Institute 14: Aesthetics of Music

The aesthetics of music engages with ideas and concepts that are fundamental to music. True to the original word meaning, it unfolds such ideas and concepts in their interplay with perception – ‘aisthesis’. What we take for granted in musical practice, in musicology and in everyday life, aesthetics turns into matter for reflection. Some of the ideas and concepts in case are peculiar to music, others it shares with further areas of thought and action, as, for instance, the idea of a work, of expression, or of form. Yet with regard to music, such more general concepts and ideas take on peculiar meaning to be articulated by aesthetics. Such meaning is not timeless. The history of concepts and ideas shapes our aesthetic access to music.