Peter Kivy

Peter Kivy was an American philosopher of art who taught at Rutgers University and wrote widely on music. In The Corded Shell he defended a resemblance or contour theory of musical expression: music is expressive of sadness much as a Saint Bernard's face looks sad, by resembling the outward expression of the emotion, without the music or the dog being sad. He later defended an 'enhanced formalism' about pure instrumental music.

Key ideas

• Music is expressive of emotions by resembling the contours of human expressive behaviour and voice.
• Expressiveness is a perceived property of the music, not a feeling the music arouses in the listener (cognitivism).
• The sad Saint Bernard: a face can look sad without its owner being sad.
• Absolute music is appreciated chiefly as structured sound, with expressive properties as part of its form.

Major works

• The Corded Shell (1980)
• Sound Sentiment (1989)
• Music Alone (1990)
• Introduction to a Philosophy of Music (2002)

In the conversation

• Question How can a piece of music be sad when it has no feelings to have? Huang Wei-ting · 4 replies
• Reading group Reading group: Hanslick’s On the Musically Beautiful, chapter by chapter Agnieszka Malinowska · 5 replies