Traditionally, the aesthetics of music or musical aesthetics concentrated on the quality and study of the beauty and enjoyment (plaisir and jouissance) of music. Aesthetics is a sub-discipline of philosophy, but in recent decades philosophers have tended to emphasize issues besides beauty and enjoyment.
It is often thought that music has the ability to affect our emotions, intellect, and our psychology; lyrics can assuage our loneliness or incite our passions. As such, music's aesthetic appeal is highly dependent upon the culture in which it is practised.
Some of the aesthetic elements expressed in music include lyricism, harmony, hypnotism, emotiveness, temporal dynamics, resonance, playfulness, and color (see also musical development).
In the 1700s, music was considered to be so far outside the realm of aesthetic theory (then conceived of in visual terms) that music was barely mentioned in William Hogarth's treatise, The Analysis of Beauty. He considered dance beautiful (closing...
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