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Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music

Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music The linking of romanticism to the notion of adventure in this quote from Irving Babbitt, the distinguished American educator and critic, seems par ticularly apt when considering Kofi Agawu's recent contribution to the study of musical meaning in works of the nineteenth (and, in a few cases, the early twentieth) century. Like the Babbitt quote, the second portion of Agawu's title connects the ideas of adventure and romanticism, suggesting that this book will delve into the "strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique" aspects of romantic compositions through musical semiotics (Bab bitt [1919] 1955, 4). Indeed, the author offers to his target audience of "advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students who are inter ested in the practice of music analysis" (v) a detailed look at works by Bee thoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and Mahler, while setting up an analytic methodology treating music as a discourse (indebted to "Schenker, Ratner, Adorno, and the general field of musical semiotics" [3]). And here, I think, is where a difficulty could arise. Agawu describes a musical discourse as a "sequence of events" (7) that is "ordered in a coherent fashion" (8). Indeed, his analytical apparatus is indebted to structuralist approaches (in http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Music Theory Duke University Press

Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music

Kraus, J.
Journal of Music Theory , Volume 57 (1) – Mar 20, 2013
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright © Duke Univ Press
ISSN
0022-2909
eISSN
1941-7497
DOI
10.1215/00222909-2017133
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The linking of romanticism to the notion of adventure in this quote from Irving Babbitt, the distinguished American educator and critic, seems par ticularly apt when considering Kofi Agawu's recent contribution to the study of musical meaning in works of the nineteenth (and, in a few cases, the early twentieth) century. Like the Babbitt quote, the second portion of Agawu's title connects the ideas of adventure and romanticism, suggesting that this book will delve into the "strange, unexpected, intense, superlative, extreme, unique" aspects of romantic compositions through musical semiotics (Bab bitt [1919] 1955, 4). Indeed, the author offers to his target audience of "advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students who are inter ested in the practice of music analysis" (v) a detailed look at works by Bee thoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and Mahler, while setting up an analytic methodology treating music as a discourse (indebted to "Schenker, Ratner, Adorno, and the general field of musical semiotics" [3]). And here, I think, is where a difficulty could arise. Agawu describes a musical discourse as a "sequence of events" (7) that is "ordered in a coherent fashion" (8). Indeed, his analytical apparatus is indebted to structuralist approaches (in

Journal

Journal of Music Theory – Duke University Press

Published: Mar 20, 2013

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