The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral

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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.

 

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

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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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