Edward Lippman

Professor Emeritus

One of the pioneering American scholars on the philosophy and aesthetics of music, Edward Lippman (1920-2010) taught at Columbia for 35 years. He earned his PhD at Columbia in 1952 with a dissertation on music and space. He joined the faculty in 1954 and was appointed professor in 1969; he retired in 1989.  At Columbia, Prof. Lippman trained several generations of scholars.  Among his dissertation advisees who went on to major careers in musicology were James McKinnon, Charlotte Cross, Patricia Carpenter, Jamie Croy Kassler, Jane Fulcher, Rose Rosengard Subotnik, and Christopher Gibbs. 

Prof. Lippman’s book Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (1964) is an important exposition of Greek philosophy of music and one of the few compilations of this size and scope in English.  Prof. Lippman also wrote on 19th-century Romanticism, particularly the music and writings of Schumann and Wagner.  Two of his most important later publications were Musical Aesthetics: a Historical Reader (1986) and A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (1992).

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A selected bibliography of Edward Lippman's work follows:

Music and Space: a Study in the Philosophy of Music (diss., Columbia U., 1952)

‘Symbolism in Music’, MQ, xxxix (1953), 554–75

‘Hellenic Conceptions of Harmony’, JAMS, xvi (1963), 3–35

‘The Sources and Development of the Ethical View of Music in Ancient Greece’, MQ, xlix (1963), 188–209

‘Spatial Perception and Physical Location as Factors of Music’, AcM, xxxv (1963), 24–35

Musical Thought in Ancient Greece (New York, 1964)

‘Theory and Practice in Schumann’s Aesthetics’, JAMS, xvii (1964), 310–45

‘The Place of Music in the System of Liberal Arts’, Aspects of Medieval and Renaissance Music: a Birthday Offering to Gustave Reese, ed. J. LaRue and others (New York, 1966), 545–59

‘The Problem of Musical Hermeneutics’, Art and Philosophy: a Symposium, ed. S. Hook (New York, 1966), 307–35

‘The Tonal Ideal of Romanticism’, Festschrift für Walter Wiora, ed. L. Finscher and C.-H. Mahling (Kassel, 1967), 419–26

A Humanistic Philosophy of Music (New York, 1977)

‘The Formation of Wagner's Style’, Music and Civilization: Essays in Honor of Paul Henry Lang, ed. E. Strainchamps, M.R. Maniates and C. Hatch (New York, 1984), 102–16

‘Progressive Temporality in Music’, JM, iii (1984), 121–41

Musical Aesthetics: a Historical Reader (New York, 1986)

‘Wagner's Conception of the Dream’, JM, viii (1990), 54–81

A History of Western Musical Aesthetics (Lincoln, NE, 1992)

‘The Place of Aesthetics in Theoretical Treatises on Music’, Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past, ed. C. Hatch and D. Bernstein (Chicago, 1993), 217–32

‘Reflections on the Aesthetics of Strophic Song’, Festschrift Walter Wiora zum 90. Geburtstag, ed. C.-H. Mahling and R. Seiberts (Tutzing, 1997), 173–85