Table of Contents

Contents: Introduction; Attentive Listening: The problem of attention; The theory and significance of attention: Descartes to Meier; Pleasure, emotion and the 'flow' experience; Adaptation of mimesis; Adaptation of rhetoric; Wonder and astonishment. Interlude: Rousseau's Transports of Attention: Simultaneous and successive unities; Applications. Sulzer and the Aesthetic Force of Music: Civilizing the savage; The aesthetic force of music. Forkel on Expert and Amateur Listening Practices: Kenner and Liebhaber: two modes of hearing; Musical decline and Forkel's remedy; Concert programming: pleasure, amusement and instrumental music; A metaphysical history of musical hearing; A new approach to attention. Elements of a Rhetoric of Attention: Arousing the attention: the rules of periodicity; Sustaining the attention: a musical dispositio; Forkel on music-rhetorical figures; The rhetoric in practice: Georg Benda and C.P.E. Bach. Bibliography; Index.

About the Author

Matthew Riley, University of Birmingham, UK

Reviews

'Matthew Riley's book is a major contribution which offers new insights into this hitherto poorly understood period in the history of listening, and provides the tools for further investigation into musical composition, performance and reception... This is an impressive study... Riley is erudite and enlightening and his close readings offer much to the expert reader, but the book as a whole is accessible to the non-expert. Kenner and Liebhaber alike are served well, making this an essential book for anyone interested in 18th-century music aesthetics.' Early Music '... an impressive contribution to the history of music theory and psychology...' Current Musicology 'All scholars interested in the growth of the social and cultural prestige of music in Germany and, further, in expanding their horizons beyond longstanding truisms about Romantic musical thought, will find Michael Riley's clear, well-written, thoughtful, and concise book enriching... a model of clarity and thoroughness...' German Studies Review '... a detailed examination of philosophical and aesthetic theories espoused by Enlightenment thinkers. As such it compliments other scholarly research dealing with eighteenth-century aesthetics... Overall his book is well-researched, finely argued, and clearly written. It will provide readers with much insight into eighteenth-century views on listening and attention and supplement emerging studies on audience behavior.' Music Research Forum ’Matthew Riley has added considerably to our understanding of eighteenth-century musical thought. His effort to shed light on the importance of Aufmerksamkeit in the writings of Forkel and Sulzer is well-researched and carefully crafted.’ Ad Parnassum