Perspectives on Musical Aesthetics (Revised)

In this volume, editor John Rahn has assembled a fascinating collection of essays that focus on creating, performing, and thinking about music in today’s world. The essays, drawn from the journal Perspectives of New Music, reflect a wide variety of artistic viewpoints and the latest critical perspectives – all from the creative point of view. Featured writers include composers Pierre Boulez, John Cage, Iannis Xenakis, Milton Babbitt, Benjamin Boretz, and J. K. Randall, as well as literary scholars Douglas Collins and Arthur Nestrovski, anthropologist Eric Gans, philosopher Michel Foucault, and poet Delmore Schwartz. The first section, “Aesthetic Theory, ” critiques recent theoretical speculation about music’s origins and function by such thinkers as Theodor Adorno and Rene Girard. In the sections that follow, the authors contemplate the changing relations between music and society, the effects that today’s often conflicting aesthetic notions have on serious composition, the close relation between music and other forms of communicative behavior (including other art forms), and music as part of a larger consciousness. Taken together, the essays suggest a new working aesthetic that champions a synthesis between individual impulse and collective responsibility and aims to ensure that the artistic tradition remains alive in Western culture.