

and life

Cage on 113–14, 117, 123, 126, 127, 128–9, 138, 139, 140

separation 65fn16, 76, 128, 130, 139, 142

and multiple meanings 87, 88

omnipresence 141

open-endedness 89–90, 111

understanding...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Translator
• Translator’s Preface
• Preface
• Introductory Sketch
• Aesthetic Understanding I
• Intermezzo I: Ontology, Interpretation and Performance
• Aesthetic Understanding II
• Intermezzo II: Aesthetic Identification
• Cognitive Understanding
• The Limits of Cognitive Understanding
• The Encircling Approach
• Intermezzo III: Identifying Life with Art – John Cage
• Understanding?
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index