::: Musical Beauty ::: Recommendations ::: Press :::

"Here is a fresh and impressive new voice in the burgeoning conversation between music and theology. With considerable skill, Dr Stone-Davis negotiates two of the most important figures in Western aesthetics. She emerges with striking proposals about the interrelation of beauty, physicality and musical perception that have far-reaching consequences, affecting every aspect of the way we hear and listen to music in our own time."

Jeremy Begbie, Thomas A. Langford Research Professor of Theology, Duke University

"Musical Beauty is an interesting and original contribution to theological aesthetics."

Patrick Sherry, Emeritus Professor, Lancaster University

"The philosophy of music is finally starting to emerge from the straitjacket imposed by the analytical tradition. Férdia Stone-Davis' Musical Beauty makes a vital contribution to the growing realization that music is a resource for philosophical thinking, rather than simply an object to be defined by philosophy."

Andrew Bowie, Professor of Philosophy and German, Royal Holloway, University of London

"Beauty leads to more than just pleasure. This elegant new study argues that it can reveal epistemological insights as well, and that musical beauty in particular can help us better understand our relationship to the world around us. As Stone-Davis argues, musical beauty is the most abstract, problematic, and, for that very reason, the most revealing of all varieties of beauty in art. She brings both historical and contemporary perspectives to this wide-ranging account."

Mark Evan Bonds, Boshamer Distinguished Professor of Music, University of North Carolina