Examines the tension between intuitive and analytical ways of making sense of the world by exploring musical knowledge and experience.

The understanding of music involves the mastery of its various layers of meaning. Sometimes this meaning can be acquired through human insight; at other times, it can be learned. The central concern of Musical Knowledge is the tension between intuitive and analytical ways of making sense of the world. Keith Swanwick examines this relationship on three levels: in considering music as a way of knowing; as the apparent predicament between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms; and as a tension in education. Keith Swanwick guides his reader from a theoretical exploration of musical knowledge, through an examination of ways of researching the musical experience to a concluding section which will be of direct practical help to teachers. He suggests ways in which music education can be a vital transaction, giving examples across a range of music teaching, including school classroom and instrumental studios. The book will be of interest to anyone who makes or responds to music.

"When this book was first published ni 1967, the material contained in its eight chapters related specifically to the content of the Grade One to Eighty Theory of Music written examinations of Trinity College. This revised edition takes into account most of the changes which have been introduced more recently in those examinations, but may not match their content in every aspect. It is now offered as a general text book on the subject, in the hope that sudents preparing for any theory of music examinations will find it helpful..."--From introduction.

In Musicologia--meaning "musical reasoning" as distinct from a mere love of music--author and composer Robin Maconie takes aim against the fashionable misconception that music is empty of meaning, or "auditory cheesecake." Fresh and penetrating insights draw attention to the influence of musical analogy in the history of science and philosophy from ancient Greece to modern times. Since music has always existed, it is an expression of human consciousness. The discoveries of Pythagoras, Zeno, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein would not have been possible without a tradition of musical acoustics. The story of Musicologia unfolds in thirty-one chapters from primordial considerations of silence, communication, selfhood, balance, and motion to focus on more recent and specific issues of chaos, order, relativity, and artificial intelligence, showing that even the most controversial aspects of modern art music form part of a wider endeavor to engage with universal propositions of science and philosophy.

What does it mean to hear scientifically? What does it mean to see musically? This volume uncovers a new side to the long nineteenth century in London, a hidden history in which virtuosic musical entertainment and scientific discovery intersected in remarkable ways. Sound Knowledge examines how scientific truth was accrued by means of visual and aural experience, and, in turn, how musical knowledge was located in relation to empirical scientific practice. James Q. Davies and Ellen Lockhart gather work by leading scholars to explore a crucial sixty-year period, beginning with Charles Burney’s ambitious General History of Music, a four-volume study of music around the globe, and extending to the Great Exhibition of 1851, where musical instruments were assembled alongside the technologies of science and industry in the immense glass-encased collections of the Crystal Palace. Importantly, as the contributions show, both the power of science and the power of music relied on performance, spectacle, and experiment. Ultimately, this volume sets the stage for a new picture of modern disciplinarity, shining light on an era before the division of aural and visual knowledge.

FREELY AVAILABLE ONLINE AS OPEN ACCESS BOOK! This book illustrates the acquisition of knowledge in a musician’s performative practice, and how this can contribute to the development of Artistic Research. Using a broad understanding of ‘knowledge,’ the first part of the book presents aspects of the practitioner knowledge a musician develops through daily exercises and performances. Technical and practical skills, creativity and music reading are central topics. Part II describes four different methodologies of knowledge accumulation. First is the hypothetico-deductive method (music as object). Then the author asks, “Where is the musical work?” After an introduction to semiotics, the question that must follow is “Is music a language?” Following up methodologies focusing on intersubjective and contextual topics, the presentation of hermeneutics generates the question “What happens to the music when you are listening?” Being the most subjective, phenomenology is the last methodology to be presented. The question it poses is “Are analysis and interpretation two sides of the same coin?” Artistic research is a new perspective in knowledge acquisition, and the performing artist is the pivot point. The obvious insight positioning music beyond the score is elaborated into a critique of the representational theory as a relevant ontological discourse in music. As an alternative, the potential in embodied meaning theories is discussed through cognitive, linguistic and artistic approaches. Artistic expressions convey the subjective practitioner knowledge based on the difference between the objective sign and the intersubjective expression. This makes music as communication the ultimate topic. In conclusion, understanding the meaning construction and the conditions of artistic content are both of importance in artistic research.