Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- An award-winning account of the importance of semiotic play in Classic instrumental music, including that of Mozart, Haydn, and BeethovenOf all the repertories of Western Art music, none is as explicitly listener-oriented as that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet few attempts to analyze the so-called Classic Style have embraced the semiotic implications of this fact. In Playing with Signs, Kofi Agawu proposes a listener-oriented theory of Classic instrumental music that encompasses its two most fundamental communicative dimensions: expression and structure.Units of expression, defined in reference to topoi, are shown here to interact with, confront, and merge into units of structure, defined in terms of the rhetorical conventions of beginning, continuing, and ending. The book draws on examples from works by Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven to show that the explicitly referential, even theatrical, surface of Classic music derives from a play with signs. Although addressed primarily to readers interested in musical analysis, the book opens fruitful avenues for further research into musical semiotics, aesthetics, and Classicism.
- Copyright:
- 1991
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Publisher Quality
- Book Size:
- 166 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780691273624
- Related ISBNs:
- 9781400861835, 9780691601922, 9780691631523, 9780691091389, 9780691273648, 9780691273631
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 03/25/25
- Copyrighted By:
- BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Nonfiction, Music
- Submitted By:
- Bookshare Staff
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.