Is Language a Music?: Writings on Musical Form and Signification

Is Language a Music? presents broadly ranging explorations of musical reference that address how and why language cannot be the only measure of meanings. Music, the author insists, is pervaded by significations, but often their erasure is as pertinent to artistry as their construction. This volume's 15 essays in musical semiotics are grouped into sections that treat issues in structural description, present alternative views of theoretical foundations, consider the elaboration of gestural references to form musical discourse, explore some stylistic issues in 20th-century music, and examine the resistance to reference which is esteemed in the tradition of absolute music.

Musical Meaning and Interpretation--Robert S. Hatten, editor

"David Lidov's new book is highly recommended... Not only has Lidov's collection of essays established a secure base in the imposing terrain associated with the study of musical signification, but it also has laid some vital programmatic depots over that terrain that will aid future treks across the rugged musico-semiotic landscape." --Music Theory Spectrum Indiana University Press Indiana University Press Indiana University Press

David Lidov is a composer whose theoretical investigations were an early and influential source of the musical semiotics movement of recent decades. He teaches at York University in Toronto.

Foreword

1. Prelude-Is Language a Music?

Part I. Structuralist Pespectives-Introduction

2. Structure and Function in Repetition.

3. The Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh.

4. Mediation as a Formal Principle in Music: Three Examples.

Part II. Semiotic Polemics-Introduction

5. Nattiez's Fondements.

6. Our Time with Druids.

7. Why We Still Need Peirce.

Part III. From Gestures to Discourses-Introduction

8. Mind and Body in Music.

9. Opera Operta: Realism and Rehabilitation in La Traviata

10. A Monument in Song: Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Beverley (Buffy) St. Marie.

Part IV. The Messages of Methods-Introduction

11. Bartok the Progessive.

12. The Art of Music Theory and the Aesthetic Category of the Possible

13. Technique and Signification in the Twelve-Tone Method

14. The Project of Abstraction in Painting and Music.

Part V. Resisting Representation-Introduction

15. Replaying my Voice Mail

Notes

References

Index