The Bloomsbury Handbook of Music and Art

This wonderfully diverse and stimulating collection of interdisciplinary essays demonstrates beautifully how contemporary humanities needs more complex polyphony. Launched predominantly from consideration of music and art interrelations, a new turn in humanities scholarship is being undertaken here by both established and emerging researchers. Drawing on geography, ecology, museology, ethics and anti-colonial approaches (among many others), the relevance of this collection to all of us working in the humanities can hardly be overstated. * Simon Shaw-Miller, Emeritus Chair of Art History, University of Bristol, UK, and author of Improvision: Orphic Art in the Age of Jazz (2022) *
The editors of this exciting volume have worked a miraculous transformation on the nascent historiography of the autonomous and conjoined arts of music and visual cultures. Drawing together contributions from the notable, the new and a diversity of intersectional scholarly views, musical and visual landscapes emerge as unbounded spaces of performance and provocation. Liveness inhabits every carefully curated section, revealing a poetic of aesthetics and activism, always future-facing and deserving of immediate attention. * Diane V. Silverthorne, art historian, Vienna 1900 scholar and editor of Music, Art and Performance from Liszt to Riot Grrrl (Bloomsbury, 2018) *
This latest addition to the cross-disciplinary field of art and music studies breaks new ground in its multi-faceted range of approaches and methodologies, diversity of voices and relevance. Essays by scholars and practitioners, case studies and interviews engage with current issues including climate change, queer studies, race relations and museum practice that invite new disciplines into the discourse. * Dr. Corrinne Chong, Assistant Curator, The Barnes Foundation *
The broad topics of this interdisciplinary volume aim to break down disciplinary and conceptual silos. By reconciling perspectives of the ear and the eye with other senses, scholars and practitioners put human creative endeavors in environmental, philosophical, sensorial and social contexts. These varied forms of scholarly and social activism, artivism and increasing access for diverse publics all lead to an agenda for change: both for individuals, artistically and conceptually, and for the myriad collective ways that humans dwell on the planet. * Aaron S. Allen, Director, Environment & Sustainability Program and Associate Professor of Musicology, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, USA, and co-editor of Sounds, Ecologies, Musics (2023) *