Ruta Staneviciute – författare

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musicalcultures in the Eastern Baltics—Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia—at the end of theCold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, thecontributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and thediffusion of information,people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artisticoutlook of several generations.The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offersa deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and politicalchange.

This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musicalcultures in the Eastern Baltics—Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia—at the end of theCold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, thecontributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and thediffusion of information,people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artisticoutlook of several generations.The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offersa deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and politicalchange.

This book provides a new approach to the intersections between music and philosophy. It features articles that rethink the concepts of musical work and performance from ontological and epistemological perspectives and discuss issues of performing practices that involve the performer’s and listener’s perceptions. 

In philosophy, the notion of essence has enjoyed a renaissance. However, in the humanities in general, it is still viewed with suspicion. This collection examines the ideas of essence and context as they apply to music. A common concern when thinking of music in terms of essence is the plurality of music. There is also the worry that thinking in terms of essence might be an overly conservative way of imposing fixity on something that evolves. Some contend that we must take into account the varying historical and cultural contexts of music, and that the idea of an essence of music is therefore a fantasy. 

This book puts forward an innovative approach that effectively addresses these concerns. It shows that it is, in fact, possible to find commonalities among the many kinds of music. The coverage combines philosophical and musicological approaches with bioethics, biology, linguistics, communication theory, phenomenology, and cognitive science. The respective chapters, written by leading musicologists and philosophers, reconsider the fundamental essentialist and contextualist approaches to music creation and experience in light of twenty-first century paradigm shifts in music philosophy.