This Key Concepts pivot considers the fundamental Chinese cultural ideal of harmony (hé/和). Historically originating from Confucianism, the concept of harmony sits at the heart of Chinese traditional culture, which is characteristically morality-based and harmony-conscious due to the central role of pragmatic reason and wisdom nurtured through Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism and other schools of thought. This pivot delineates the rationale of the Chinese philosophy of harmony and its implications for modern social practices worldwide. It notably reexamines the relevance of hé beyond the realm of philosophy, and how this concept can impact on modern day human relations, amongst individuals and families as well as on a wider societal scale. It explores how hé can affect perspectives on political interaction, international relations and human conflict, as well as the interaction between man and nature. Addressing the inevitable tension between theory and practice, this book argues for the very real relevance of hé in 21st century cultural, social, political and economic spheres in China and beyond.

As scholars and publics look for alternatives to what is understood as a violent Western world order, many claim that China can provide such an alternative through the Chinese dream of a harmonious world. This book takes this claim seriously and examines its effects by tracing the notion across several contexts: the policy documents and speeches that launched harmony as an official term under previous president Hu Jintao; the academic literatures that asked what a harmonious world might look like; the propaganda and mega events that aimed to illustrate it; the online spoofing culture that is used to criticise and avoid "harmonization"; and the incorporation of harmony into current president Xi Jinping’s "Chinese dream". This book finds contemporary Chinese society and international relations saturated with harmony. Yet, rather than offering an alternative to problems in "Western" thought, it counter-intuitively argues that harmony has not taken place, is not taking place, and will not take place. The argument unfolds as a contribution to wider debates on time, space and multiplicity in world politics. Offering analysis of the important but understudied concept of harmony, Nordin provides new and creative insights into wider contemporary issues in Chinese politics, society and scholarship. The book also suggests a creative and novel methodology for studying foreign policy concepts more broadly, drawing on critical thinkers in innovative ways and in a new empirical context. It will be of interest to students and scholars of IR, Chinese foreign and security policy and IR theory.

Ernst Levy was a visionary Swiss pianist, composer, and teacher who developed an approach to music theory that has come to be known as "negative harmony." Levy's theories have had a wide influence, from young British performer/composer Jacob Collier to jazz musicians like Steve Coleman. His posthumous text, A Theory of Harmony, summarizes his innovative ideas. A Theory of Harmony is a highly original explanation of the harmonic language of the modern era, illuminating the approaches of diverse styles of music. By breaking through age-old conceptions, Levy was able to reorient the way we experience musical harmony. British composer/music pedagogue Paul Wilkinson has written a new introduction that offers multiple points of entry to Levy’s work to make this text more accessible for a new generation of students, performers, and theorists. He relates Levy's work to innovations in improvisation, jazz, twentieth-century classical music, and the theoretical writings of a wide range of musical mavericks, including Harry Partch, Hugo Riemann, and David Lewin. Wilkinson shows how A Theory of Harmony continues to inspire original musical expression across multiple musical genres.

Ed Simon tells the story of Pittsburgh through this exploration of its hidden histories--the LA Review of Books calls it an "epic, atomic history of the Steel City." The land surrounding the confluence of the

"A fascinating and genuinely accessible guide....Educating, enjoyable, and delightfully unscary."—Classical Music What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament"—the equal division of the octave into twelve notes that has become our standard tuning method? Thanks to How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony, "we may soon be able to hear for ourselves what Beethoven really meant when he called B minor 'black'" (Wall Street Journal).In this "comprehensive plea for more variety in tuning methods" (Kirkus Reviews), Ross W. Duffin presents "a serious and well-argued case" (Goldberg Magazine) that "should make any contemporary musician think differently about tuning" (Saturday Guardian). Some images in the ebook are not displayed owing to permissions issues.

Do human beings have a special and distinguished place in reality? In Idealism and the Harmony of Thought and Reality Thomas Hofweber contends that they do. We are special since there is an intimate connection between our human minds and reality itself. This book defends a form of idealism which holds that our human minds constrain, but do not construct, reality as the totality of facts. Reality as the totality of facts is thus not independent of our minds, and our minds play a metaphysically special role in all of reality. But reality as the totality of things is taken to be completely independent of us. Hofweber's proposed form of conceptual idealism is formulated via the notion of a harmony between our minds and reality. This harmony is defended through considerations in the philosophy of language. How can one possibly defend a metaphysical thesis like idealism from considerations about our own representation? A key step in the book's argument is to consider a special class of concepts--inescapable concepts--which we cannot rationally replace with different ones. This leads to a new approach for making progress in metaphysics--immanent metaphysics--which is broadly neo-Kantian in spirit.

Reconstructing historical conceptions of harmonic distance, Audacious Euphony advances a geometric model appropriate to understanding triadic progressions characteristic of 19th-century music. Author Rick Cohn uncovers the source of the indeterminacy and uncanniness of romantic music, as he focuses on the slippage between chromatic and diatonic progressions and the systematic principles under which each operate.