Sense of Music
Regular price
€64.99
A01=Raymond Monelle
Absolute music
Allegory
Appoggiatura
Atonality
Author_Raymond Monelle
Bar (music)
Beat (music)
Category=AVA
Category=CFG
Chromatic scale
Clarinet
Composer
Criticism
Dissonant
Duration (music)
Early music
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Ernst Toch
Evocation
Fanfare
For Example
Genre
Gustav Mahler
Harmonic series (music)
Iconicity
Igor Stravinsky
Illustration
Improvisation
Intentionality
Interval (music)
Lawrence Kramer (musicologist)
Le nuove musiche
Leitmotif
Listening
Literature
Ludwig van Beethoven
Lute song
Madrigal
Magic word
Metaphor
Modernism (music)
Modulation (music)
Motet
Music history
Music Is
Music psychology
Music theory
Musica reservata
Musical composition
Musical expression
Musical form
Musical History
Musical quotation
Musical setting
Musical syntax
Musician
Musicology
Narrative
Oboe
Oratorio
Orchestra
Orchestration
Ornament (music)
Philosophical language
Phrase (music)
Picturesque
Poetry
Popular music
Postmodernism
Progressive music
Rhythm
Richard Wagner
Romantic music
Romantic Revival
Romanticism
Schumann
Singing
Slur (music)
Sophistication
Sound recording and reproduction
Stretto
Subjectivity
Sympathy (music)
Symphonic poem
Syncopation
The Classical Style
The Perfect Wagnerite
The Soloist
Theory
Tonality
Vocal music
Writing
Product details
- ISBN 9780691057163
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 12 Nov 2000
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
The fictional Dr. Strabismus sets out to write a new comprehensive theory of music. But music's tendency to deconstruct itself combined with the complexities of postmodernism doom him to failure. This is the parable that frames The Sense of Music, a novel treatment of music theory that reinterprets the modern history of Western music in the terms of semiotics. Based on the assumption that music cannot be described without reference to its meaning, Raymond Monelle proposes that works of the Western classical tradition be analyzed in terms of temporality, subjectivity, and topic theory. Critical of the abstract analysis of musical scores, Monelle argues that the score does not reveal music's sense. That sense--what a piece of music says and signifies--can be understood only with reference to history, culture, and the other arts. Thus, music is meaningful in that it signifies cultural temporalities and themes, from the traditional manly heroism of the hunt to military power to postmodern "polyvocality."
This theoretical innovation allows Monelle to describe how the Classical style of the eighteenth century--which he reads as a balance of lyric and progressive time--gave way to the Romantic need for emotional realism. He argues that irony and ambiguity subsequently eroded the domination of personal emotion in Western music as well as literature, killing the composer's subjectivity with that of the author. This leaves Dr. Strabismus suffering from the postmodern condition, and Raymond Monelle with an exciting, controversial new approach to understanding music and its history.
Raymond Monelle is Reader in Music at the University of Edinburgh. He is author of Linguistics and Semiotics in Music and publishes widely as both a music theorist and a music critic. He has lectured and taught at universities throughout Europe, North America, and Israel. He was formerly a pianist, conductor, and composer.
