This volume explores Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics within a musical context. It features contributions from philosophers, musicians, educators, and musicologists from a variety of backgrounds, and sheds light on both the hermeneutic nature of music and the musicality of hermeneutics. Contributors to this volume hermeneutically think with music to uncover its fundamentally hermeneutic character, and by thinking with Gadamer in a musical context, explore ways in which hermeneutics may be understood to possess an inherent musicality. Gadamer's thought is taken up in a variety of musical contexts including improvisation, musical performance, classical music, jazz, and music criticism. This first volume to explore Gadamer's hermeneutics in a musical context breaks new ground by challenging musical concepts and by pushing Gadamer's thought in new directions. It appeals to philosophers engaged with Gadamer's thought (and philosophical hermeneutics more broadly), as well as philosophers of music, musicologists, and musicians interested in critically engaging with the practice of performing and listening to music.

In the first book to examine the overlooked relationship between musical improvisation and philosophical hermeneutics, Sam McAuliffe asks: what exactly is improvisation? And how does it relate to our being-in-the-world? Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics answers these questions by investigating the underlying structure of improvisation. McAuliffe argues that improvising is best understood as attending and responding to the situation in which one find itself and, as such, is essential to how we engage with the world. Working within the hermeneutic philosophical tradition - drawing primarily on the work of Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Jeff Malpas - this book provides a rich and detailed account of the ways in which we are all already experienced improvisers. Given the dominance of music in discussions of improvisation, Part I of this book uses improvised musical performance as a case study to uncover the ontological structure of improvisation: a structure that McAuliffe demonstrates is identical to the structure of hermeneutic engagement. Exploring this relationship between improvisation and hermeneutics, Part II offers a new reading of Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, examining the way in which Gadamer's accounts of truth and understanding, language, and ethics each possess an essentially improvisational character. Working between philosophy and music theory, Improvisation in Music and Philosophical Hermeneutics unveils the hermeneutic character of musical performance, the musicality of hermeneutic engagement, and the universality of improvisation.