Music in the moment

Description:

"What is required for a listener to understand a piece of music? Does aural understanding depend upon reflective awareness of musical architecture or large-scale musical structure? Jerrold Levinson thinks not. In contrast to what is commonly assumed, Levinson argues, basic understanding of music requires nothing more than properly grounded, present-focused attention; and virtually everything in the comprehension of extended pieces of music that suggests explicit architectonic awareness can be explained without the need to posit a conscious grasp of relationships across broad spans." "Levinson rejects the notion that keeping music's large-scale form before the mind is somehow essential to fundamental understanding of it. As evidence, he describes in detail the experience of listening to a wide range of music. He defends, with some qualifications, the views of the nineteenth-century musician and psychologist Edmund Gurney, author of The Power of Sound, who argued that musical comprehension requires only attention to the evolution of music from moment to moment."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Philosophy and aesthetics,  Musical perception,  Psychological aspects of Music,  Music,  Psychological aspects,  Music, history and criticism,  Music, psychological aspects,  Musique,  Philosophie et esthétique,  Perception de la musique,  Aspect psychologique,  Muziek,  Esthetische ervaring,  Psychology