Good Music : What It Is and Who Gets to Decide / John J. Sheinbaum.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sheinbaum, John J., author.

Series:

Chicago scholarship online.

Chicago scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Music--Philosophy and aesthetics.

Music.

Popular music and art music.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations (black and white).

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2018]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of "good" music-highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original-and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what music we value and reconsider the conventional rituals surrounding it, while retaining the joys of making music, listening closely, and caring passionately.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction Good: What Values Do We Bring to Music?

1. Serious: The Cultural Work of Classical Music and the Trap of Musical Sound

2. Unified: Beethoven, the Beatles, and the Imperfect Ideology of the Masterpiece

3. Deep: Classical Values and Musical Color in Mahler's Symphonies

4. Authentic: Progressive Rock and the Inversion of Musical Values

5. Heroic: "Classic" Jazz and Musical Dialogues

6. Original: Handel Historiography and the Horizontal Remix

7. Connected: What's at Stake in How We Love the Music We Love?

Notes

Works Cited

Index

Notes:

Previously issued in print: 2018.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780226593418

022659341X

OCLC:

1062360941