Music & meaning
By: edited by Jenefer Robinson.
Contributors: Robinson, Jenefer.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1997
Place of publication: Ithaca [N.Y.]
Language: eng
Number of pages: 261
Subjects: Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics; Symbolism in music; Music and language; Music and literature; Music, Influence of; Music -- Psychological aspects
Other titles: Music and meaning.
Description: In order to promote new ways of thinking about musical meaning, this volume brings together scholars in music theory, musicology, and the philosophy of music, disciplines generally treated as separate and distinct. This interdisciplinary collaboration, while respecting differences in perspective, identifies and elaborates shared concerns.

This volume focuses on the many and various kinds of meaning in music. Do musical meanings exist exclusively in internal, formal musical relations or might they also be found in the relationship between music and other areas of experience, such as action, emotion, ideas, and values? Also discussed is the vexed question why people listen to and apparently enjoy music that expresses unpleasant emotions, such as melancholy or despair.

Among the particular pieces the writers discuss are Mahler's Ninth Symphony, Shostakovich's Tenth Symphony, and Schubert's last sonata. More broadly, they consider the relation of musical meaning and interpretation to language, storytelling, drama, imagination, metaphor, and emotion.
Notes: Includes index.
Table of contents: title: Language and the interpretation of music / Leo Treitler; title: Listening with imagination: is music representational? / Kendall Walton; title: Musical idiosyncrasy and perspectival listening / Kathleen Marie Higgins; title: Music as drama / Fred Everett Maus; title: Action and agency in Mahler's Ninth symphony, second movement / Anthony Newcomb; title: Shostakovich's Tenth symphony and the musical expression of cognitively complex emotions / Gregory Karl and Jenefer Robinson; title: What Schubert's last sonata might hold / Charles Fisk; title: Two types of metaphoric transference / Marion A. Gluck; title: Music and negative emotion / Jerrold Levinson; title: Why listen to sad music if it makes one feel sad? / Stephen Davies.