A common characteristic of twentieth-century aesthetic research was the propensity to reconstruct British eighteenth-century aesthetics in a teleological manner. In knowing all too well who and what was around the corner – Kant and the autonomy of art – researchers frequently arranged aesthetic concepts of the time so that they looked like precursors to subsequent modern notions. Needless to say, if British critics and philosophers such as Joseph Addison and the third Earl of Shaftesbury were to resemble Kant, many of their national characteristics had to be omitted.

Since the early 1990s we have witnessed a refreshing critique of such teleological reconstructions of British aesthetics (the term aesthetics being itself an anachronism when applied to Britain in the eighteenth century). Any philosopher of art addressing British eighteenth-century aesthetic categories and concepts of art is nowadays forced to recognize that the history of aesthetics cannot be viewed as a narrative smoothly advancing towards autonomy, but rather as a history characterized by substantial discontinuity. Much to the advantage of her book, Maria Semi intends to join such a party and address ‘aesthetic reflections within a broader cultural framework’ (16). While Semi's text occasionally manages to suggest a glimpse of the British context in which music was addressed with increasing gravity throughout the century, inciting a future science of music, as well as our modern concepts of musicology or Musikwissenschaft, it is nevertheless the ability to eradicate the barriers between eighteenth-century philosophy of mind and music theory that lingers on as the most successful quality of her book.

The book is divided into two parts. In part one, Semi reflects on how late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century philosophers referred to music not necessarily because they were fascinated by the art of sound but rather in view of music's potential to address more urgent questions concerning human nature. Broadly speaking, Semi observes two approaches: on the one hand, philosophers such as Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson tended to address the educational worth of music as being something that was intrinsic to sound, while on the other hand, Addison focused on the content that such music might transmit (hence Addison's discomfort with Italian opera, which speaks in a culturally foreign musical idiom as well as in a foreign tongue). Man is allegorically addressed as a musical instrument by Addison, and in order to perceive sound properly he has to listen to himself: man turns into an instrument by perceiving himself properly and by refining his hearing into a virtuous self-reflection, thus recognizing his position in the cosmological and social hierarchy.

While perception – to listen properly – becomes a social virtue to Addison, Semi suggests that Shaftesbury identifies listening as ‘entirely inner-directed, oriented first and foremost to the understanding of “self”’ (54). Here, Semi would have benefitted from delving into the philosophy of Shaftesbury more thoroughly. The self, identified by the act of soliloquy, must always be understood in relation to its wider social, political and national contexts. There exists no definable position outside of society – the self is, to Shaftesbury, always participating in, and more importantly striving towards, a specific society. The Boethian musica humana is, so to speak, simultaneously a musica mundana, which Semi accurately recognizes by relating music and hearing to political liberty in general. However, it would have been fruitful to analyse the very fine points of Shaftesbury's arguments of the self, and stress how such matters are utterly inseparable from his belief in natural social affections and his unique way of inscribing topical political matters into aesthetic categories. Thus the accord represented by music is a resounding harmony of post-revolutionary Britain; a nation which Shaftesbury believes is finally ready to discard Thomas Hobbes's notion of an interested (that is, selfish) human nature, and in conjunction with a regulated English constitution, disinterestedly detect the universe and sense itself as part of the divine harmony.

In part one of her book Semi also pursues how mid-century philosophers and critics such as James Harris, Lord Kames and Daniel Webb mulled over the ontological questions of the effects of music. Semi demonstrates how Harris, in A Discourse on Music, Painting, and Poetry (1744), ends up making an interesting claim for instrumental music. While it is from poetic words that music gains the possibility, according to Harris, of making a lasting impression upon the human mind, instrumental music remains vital as a stimulus, preparing the imagination for the ideas arising from poetry. Kames follows in the footsteps of Harris's remarks, pointing out that while the passions motivate man to ‘act upon an object in order to satisfy the desire’, the sympathetic emotions aroused by instrumental music ‘excite desire but without object’ (73). However, the fact that the object is absent does not devalue instrumental music; rather, the sympathetic emotions aroused when we listen to instrumental music are analogous to those present when we observe someone performing a moral act: though we are unable to refer to a specific object, we are, in both cases, experiencing strong emotions that in turn inspire actions. Thus Semi effectively shows how instrumental and vocal genres persistently raise epistemological questions regarding the meaning of music – questions which are also tackled by Webb's perception of an endlessly vibrating universe in which music and poetry are amalgamated into a single category of movements governed by rhythms.

In the second part of the book, Semi continues to explore the benefits of such cross-fertilization between philosophical and musical ideas, focusing more specifically on the musical literature of Scottish teacher and scholar Alexander Malcolm, and the composers John Frederick Lampe and Charles Avison. Semi is concerned, for instance, with the connection between Malcolm's A Treatise of Musick, Speculative, Practical and Historical (1721) and the Lockeian philosophy of mind, demonstrating how Malcolm addresses the demarcation between sensations and ideas. The end of music is pleasure, and in order to achieve an agreeable sensation, sound has, according to Malcolm, to be clearly discernible (112). In a self-evidently Lockeian fashion, Malcolm then goes on to observe that although our minds perceive sound as simple ideas, by assessing and comparing these ideas (a comparison between pitches) we also actively create fresh ideas (sounds) from which we may perhaps receive pleasure. Even Lampe, the composer behind the successful opera The Dragon of Wantley (1737), put his faith in Locke in the short treatise The Art of Musick (1740). While Locke stressed that our shortcomings in obtaining knowledge did not necessarily depend on the failings of the senses, but perhaps merely on a lack of attention, Lampe refers to Locke before arguing that technical proficiency in applying musical concords and discords remains irrelevant unless we concentrate firmly on gaining knowledge of human nature and on how to ‘touch the passions’ (119).

All in all Semi's book constitutes a valuable contribution to a research field in aesthetics that is currently undergoing major changes and improvements. However, the book leaves me slightly bemused as to the general course of aesthetic research on eighteenth-century philosophy and art. The claim that the eighteenth-century man of letters was unacquainted with modern scientific taxonomies is readily understood; neither Addison nor Shaftesbury did of course refer to aesthetics or musicology as autonomous disciplines, even though at times we approach them almost as if they unconsciously addressed themselves to such fields of study. My bemusement, though, concerns the general methodology that has been preferred. Given that British eighteenth-century philosophy and criticism were remote from modern scientific taxonomies, are we perhaps better off disregarding such classifications altogether? As things stand, we are likely to expand a paradox according to which scientific taxonomies (such as music theory) are applied with the sole intention of demonstrating their inapplicability to the eighteenth-century man of letters. Nevertheless, Semi should perhaps not be reproached for neglecting this methodological topic. She has indeed written a very appealing book that underscores the necessity of persistently broadening our view of eighteenth-century music theory.