'''Glasbena znanstveno-filozofska disciplina cilj, da s proučevanjem vseh vidikov na glasbeno umetnost spozna njeno bistvo in zakone ter odkrije njen popolni smisel v podrobnostih in v celoti.

== Zgodovina glasbene estetike ==
Razvoj estetike glasbe se ne razlikuje dosti od razvoja celotne vede o lepem, saj se zorni kot obravnavanja glasbe antropološko skozi zgodovino estetike venomer ujema tudi z obravnavanjem drugih estetskih predmetov. 

===Stari vek===
Glasba je najstarejša umetnost sveta in predantične civilizacije starega veka, kot so kozmogonijsko in mitično povezana z nastankom vesolja.

=== Antična Grčija ===
Prvi človek, za katerega lahko z gotovostjo trdimo, da se je sistematično lotil obravnave zvoka in glasbe, je bil oktavo na intervale in s tem zaznamoval razmerja med višinami števil in občutij, odraz zakonov univerzuma z močnim vplivom na moralo. Zaradi tega vpliva jo obravnava kot politično sredstvo, posamezni tonovskih načinih. Proučuje glasbo kot vpliv na občutja in izkustvo. V antiki je pomemben še melodijo in glasbeno percepcijo.

=== Srednji vek ===
V srednjem veku se je z estetiko glasbe spopadal sv. Avguštin, ki je nadaljeval pitagorejska tolmačenja v smislu »''scientie bene movendi''« (glasba je gibanje razporejeno s števili), prav tako pa tudi Kasidor, Beocij, Tomaž Akvinski, Izidor iz Sevilje in Guido Areški, ki so prevzeli in analizirali antična stališča.

=== Renesansa ===
To obdobje se je že v svojem bistvu napajalo z antičnim znanjem. Tako ni presenetljivo, da lepo v glasbi še vedno determinira pitagorejski vpliv, vendar s to razliko, da je pristop empiričen. Tako je konsonance in disonance; estetskega v glasbi ni označeval z matematičnim (številčnim) odnosom, ampak s psihološkim (ugodno, neugodno čustvo). Tudi konzervativnejša struja, saj so Rene Descartes, Marin Mer-senne, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Leonhard Euler še vedno gledali na glasbo kot del matematike in niso dovoljevali veliko novosti.

=== 18. stoletje ===
V zgodovini filozofije se je večinoma dogajalo, da je terasasto dinamiko in glasbenega baroka (ob smrti glasbenega klasicizma se tako z letom A. G. Baumgarten). Klasicizem je prinesel v glasbo novo melodiko in se odmakne od polifonije. sentimentalistično stališče o glasbi kot izrazu občutkov, kasneje pa so ga zastopajli romantične glasbene estetike.

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. However, many musicians, music critics, and other non-philosophers have contributed to the aesthetics of music. 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. For this reason, the philosopher Plato proposed that music is a dangerous entertainment that should be closely regulated by the state. (Plato, Book VII)

It is generally agreed that human responses to music are culturally influenced. For example, musical passages in Beethoven that sounded highly dissonant to his contemporaries does not sound dissonant to listeners today. As such, music's aesthetic appeal is highly dependent upon the culture in which it is practiced.

Some of the aesthetic elements expressed in music include lyricism, emotiveness, temporal dynamics, color (see also musical development). However, there has been a strong tendency in the aesthetics of music to emphasize musical structure as the most important (or even only) aesthetic element that is important in the experience of music.

== History: Aesthetics and European classical music ==  
=== 1700s ===
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 the treatise with a discussion of the minuet), but treated of music only insofar as it could provide the proper accompaniment for the dancers. However, by the end of the century the topic of music and its own beauty came to be distinguished from cases in which music is part of a mixed media presentation, as it is in opera and dance. Immanuel Kant, whose ''Critique of Judgment'' is generally considered the most important and influential work on aesthetics in the 1700s, argued that instrumental music is beautiful but ultimately trivial. Compared to the other fine arts, it does not engage the understanding sufficiently and it lacks moral purpose. In order to display the combination of genius and taste that combines ideas and beauty, respectively, music must be combined with words, as in song and opera.

=== 1800s ===
In the 1800s, the era of romanticism in music, some composers and music critics argued that music should and could express ideas, images, emotions, or even a whole literary plot. Challenging Kant's reservations about instrumental music, in 1813 E. T. A. Hoffman argued that the art of music was fundamentally the art of instrumental composition. Five years later, Arthur Schopenhauer's ''The World as Will and Representation'' argued that instrumental music is the greatest art, because it is uniquely capable of representing the metaphysical organization of reality. Although the Romantic movement accepted the thesis that instrumental music has representational capacities, most did not support Schopenhauer's linking of music and metaphysics. The mainstream consensus endorsed music's capacity to represent particular emotions and situations. In 1832, composer Robert Schumann stated that his piano work Papillons was "intended as a musical representation" of the final scene of a novel by Jean Paul, ''Flegeljahre''. The thesis that the value of music is related to its representational function was vigorously countered by the formalism of Eduard Hanslick, setting off the "War of the Romantics." This fight divided the aesthetics into two competing groups. On one side are formalists (e.g., Hanslick), who emphasize that the rewards of music are found in appreciation of musical form or design. On the other side are the anti-formalists, such as Schumann and Richard Wagner, who regarded musical form as a mere means to other artistic ends.

By the end of the 1800s, psychologist William James gave the auditory and optical sensations equal billing in his discussion of aesthetics. But he also took a detached view of the classical/romanticist disputes. James wrote that "Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic." He stated that the "classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage."

=== 1900s ===
A group of modernist writers in the early twentieth century (including the poet Bach. Far from being a new debate, this disagreement between modernists and their critics was a direct continuation of the nineteenth-century debate about the autonomy of music.

Among twentieth century composers, Igor Stravinsky is the most prominent composer to defend the modernist idea of musical autonomy. When a composer creates music, Stravinsky claims, the only relevant thing "is his apprehension of the contour of the form, for the form is everything. He can say nothing whatever about meanings." (Stravinsky 1962, p. 115) Although listeners often look for meanings in music, Stravinsky warned that these are distractions from the musical experience.

The most distinctive development in the aesthetics of music in the 1900s was attention directed at the distinction between 'higher' and 'lower' music, now understood to align with the distinction between art and False needs are cultivated in people by the culture industries. These are needs which can be both created and satisfied by the capitalist system, and which replace people's 'true' needs - freedom, full expression of human potential and creativity, genuine creative happiness. Thus, those who are trapped in the false notions of beauty according to a capitalist mode of thinking, are only capable of hearing beauty in dishonest terms.

Beginning with Peter Kivy's work in the 1970s, analytic philosophy has contributed extensively to the aesthetics of music. Analytic philosophy pays very little attention to the topic of musical beauty. Instead, Kivy inspired extensive debate about the nature of emotional expressiveness in music. He also contributed to the debate over the nature of authentic performances of older music, and he argues that much of the debate is incoherent because it fails to distinguish among four distinct standards of authentic performance of music (1995).