The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral

Front Cover
Indiana University Press, 2006 M09 21 - 304 pages

The Musical Topic discusses three tropes prominently featured in Western European music: the hunt, the military, and the pastoral. Raymond Monelle provides an in-depth cultural and historical study of musical topics -- short melodic figures, harmonic or rhythmic formulae carrying literal or lexical meaning -- through consideration of their origin, thematization, manifestation, and meaning. The Musical Topic shows the connections of musical meaning to literature, social history, and the fine arts.

From inside the book

Contents

1 Topic and Expression
3
2 The Literary Source of Topic Theory
11
3 Signifier and Signified in Music
20
Huntsmen
33
The Hunting Horn
35
Hunts Noble and Ignoble
59
6 Musical Hunts
72
7 The Topic Established
95
Shepherds
183
The Myth
185
13 The Pastoral Signifier
207
14 The Pastoral in Music
229
15 New Pastorals
251
16 Epilogue
272
Appendix 1
275
Appendix 2
281

Soldiers
111
1 The March
113
2 The Military Trumpet and Its Players
134
10 The Military Signified
142
11 The Soldier Represented
160
Bibliography
291
Index
299
Back cover
307
Copyright

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Page 205 - Five years have past ; five summers, with the length Of five long winters ! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur. — Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion ; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view...
Page 108 - The Sick Rose O rose, thou art sick; The invisible worm That flies in the night, In the howling storm, Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy, And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy.
Page 203 - See, where the winding vale its lavish stores, Irriguous, spreads. See, how the lily drinks The latent rill, scarce oozing through the grass, Of growth luxuriant; or the humid bank, In fair profusion, decks.
Page 15 - The budding twigs spread out their fan, To catch the breezy air; And I must think, do all I can, That there was pleasure there.
Page 15 - Imbrowned the noontide bowers : thus was this place A happy rural seat of various view ; — Groves whose rich trees wept odorous gums and balm, Others, whose fruit, burnished with golden rind, Hung amiable, Hesperian fables * true, If true, here only, and of delicious taste...
Page 15 - The birds their choir apply ; airs, vernal airs, Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune The trembling leaves, while universal Pan, Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance, Led on the eternal Spring.
Page 109 - THE splendour falls on castle walls And snowy summits old in story : The long light shakes across the lakes, And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Page 205 - Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The hermit sits alone.
Page 26 - A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign. That sign which it creates I call the interpretant of the first sign. The sign stands for something, its object. It stands for that object, not in all respects, but in reference to a sort of idea, which I have sometimes called the ground of the representamen.
Page 15 - I dreamed that, as I wander'd by the way, Bare Winter suddenly was changed to Spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray, Mix'd with a sound of waters murmuring...

About the author (2006)

Raymond Monelle was formerly Reader in Music at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, where he is now an Honorary Fellow. His work on music theory and semiotics is internationally known. His books include Linguistics and Semiotics in Music and The Sense of Music. He has been a composer, pianist, and conductor, and writes music criticism for The Independent, Opera magazine, and other publications.

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