Music and Human Flourishing

This volume examines how music scholarship enhances human flourishing, featuring essays from eleven scholars. It addresses music's societal roles, biases, and the influence of ethnicity, gender, and technology on connections through music.

Music and Human Flourishing is an insightful exploration into the impact of music scholarship on human well-being. While it is widely recognized that engaging with music as a performer, listener, or composer enhances happiness, this volume introduces a fourth dimension: music scholarship. This collection, part of The Humanities and Human Flourishing series, examines how understanding the cultural, social, and political contexts of music can further enrich the human experience, offering insights that mere participation cannot provide.

The book features essays from eleven distinguished scholars in musicology, ethnomusicology, and music theory, organized into three thematic sections. In the first part, titled Contemplation, contributors delve into specific aspects of music's relationship with human flourishing, proposing innovative approaches for future inquiry. This section invites readers to reflect on the deeper connections between music and personal well-being.

The second part, Critique, challenges conventional views on music's societal roles, addressing the impact of unconscious biases and stereotypes on music's potential to foster human flourishing. Finally, Communication investigates how various factors, including ethnicity, gender, religion, and technology, shape our musical interactions. Together, these essays illustrate how engaging with music scholarship not only deepens our understanding of cultural identities and social practices but also enhances our capacity for connection and transcendence through music.