Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music - Brossura

Agawu, V. Kofi

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691273634 ISBN 13: 9780691273631

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 2025

Riassunto

An award-winning account of the importance of semiotic play in Classic instrumental music, including that of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven

Of 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.

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2025
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691273634
• ISBN 13: 9780691273631
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 166
• Contatto del produttore: Princeton University Press; https://press.princeton.edu/books; ; 7th Floor, New South Building; PRINCETON; NJ; 8544; U.S.A.
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile