Music with Stanley Cavell in Mind

Why does Stanley Cavells philosophical thought matter for music? And how did Cavells musical practice and appreciation of music give shape to his most famous philosophical claims about cinema, human speech, opera, the expression of skepticism, and ordinary language philosophy? Music with Stanley Cavell in Mind provides a first-of-its-kind intervention by leading philosophers and scholars of music into an intellectual landscape in need of such charting. As a performer and a devoted student of music, the arc of Cavells wide-ranging investigation maps consistently with a proximate concern with features of human experience that involve music and sound, including the sound of prose, authorial voice (including its possession and its divestment), the presence/problem/potentiality of silence in human communication, and related features of sonic experience central to life lived at the scale of the everyday. Despite widespread scholarly fascination with the intersection of Cavell and musicthat music is famously a core theme for himno book like this has yet appeared. Moreover, our efforts here are addressed to the serious student (at all levels) and the general reader alike arriving from many precincts of thought and practicemusical performance, literary theory, cultural studies, musicology, and philosophy.