Music, Performance, Meaning: Selected Essays

Out of Stock

Contents: Introduction
Published writings
Musical form and the listener
The perception of large-scale tonal closure
Beethoven's unfinished piano concerto: a case of double vision?
Schenker's theory of music as ethics
The editor and the virtuoso, or Schenker vs. BA1/4low
Heinrich Schenker, polemicist: a reading of the 9th symphony monograph
Music minus 1: rock, theory and performance
The domestic gesamtkunstwerk, or record sleeves and reception
At the borders of musical identity: Schenker, Corelli and the Graces
Theorizing musical meaning
Form and syntax: a tale of 2 terms
The other Beethoven: heroism, the canon and the works of 1813-14
Performance writ large: desultory remarks on furnishing the abode of the retired scholar
In praise of symbolic poverty
Writing on music or axes to grind: road rage and musical community
Making music together, or improvisation and its others
Index.

About
Explore

About

This selection of sixteen of Nicholas Cook's essays covers the period from 1987 to 2004 and brings out the development of the author's ideas over these years. In particular the two keywords of the title -Meaning and Performance- represent critical directions that expand to the point that, by the end of the book, they become coextensive: music is seen as social action and meaning as created by that action. Within this overall direction, a wide variety of topics is explored, ranging from Beethoven to Schenker, from Chinese qin music to jazz and rock, from perceptual psychology to sketch studies and analysis of record sleeves. A substantial introduction draws out the links (and differences) between the essays, sometimes critiquing them and always setting them into the developing context of the author's work as a whole.

Book

Contents

Download queue