Retrospective Reviews is a new series of website pieces, conceived of as concise, critically informed reviews of key texts that have influenced philosophical thought about music. ‘Philosophical’ is taken here, as elsewhere in the MPSG’s remit, in the broad sense: as well as being by philosophers of any stripe, these may be texts by musicologists, ethnomusicologists, music critics, musicians, or even by writers outside both music and philosophy, as long as the review can account for their musical and philosophical influence. How that influence is construed – positively or negatively – ultimately matters less than whether the author can prompt readers to revisit the text and reassess its significance for contemporary scholarship. Each review summarizes the key idea(s) behind a text before turning to its reception and influence.
Peter Kivy, “The Corded Shell” (1980)
Derek Matravers (The Open University)
MPSG Retrospective Review No. 2020:4. Published 26. March 2020
Acoustemology: A Retrospective Glance at a 1990’s Sound-Concept
Charissa Granger (Erasmus University, Rotterdam)
MPSG Retrospective Review No. 2019:3. Published 11. July 2019
What Music? – Whose Aesthetics? Looking Back Over Edward Lippman’s History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992)
Matthew Pritchard (University of Leeds)
MPSG Retrospective Review No. 2019:2. Published 11. July 2019
Derek Bailey, Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music (1980)
Marian Jago (Reid School of Music, University of Edinburgh)
MPSG Retrospective Review No. 2019:1. Published 11. July 2019