Kivy, Peter Nathan 1934-

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KIVY, Peter Nathan 1934-

PERSONAL: Born October 22, 1934, in New York, NY. Education: University of Michigan, A.B., 1956, M.A., 1958; Yale University, M.A., 1960; Columbia University, Ph.D., 1966.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08903. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, assistant professor, 1967-70, associate professor, 1970-76, professor of philosophy, 1976—.

MEMBER: American Society of Aesthetics, American Musicological Society, American Philosophical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Deems Taylor Award, ASCAP, 1980.

WRITINGS:

Speaking of Art, Nijhoff (Zoetermeer, Netherlands), 1973.

(Editor and author of introduction and notes) ThomasReid's Lectures on the Fine Arts, Nijhoff (Zoetermeer, Netherlands), 1973.

The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutchinson'sAesthetics and Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain, B. Franklin (New York, NY), 1976.

The Corded Shell: Reflections on Musical Expression, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1980.

Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1984.

Osmin's Rage: Philosophical Reflections on Opera,Drama, and Text, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1988.

Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions, including the Complete Text of "The Corded Shell," Temple University Press (Philadelphia, PA), 1989.

Music Alone: Philosophical Reflections on the PurelyMusical Experience, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1990.

(Editor) Essays on the History of Aesthetics, University of Rochester Press (Rochester, NY), 1992.

The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on MusicalPerformance, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY), 1995.

Philosophies of Arts: An Essay in Differences, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1997.

The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart,Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

New Essays on Musical Understanding, Oxford University Press (Clarendon, England), 2001.

Introduction to the Philosophy of Music, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2002.

The Blackwell Guide to Aesthetics, Blackwell (London, England), 2004.

Contributor to philosophy journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Peter Nathan Kivy has been praised by critics in the fields of music history and aesthetics for rejuvenating the discipline of music aesthetics. The philosophy of music has flourished in the last thirty years, with great advances made in the understanding of the nature of music and its aesthetics. Kivy's specialty is musical philosophy and eighteenth-century aesthetic theory.

Kivy has been at the center of this flourishing; his essays show how he sees the most important and interesting philosophical issues relating to music. Essentially Kivy addresses the question of what makes a musical work profound and what really makes music attractive and rewarding to the listener.

Kivy often writes on the place of music in a liberal education or arcane academic inquiries. According to the Cambridge University Press Web site, "His essay subjects range from the biological origin of music to the very nature of music itself. Kivy uses no musical notation, so no technical knowledge is required to appreciate his work."

On the Rutgers University Philosophy Department Web site Kivy said, "My field of specialization is aesthetics and the philosophy of art. My early work in this area was centered on eighteenth-century British aesthetics. . . . In the late seventies, I turned my hand, as a kind of interlude between projects, to the philosophical problem of the emotions in music. The philosophy of music became, from that time onwards, my principal interest, although I still work in the eighteenth century, and in contemporary Analytic Aesthetics as well.

"In my most recent book, Philosophies of Arts, I have departed somewhat from the musical problems, and tried to deal with issues centering on how the various arts differ. This has led me to become deeply interested in the philosophy of literature, which is currently occupying about half of my research time."

Douglas Dempster, writing on the Kivy essay collection The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music, summarized Kivy's understanding of the philosophical value of music. "The most vexing problem for Kivy, one which he addresses in both the opening and closing essays of The Fine Art of Repetition, and which absorbed his entire earlier book, Music Alone—is explaining the value, indeed, what is sometimes the 'exalted' and profound value, of an inherently meaningless decorative art form."

Kivy's 2001 book, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius, explores the concept of musical genius; the idea that some artists have something that others don't. Kivy observes that two theories have emerged from antiquity to explain the concept of genius to us lesser mortals. The first, dating back to Plato, has it that the genius is possessed by some outside, godlike force that visits and flows through the artist at the moment called inspiration. The second, attributed to Longinus, a third-century critical theorist, sees the genius himself possessing a gift of godlike powers. Kivy takes for his examples the work of Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven. The Yale University Press Web site noted, "He explores why this pendulum swing from the concept of the possessor to the concept of the possessed has occurred and how the concepts were given philosophical reformulations as views toward Handel, Mozart, and Beethoven as geniuses changed in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries."

The author commented in Focus magazine: "What separates the average music lover or amateur musician from Mozart or Beethoven is not the gulf between God and Man, angel and ape. We are all of the same substance as they. And by small increments, you get from me to Mozart. We are separated by degree, not kind. But, of course, in practice, no person can become a Mozart: one can only be born one."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Directory of American Scholars, 10th edition, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.

Kivy, Peter, The Possessor and the Possessed: Handel,Mozart, Beethoven, and the Idea of Musical Genius, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2001.

Kuhn, Laura, editor, Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 9th edition, Schirmer Music (New York, NY), 2001.

Kuhn, Laura, editor, Baker's Dictionary of Opera, Schirmer Music (New York, NY), 2001.

PERIODICALS

Antioch Review, winter, 1991, review of Music Alone:Philosophical Reflections on the Purely Musical Experience, p. 152.

Booklist, April 1, 1990, review of Music Alone, p. 1517; October 1, 2001, Alan Hirsch, review of The Possessor and the Possessed, p. 291.

British Journal of Aesthetics, April, 1991, Malcolm Budd, review of Sound Sentiment: An Essay on the Musical Emotions, including the Complete Text of "The Corded Shell,", p. 190; July, 1991, R. A. Sharpe, review of Music Alone, p. 276; April, 1995, R. A. Sharpe, The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music, p. 194; July, 1996, Max Paddison, review of Authenticities: Philosophical Reflections on Musical Performance, p. 330.

Canadian Philosophical Review, January, 1990, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 31; September, 1990, review of Music Alone, p. 368; June, 1994, review of The Fine Art of Repetition: Essays in the Philosophy of Music, p. 175; spring, 1997, Paul Dumouchel, review of The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 416.

Choice, April, 1985, Sound and Semblance: Reflections on Musical Representation, p. 1174; September, 1989, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 141; October, 1990, review of Music Alone, p. 320; January, 1994, R. Stahura, review of The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 796; November, 1995, B. J. Murphy, review of Authenticities, 475; February, 1998, M. C. Rose, review of Philosophies of Arts: An Essay in Differences, p. 1002; September, 2002, R. Stahura, review of New Essays on Musical Understanding, p. 110.

Cresset, April 1989, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 22.

Journal of Aesthetic Education, winter, 1982, review of Sound Sentiment, p. 105.

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, summer, 1985, Sound and Semblance, p. 405; spring, 1987, review of Sound and Semblance, p. 113; spring, 1990, Robert Stecker and Gary Fuller, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 165; winter, 1991, Stephen Davies, review of Sound Sentiment, p. 48; spring, 1991, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 123; summer, 1991, Colin Radford, review of Sound Sentiment, p. 83; fall, 1991, Douglas Dempster, review of Music Alone, p. 381; summer, 1994, Mary Sirridge, Essays on the History of Aesthetics, p. 369; fall, 1994, Kathleen Marie Higgins, review of The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 472; spring, 1996, James O. Young, review of Authenticities, 198; fall, 1999, Robert Stecker, review of Philosophies of Arts, p. 476.

Journal of the American Musicological Society, summer, 2000, John Butt, Authenticities, p. 402.

Journal of the History of Ideas, summer, 2000, review of The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 702.

Journals of Aesthetics, winter, 1977; spring, 1991.

Mind, October, 2000, John E. Mackinnon, Authenticities, p. 949; April 1993, Christine Tappolet, review of Music Alone, p. 377.

Music & Letters, May, 1990, Tim Carter, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 246; May, 1991, J. O. Urmson, review of Music Alone, p. 273; August, 1994, Nicholas Cook, The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 453; February, 1997, Jonathan Dunsby, review of Authenticities, p. 132.

Musical Quarterly, April, 1982, review of Sound Sentiment, p. 287.

Musical Times, winter, 2001, Michael Fuller, review of The Possessor and the Possessed, p. 66.

Music Educators Journal, March, 1993, review of Music Alone, p. 12.

New York Times, January 5, 2002, Edward Rothstein, The Possessor and the Possessed, p. B11.

Nineteenth Century Music, summer, 1990, Ellen Rosand, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 75.

Notes, summer, 1988, Sound and Semblance, p. 65; December, 1989, Linda L. Tyler, review of Osmin'sRage, p. 385; December, 1991, Naomi Cumming, review of Music Alone, p. 450; June, 1996, Rennee Cox Lorraine, review of Authenticities, 1151.

Opera Quarterly, summer, 1989, William R. Wians, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 95.

Philosophical Quarterly, October, 1994, Roger Scruton, The Fine Art of Repetition, p. 503; April, 1997, Stephen Davies, review of Authenticities, p. 238.

Philosophical Review, April, 1986, Sound and Semblance, p. 284; October, 1997, Gunter Zoller, review of Authenticities, p. 638; January, 2000, Jennifer Robinson, Philosophies of Arts, p. 138.

Philosophy in Review, June, 1998, review of Philosophies of Arts, p. 188.

Review of Metaphysics, December, 1998, Albert E. Gunn, review of Philosophies of Arts, p. 460.

San Francisco Review of Books, Volume 1, 1990, review of Music Alone, p. 35.

Sewanee Review, spring, 1992, Robert Miles, review of Music Alone, p. 43.

Times Literary Supplement, February 26, 1989, Roger Scruton, review of Authenticities, p. 20; June 16, 1989, Richard Osborne, review of Osmin's Rage, p. 667; December 24, 1990, review of Music Alone, p. 1403; December 28, 1990, Sebastian Gardner, review of Sound Sentiment, and Music Alone, p. 1103; May 8, 1998, Michael Tanner, review of Philosophies of Arts, p. 19; November 23, 2001, Malcolm Budd, review of The Possessor and the Possessed, p. 12.

University Press Book News, September, 1992, Essays on the History of Aesthetics, p. 4.

Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2002, Mitchell Cohen, review of The Possessor and the Possessed, p. A12.