Political Ontologies of Music: Rethinking the Relationship between Music and Politics in the Twenty-First Century

ONTOMUSIC provides an innovative and interdisciplinary theoretical framework to analyse the political and ethical dimensions of contemporary art music in the twenty-first century. It explores the relationship between composers’ ethical concerns, political thought and ontological assumptions about music. These ontological assumptions are defined as personal or collective assertions about the nature and means of music and sound, which reveal our beliefs on what music is as well as what music can do or accomplish. ONTOMUSIC argues that integrating composers’ ontological assumptions about music into the exploration of their political or ethical commitments makes possible the study of a broader range of living composers and their views about ethical issues such as social justice, human rights and the environment.