A Research On Fomalism Theory In Peter Kivy’s Music Philosophy

Peter Kivy is one of the key character of the contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of music. His theoretical research mainly focus on:music expressiveness, formalism, the Opera, historical authentic performance, ontology, etc. And these above problems are also hot topic of Anglo-American philosophy of music. Based on his standpoint on formalism, this article will focuses on the discussion and analysis of the musical expressiveness and formalism problem. Kivy makes a new exploration from the "contour theory" in expressiveness issues. this article argues that this theory from Kivy provides a new train of thought for expressiveness theory, and also a new way to solve an academics problems on the relationship between music and emotion. Kivy has upgraded the theory of traditional formalism, so he named this modification as "enhanced formalism". As a result, this article consider that Kivy in this theory is defending himself from formalism in ideological positions rather than criticizing the formalism.