Music in the moment
By: Jerrold Levinson.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Ithaca, N.Y
Language: eng
Number of pages: 184
Subjects: Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics; Musical perception; Music -- Psychological aspects
Description: "What is required for a listener to understand a piece of music? Does aural understanding depend upon reflective awareness of musical architecture or large-scale musical structure? Jerrold Levinson thinks not. In contrast to what is commonly assumed, Levinson argues, basic understanding of music requires nothing more than properly grounded, present-focused attention; and virtually everything in the comprehension of extended pieces of music that suggests explicit architectonic awareness can be explained without the need to posit a conscious grasp of relationships across broad spans." "Levinson rejects the notion that keeping music's large-scale form before the mind is somehow essential to fundamental understanding of it. As evidence, he describes in detail the experience of listening to a wide range of music. He defends, with some qualifications, the views of the nineteenth-century musician and psychologist Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, who argued that musical comprehension requires only attention to the evolution of music from moment to moment."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 176-179) and index.