Philosophy of Music

[Angi István]

(b Ojdula, 16 Oct 1933) Romanian music aesthetician and musicologist. He is considered the founder of musical aesthetics in Romania. Ştefan Angi studied at Cluj-Napoca Conservatory (1953–8) where his teachers included Márkos Albert (music theory), Jodál Gabor (harmony), Max Eisikovits (counterpoint), Jagamas János (forms), Földes László (aesthetics), Lakatos István and Benkő András (music history), Zsurka Péter (violin), Ana Voileanu-Nicoară (chamber music), Antonin Ciolan (orchestral ensemble), and Szenik Ilona (folklore). He then studied at Lomonosov Moscow State University (1963–5), with the philosopher Valentin Ferdinandovich Asmus, where he graduated with a dissertation on Music and Affectivity and took the PhD in Romania in 1966. In 1958 he joined the academic staff of Cluj-Napoca Conservatory and between 1976 and 1986 was the dean of the Theoretic Faculty. He was awarded the ‘Cultural Merit’ medal (1970) and the ‘Romanian Academy Award’ (1977). Angi is a permanent correspondent on serial radio broadcasts, has published more than 100 articles, and has attended 70 conferences – on musicology, philosophy, and aesthetics....

(b Sibiu, 4 Nov 1956) Romanian musicologist and music aesthetician. He studied at Cluj-Napoca Conservatory (1976–81) where he joined the academic staff (in 1996), earned a doctorate on music aesthetics (1999), was pro-rector (2008–12), and became president of the Senate in 2012.

Owing to his multiple interests Banciu has been recognized as a member of several professional music associations (starting in 2002), an evaluator on many national committees and music competitions (starting in 2006), a member of the board of directors at the Union of Romanian Composers and Musicologists (starting in 2014), the vice-president of the ‘Performing Arts Commission’ within the National Council for the Certification of University Titles, Diplomas, and Certificates (C.N.A.T.D.C.U., starting in 2016), a peer reviewer on journals (Musicology Papers, Musicology Today, Studia Musica), and an organizer of international conferences (The International Congress on Musical Signification in ...

[Fišer, Zbyněk]

(b Prague, 20 Jan 1930; d Bratislava, 9 April 2007).Czech philosopher, writer, and poet, and a leading figure of the Czechoslovak underground. Egon Bondy’s legendary career began in 1947, when he briefly joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia only to resign immediately after the party’s takeover in February 1948. For the next ten years Bondy freewheeled on the edge of the law, proto-beatnik style. During those years he gained visibility among members of the underground by cofounding the illegal samizdat review Půlnoc (‘Midnight’). With the 1949 Půlnoc collection Jewish Names he started to use the name Egon Bondy. In 1957 he enrolled at Prague’s Charles University on distance study while working as a nighttime security guard. He received the PhD in 1967 with a dissertation entitled Útěcha z ontologie (‘Consolation from Ontology’). From that year Bondy lived on disability while continuing to write, but other than his study ...

Member of Goehr family

(b London, Jan 10, 1960). British philosopher, daughter of Alexander Goehr. After her first degree in philosophy at the Universities of Exeter and Manchester (1982), she took the PhD at Cambridge with a dissertation, The Work of Music (1987). She subsequently held academic posts at the University of Nevada at Reno (1986–7), Boston University (1987–9), Harvard University (1989–90) and Wesleyan University (1989–97) before being appointed professor of philosophy at Columbia University (1995). Her book The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works (1992), adapted from her dissertation, engages in a radical way with discussions by analytic philosophers about the question of the ontology of a musical work. An ontological question asks what it is for any entity to have existence, or to ‘be’; applied to music, it takes the form of asking what it is for a piece of music to be defined as a ‘work’ or to have a singular ‘identity’. (Is the work a material thing? Does it consist in the score? Is it an ideal in the mind of the composer? Is it a compendium of possible performances?) This question was opened up most notably by the philosopher Roman Ingarden, who approached it from a phenomenological point of view (...