Aesthetics of Music

For the first time, Dr. David Whitwell presents a thor-ough study of the per-for-mance of music in soci-ety together with the philo-soph-i-cal views on art ver-sus enter-tain-ment, the role of per-for-mance in edu-ca-tion and char-ac-ter for-ma-tion and how ear-lier philoso-phers viewed the inter-play among Rea-son, Emo-tions, expe-ri-ence and the senses. The present vol-ume stud-ies these ques-tions and more dur-ing the first two cen-turies of the Renais-sance. While the Church con-tin-ued to spon-sor impor-tant music, the spot-light had clearly turned to the grow-ing cul-ti-va-tion of the arts in the indi-vid-ual courts and the pub-lic at large, as is doc-u-mented by a num-ber of great writ-ers, among them Petrarch, Boc-cac-cio and Chaucer. It should be no sur-prise that some friends of Leonardo da Vinci con-sid-ered him the great-est musi-cian known to them, a fact almost entirely for-got-ten today. This wide inter-est in the per-for-mance of music caused the music the-o-rists to begin to aban-don the old Church dogma about music being a branch of math-e-mat-ics and to recon-sider music as an expres-sion of man.