Good music : what it is and who gets to decide / John J. Sheinbaum.

9780226593418 (ebook) :

Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2019.

1 online resource : illustrations (black and white).

Access is available to the Yale community.

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Over the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of 'good' music-highly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly original-and, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In 'Good Music', John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding.

Chicago scholarship online 2019.

Print version :

Books / Online

English

December 11, 2019

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Specialized.