Product Description: Sounding Off brings together a selection of essays on philosophy of music written by Peter Kivy--the leading expert on the subject. The essays fall into four groups, corresponding to Kivy's major interests. Part I contains two essays on the nature of musical genius...read more

Product Description: The concept of genius intrigues us. Artistic geniuses have something other people don’t have. In some cases that something seems to be a remarkable kind of inspiration that permits the artist to exceed his own abilities. It is as if the artist is suddenly possessed, as if some outside force flows through him at the moment of creation...read more

Product Description: Antithetical Arts constitutes a defence of musical formalism against those who would put literary interpretations on the absolute music canon. In Part I, the historical origins of both the literary interpretation of absolute music and musical formalism are laid out...read more

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, Noël Carroll, Paul Guyer, Ted Cohen, Marcia Eaton, Joseph Margolis, Berys Gaut, Nicholas Wolterstrorff, Susan Feagin, Peter Lamarque, Stein Olsen, Francis Sparshott, Alan Goldman, Jenefer Robinson, Mary Mothersill, Donald Crawford, Philip Alperson, Laurent Stern and Amie Thomasson. Functions as the ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in aesthetics, art theory, and philosophy of art.

Product Description: The Performance of Reading argues that there are distinct analogies between "silent" reading and artistic performance, and so fashions the new role of the reader as performer. An original and insightful exploration of the act of reading by the leading scholar in the field...read more

Product Description: 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...read more

Product Description: Now reissued with substantial new material, The Seventh Sense is the definitive study of the aesthetic theory of the great eighteenth-century philosopher Francis Hutcheson, and its huge influence on British aesthetics. Peter Kivy's book is a seminal work on early modern aesthetics, and has been much in demand since going out of print some years ago; this new edition brings the book up to date with the addition of eight essays that Kivy has written on the subject since 1976...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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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 readers. (view table of contents)

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

"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."--Choice "Written in lively prose, with a keen sense of reality, [this volume] ought to be of interest not only to philosophers and musicologists, but to all serious lovers of music."--Roger Scruton, Times Literary Supplement "The consistent theme running through Kivy's book is the need for interpretation as the personal authenticity and authority of the performer against the ideology both of the composer as genius and of the puritanical devotion to the authority of the text of the early music devotees. . . . This is a most valuable book, one which constantly surprises and delights through its philosophical insights and informed musical understanding."--British Journal of Aesthetics

Product Description: 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...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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 avoids the use of musical notation so that no technical knowledge at all is required to appreciate his work. The essays will prove enjoyable and insightful not just to professionals in the philosophy of art and musicologists, or to musicians themselves, but also to any motivated general reader with a deep interest in music. (view table of contents)

Product Description: In the past twenty-five years interest in aesthetics and the philosophyof art has accelerated to a remarkable degree. This collection ofessays, from the first half-century of the Journal of the Historyof Ideas, reflects this growth in interest; they will be of valueto philosophers and others in related areas for their intrinsic historical interest, and for the stimulation to further speculation that the history of philosophy has always provided to philosophy itself...read more

Product Description: The Description for this book, Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation, will be forthcoming.

Product Description: The Description for this book, The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression, will be forthcoming.