1991
Enrico Fubini's book, Aesthetics of Music: From the Eighteenth Century to Today (Einaudi, Turin, 1991—often cited with Feltrinelli by mistake or in other editions)—is a seminal text in Italian musicology, analyzing the evolution of philosophical thought on music.
The connection with Max Neuhaus unfolds on three main theoretical levels, addressed in the book:
The overcoming of the closed work: Fubini traces the path from traditional "form" to uncertainty and indeterminacy. Neuhaus represents the extreme of this concept: he does not create "works" in the sense of temporal objects with a beginning and an end, but permanent and spatial "sound sculptures."
The legacy of John Cage: Fubini devotes considerable space to John Cage's revolution, which freed sound from any communicative or expressive intention. Neuhaus, who began his career as a performer of Cage's works, brings this philosophy to the real world: if for Cage "everything is music," for Neuhaus, sound becomes a tool for defining a sense of place.
The Crisis of Musical Language: The text analyzes how, in the twentieth century, the boundary between sound and noise vanished. Neuhaus is cited in aesthetic studies that draw on Fubini's premises to explain the birth of Sound Art: aesthetic experience no longer occurs through musical "grammar," but through the listener's subjective perception in a public space.