Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music (Oxford Studies in Music Theory)

Music as Discourse. Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music. Kofi Agawu. Oxford Studies in Music Theory. Demonstrates a possible interface.
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But now we have a set of analyses embracing Liszt, Brahms, Mahler, and Stravinsky, in which the theory of topics is alive and well; 'the historical persistence of topoi ' is affirmed Music as Discourse , The other surprise is to find that Nattiez-style paradigmatic analysis, which seemed to have died with the dodo, is the basis for Agawu's new analytical technique. There is more to say about this, however. The author is convinced that repetition is a non-trivial aspect of our music, and he finds paradigmatic charts useful in demonstrating this.

But unlike Nicolas Ruwet and Nattiez, his segmentation is not governed by positivism and 'science', denying the intuition of the analyst; on the contrary, it encloses a hermeneutic spirit, interpreting and describing the 'units' in terms of their implications, their structural significance, their mutual dialogue, and dealing with whole harmonic textures, not merely the monodies chiefly studied by Nattiez.

And gone are Nattiez's pages of melodic fragments printed vertically under each other; after quoting the salient units, Agawu simply numbers them and places the numbers in a paradigmatic chart.

Music as Discourse: Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music

It is revealed that the positivisms of the earlier writers and the paradigmatic idea were not inseparable. Agawu finds musical repetition a meaningful aspect of seriality. His charts are not simply founded on logical distinctions of identity and difference but are meant to be interpretative as well as analytical; they are, in a sense, hermeneutic charts. There is a fairly extensive account of musical topics; the list of twenty-seven topics in Classical music has now been extended to sixty-one pp. I would like to contribute my own two-penn'orth: It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide.

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Choose your country or region Close. Ebook This title is available as an ebook. To purchase, visit your preferred ebook provider. Oxford Scholarship Online This book is available as part of Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level. Music as Discourse Semiotic Adventures in Romantic Music Kofi Agawu Oxford Studies in Music Theory Demonstrates a possible interface between semiotics and music theory Approaches the subject of musical meaning from within technical views of musical structure Accessible to readers with a less advanced background in music theory.

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Music as Discourse

What does music mean, and how does this meaning occur? Kofi Agawu's Music as Discourse has become a standard and definitive work in musical semiotics.

6 editions of this work

Working at the nexus of musicology, ethnomusicology, and music philosophy and aesthetics, Agawu presents a synthetic and innovative approach to musical meaning which argues deftly for the thinking of music as a discourse in itself - composed not only of sequences of gestures, phrases, or progressions, but rather also of the very philosophical and linguistic props that enable the analytical formulations made about music as an object of study.

The book provides extensive demonstration of the pertinence of a semiological approach to understanding the fully-freighted language of romantic music, stresses the importance of a generative approach to tonal understanding, and provides further insight into the analogy between music and language.

Music as Discourse is an essential read for all who are interested in the theory, analysis and semiotics of music of the romantic period. Students and scholars of music theory, theory, analysis, semiotics and music of the romantic period.

Music as Discourse - Kofi Agawu - Oxford University Press

Reviews "Kofi Agawu is widely known as one of the pioneers of musical semiotics. Now, in Music as Discourse, he offers a focused study that shows semiotics in action, engaging with a familiar and cherished repertory in a way that provides valuable insights to both scholar and student.

These are splendid new analyses of important works. This book, with its lapidary clarity, its surprising insights, and its emphasis on musical meaning, is going to change all that.