Aesthetics and Music

'A gifted philosopher, music critic and jazz performer, Andy Hamilton has produced a book which leaves neither the philosophy nor the music out. He guides us deftly through the aesthetics of Kant and Adorno without neglecting the reality of music as sound and rhythm, improvisation and composition, showing in an unusually open-minded, lively way - and in philosophical depth - how aesthetic experience is universal and human.' Professor John Skorupski, St Andrews University, UK 'An innovative, cross-disciplinary contribution to the philosophy of music, weaving Adorno's Critical Theory with Analytic aesthetics.' Professor Max Paddison, Durham University, UK. 'With a fine eye for argument, for teasing out and testing key assumptions within the philosophy of music, Andy Hamilton's Aesthetics And Music charts a knife-edge course between scholarship, clear and penetrating thinking, and above all sound intuitions.' Stephen Robinson, The Wire, December 2007 'Aesthetics and Music is a rich and interesting study. Hamilton's approach is innovative ... [the book] should be recommended to anyone interested in the philosophy of music.' Stephen Davies, University of Auckland, Analysis 'A deeply informed author thinking hard about the musical matters which he considers - with justification - to be the most important... a lively and stimulating contribution to a number of debates.' M.W. Rowe, British Journal of Aesthetics 'Hamilton has read widely, listened hard and had his own practical engagement with music as a jazz pianist, and there is much to be learned from his argument ... The range of Hamilton's interests, and his familiarity with modern, postmodern, and post-postmodern culture, help to support an argument that is far more interesting in its detail than can be conveyed in a short review. There is a freshness in his approach, and a pleasing disregard for pedantic controversies, that will surely attract new readers to a subject that has not always been as well served by its practitioners as it is served by Hamilton.' Roger Scruton, MIND "The value of Aesthetics and Music lies in its producing the groundwork needed to present modern jazz as music worthy of Analytic philosophical treatment." Reviewed by Andrew McGettigan in Radical Philosophy, July 2008 "Andy Hamilton's Aesthetics and Music is an unusual concoction: one part history of the aesthetics of music, one part review of recent work in the Analytic philosophy of music, and one part original contribution to musical aesthetics...Hamilton's respect for and sincere interest in improvised music, experimentalism, and sound-art is model for future writers on the philosophy of music." - Brian Kane, Current Musicology, No. 85, Spring 2008 Reviewed in Dagens Nyheter, Sweden - Jan 2008 'Hamilton's is a distinctive philosophical voice, and Aesthetics and Music is a lively and stimulating contribution to a number of important debates.' - British Journal of Aesthetics

Andrew Hamilton is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Durham, UK.

1. Aesthetics and music in ancient Greece; 2. The concept of music; 3. The aesthetic of form, the aesthetic of expression, and "Absolute Music": Aesthetics of music in the late 18th and 19th centuries 4. The sound of music; 5. Rhythm and time; 6. Adorno and modernism: Music as autonomous and "social fact" 7. Improvisation and composition.