Philosophy of Music

A topic within Aesthetics, itself one of 10 topics in that field and part of Philosophy.

Reading on Philosophy of Music

2 works

Book1854

On the Musically Beautiful

Eduard Hanslick

Music's beauty lies in its own moving sonic forms alone, not in any feeling it supposedly represents or expresses, founding musical formalism against the emotion-centred aesthetics of the Romantic movement.

link checked 17 Sept 2026

Philosophy · Aesthetics

FreeIntermediate

Essay1907

Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music

Ferruccio Busoni

Argues that notated composition and the tempered scale are only a provisional stage in music's history, and that music's real nature is a free art bound by nothing but the composer's ear.