Language of Its Own
Sense and Meaning in the Making of Western Art Music
1st Edition
Published on 15. January 2010
380 pages
978-0-226-42598-6 (ISBN)
Description
The Western musical tradition has produced not only music, but also countless writings about music that remain in continuous-and enormously influential-dialogue with their subject. With sweeping scope and philosophical depth, A Language of Its Own traces the past millennium of this ongoing exchange.Ruth Katz argues that the indispensible relationship between intellectual production and musical creation gave rise to the Western conception of music. This evolving and sometimes conflicted process, in turn, shaped the art form itself. As ideas entered music from the contexts in which it existed, its internal language developed in tandem with shifts in intellectual and social history. Katz explores how this infrastructure allowed music to explain itself from within, creating a self-referential and rational foundation that has begun to erode in recent years.A magisterial exploration of a frequently overlooked intersection of Western art and philosophy, A Language of Its Own restores music to its rightful place in the history of ideas.
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Content
- Intro
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: The Guiding Conception of Western Art Music
- Part I: The Structuring of a Self-Referential World
- 1. The Making of Musical Building Blocks
- 2. Systematizing Musical Laws
- Part II: The Crafting of a "Shared Understanding
- 3. Separating 'Sense' from 'Meaning'
- 4. Probing the Limits of Musical Coherence
- Part III: The Retreat from the "Shared Understanding
- 5. A Shift in Thought and Theory
- 6. The Appropriation of Musical Meaning
- Bibliography
- Index
