UC Press Blog

The story of Ludwig van Beethoven’s confronting his growing deafness as he continued to compose and conduct has always provided special inspiration for me that transcends his music. Whenever I listen to his compositions, I hear more than notes exquisitely written and performed. I hear the voice of a fellow human being who is overcoming trauma, adversity and fear through his art, whispering to me not to despair, but like him, to make the most of what I have while I can in my own way.

By Lawrence Kramer, author of Music and the Forms of LifeThe concept of life has a long and complicated history, but its modern version can be said to date to the late seventeenth century. The science of the time launched a concerted effort to discover what made living bodies, particularly human

By Lawrence Kramer, author of The Hum of the World: A Philosophy of ListeningSound in recent years has escaped its traditionally subordinate relationship to sight and become the object of widespread interest. Sound Studies is a flourishing field. But much of the work done under this rubric has c

By Lawrence Kramer, author of Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History In his classic study of perception, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes the experience of listening to a classical sonata, which he takes to be representative of lis