 There are many disputes about the nature of aesthetic and artistic value, including even whether these are synonymous terms or distinct concepts. This is not the place to go into those disputes. (For an excellent introduction, see Stecker 2003b.) With regard to the value of art in general, there are two central points on which there is some consensus. First, most philosophers take the value of artworks to be intrinsic to them, in the sense that the value of a work is tied essentially to the experience that the work affords. Thus, artworks are not (properly) valued merely instrumentally, as means to some end, but “for” or “in” themselves (Budd 1995: 1–16; S. Davies 1987: 198–200; Scruton 1997: 374–6; Levinson 1992: 15–17). The question that naturally arises next is what it is about the experience an artwork affords that makes it valuable. That pleasure is a non-negligible part of the answer to this question is the second point upon which there is some consensus (S. Davies 1987: 198–205; Levinson 1992; Kivy 1997b: 212–17). However, concomitant with this consensus is an acknowledgment that simple pleasure taken, say, in the sensuousness of the musical sounds is too trivial to ground the great value we attribute to music. In looking for other sources, the puzzle that arises is that music is supposed to be an abstract art, par excellence. If this means that music is divorced from everything else that concerns us in the “real world” (that is, extra-musical life), it is puzzling why we should find so valuable the experiences musical works afford. Like the questions about musical expressiveness and understanding considered above, this puzzle is most evident with respect to “pure” instrumental music, though solutions to it may be applicable to the purely musical aspects of “impure” musical works such as songs.