This essay develops a series of reflections about the changes in the musical sensibility in the Western world today. The profound changes in the technology of musical production which occurred in the last decades provoked a substantial shift in the place of music in society and for the individual. I try to interpret the impact of these changes on the basis of four elements of analysis deeply interrelated: technological innovations in recording and reproduction, musical performance, reception of the musical product, and musical subcultures which shape the choices of a vast sector of musical consumers, young and old. In an attempt to set the basis for a truly pluralist musical sensibility I seek to illustrate these new dilemmas with musical examples coming from the most varied and different styles: erudite, popular, traditional, folk, mass-media-oriented, ritualized, etc. Dialogues are established with various theoreticians of music and of contemporary culture, from Adorno, Béla Bártok, Walter Benjamin, to John Blacking, Jacques Attali, Jean Baudrillard, Simon Frith, and Lawrence Kramer,among others.
mediations in music; musicality; musical sensibility; performance