Review of the book The Oxford Handbook of Western Music and Philosophy Tomás McAuley Nanette Nielsen Jerrold Levinson and Associate Editor Ariana Phillips-Hutton

Abstract

The first major publication to emerge from the Royal Musical Association’s Music & Philosophy Study Group (RMA MPSG), The Oxford Hand-book of Western Music and Philosophy represents in some ways the culmination of the Study Group conferences that since 2010 have been held on an annual, latterly biennial, basis at the Strand Campus, King’s College London. The RMA MPSG conferences provide an all-too-rare space for collaboration and dialogue between musicologists, philosophers, and those working in the interstices. That spirit of mutual engagement ani-mates the Handbook, to which music scholars and philosophers have contributed in roughly equal proportion. The volume is organized in six parts: I. ‘Mapping the Field’; II. ‘History’; III. ‘Philosophical Traditions and Practices’; IV. ‘Musical Traditions and Practices’; V. ‘Key Concepts’; and VI. ‘Collisions and Collaborations’. As this review lacks the space to present each chapter let alone critique it, I instead highlight some features about the volume as a whole with selected reference to individual contributions for illustration.