Musical Vitalities: Ventures in a Biotic Aesthetics of Music (pdf)

Description

In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature  approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world.