Music and Humanism: An Essay in the Aesthetics of Music

Robert Sharpe examines the humanist conception of music as a language—as expressive and intelligible—which has been a dominant theory in Western culture. He argues against the view that music is expressive by causing certain states in us. Rather, he contends that our beliefs about music are integral to our appreciation of it. Differences in musical taste are then not just irresolvable differences in sensitivity, but the result of variations in circumstance and upbringing, of associations and ideology.