Departing from the traditional German school of music theorists, Michael Klein injects a unique French critical theory perspective into the framework of music and meaning. Using primarily Lacanian notions of the symptom, that unnamable jouissance located in the unconscious, and the registers of subjectivity (the Imaginary, the Symbolic Order, and the Real), Klein explores how we understand music as both an artistic form created by "the subject" and an artistic expression of a culture that imposes its history on this modern subject. By creatively navigating from critical theory to music, film, fiction, and back to music, Klein distills the kinds of meaning that we have been missing when we perform, listen to, think about, and write about music without the insights of Lacan and others into formulations of modern subjectivity.

Departing from the traditional German school of music theorists, Michael Klein injects a unique French critical theory perspective into the framework of music and meaning. Using primarily Lacanian notions of the symptom, that unnamable jouissance located in the unconscious, and the registers of subjectivity (the Imaginary, the Symbolic Order, and the Real), Klein explores how we understand music as both an artistic form created by "the subject" and an artistic expression of a culture that imposes its history on this modern subject. By creatively navigating from critical theory to music, film, fiction, and back to music, Klein distills the kinds of meaning that we have been missing when we perform, listen to, think about, and write about music without the insights of Lacan and others into formulations of modern subjectivity.

"What, exactly, is knowledge of music? And what does it tell us about humanistic knowledge in general? The Thought of Music, completing a trilogy on musical understanding with Interpreting Music and Expression and Truth, grapples directly with these fundamental questions--questions especially compelling at a time when humanistic knowledge is enmeshed in debates about its character and future. Lawrence Kramer seeks answers in both thought about music and thought in music--thinking in tones. He skillfully assesses musical scholarship in the aftermath of critical musicology and musical hermeneutics and in view of more recent concerns with embodiment, affect, and performance. This authoritative and timely work challenges the prevailing conceptions of every topic it addresses: language, context, and culture; pleasure and performance; and, through music, the foundations of understanding in the humanities."--Provided by publisher.

In this groundbreaking and comprehensive study, Julian Murphet examines how dramatists and prose writers at the turn of the twentieth century experimented with new forms of modern character. Old truisms of character such as consistency, depth, and verisimilitude are eschewed in favour of inconsistency, bad faith, and fragmentation.

The national element in music has been the subject of important studies, yet the scholarly framework has remained restricted almost exclusively to the field of music studies. This volume brings together experts from different fields (musicology, literary theory and modern Greek studies), who investi- gate the links that connect music, language and national identity, focusing on the Greek paradigm. Through the study of the Greek case, the book paves the way for innovative interdisciplinary approaches to the formation of the ‘national’ in different cultures, shedding new light on ideologies and mechanisms of cultural policies.

The concept of intertextuality – namely, the meaning generated by interrelations between different texts – was coined in the 1960s among literary theorists and has been widely applied since then to many other disciplines, including music. Intertextuality in Music: Dialogic Composition provides a systematic investigation of musical intertextuality not only as a general principle of musical creativity but also as a diverse set of devices and techniques that have been consciously developed and applied by many composers in the pursuit of various artistic and aesthetic goals. Intertextual techniques, as this collection reveals, have borne a wide range of results, such as parody, paraphrase, collage and dialogues with and between the past and present. In the age of sampling and remix culture, the very notion of intertextuality seems to have gained increased momentum and visibility, even though the principle of creating new music on the basis of pre-existing music has a long history both inside and outside the Western tradition. The book provides a general survey of musical intertextuality, with a special focus on music from the second half of the twentieth century, but also including examples ranging from the nineteenth century to the second decade of the twenty-first century. The volume is intended to inspire and stimulate new work in intertextual studies in music.

The Routledge Handbook of Music Signification captures the richness and complexity of the field, presenting 30 essays by recognized international experts that reflect current interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to the subject. Examinations of music signification have been an essential component in thinking about music for millennia, but it is only in the last few decades that music signification has been established as an independent area of study. During this time, the field has grown exponentially, incorporating a vast array of methodologies that seek to ground how music means and to explore what it may mean. Research in music signification typically embraces concepts and practices imported from semiotics, literary criticism, linguistics, the visual arts, philosophy, sociology, history, and psychology, among others. By bringing together such approaches in transparent groupings that reflect the various contexts in which music is created and experienced, and by encouraging critical dialogues, this volume provides an authoritative survey of the discipline and a significant advance in inquiries into music signification. This book addresses a wide array of readers, from scholars who specialize in this and related areas, to the general reader who is curious to learn more about the ways in which music makes sense.