Music and Discourse: Toward a Semiology of Music

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Princeton University Press, Nov 21, 1990 - Literary Criticism - 272 pages

In this book Jean-Jacques Nattiez, well-known for his pioneering work in musical semiology, examines both music, and discourse about music, as products of human activity that are perceived in varying ways by various cultures. Asking such questions as "what is a musical work" and "what constitutes music," Nattiez draws from philosophy, anthropology, music analysis, and history to propose a global theory for the interpretation of specific pieces, the phenomenon of music, and the human behaviors that music elicits. He reviews issues raised by the notion of the musical sign, and shows how Peircian semiotics, with its image of a chain or web of meanings, applies to a consideration of music's infinite and unstable potential for embodying meaning.


In exploring the process of ascribing meaning to music, Nattiez reviews writings on the psychology of music, non-Western metaphorical descriptions, music-analytical prose, and writings in the history of musical aesthetics. A final analytical chapter on the Tristan chord suggests that interpretations of music are cast in terms of analytical plots shaped by transcendent principles, and that any semiological consideration of music must account for these interpretive narratives.

 

Contents

A Theory of Semiology
3
The Semiology of the Musical Fact
39
The Concept of Music
41
The Concept of the Musical Work
69
The Status of the SoundObject
91
Musical Meaning The Symbolic Web
102
The Semiology of Discourse on Music
131
The Object of Musical Analysis
133
The Semiology of Musical Analysis
150
The Musicians Discourse
183
Conclusion
199
Theory and Analysis as Symbolic Constructions
201
References
239
Index
261
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