Musical Meaning
Toward a Critical History

Argues that humanistic, not just technical, meaning is a basic force in music history and an indispensable factor in how, where, and when music is heard. This work shows that the problem of musical meaning is not just an intellectual puzzle, but a musical phenomenon in its own right.

Focusing on the classical repertoire from Beethoven to Shostakovich and also discussing jazz, popular music, and film and television music, "Musical Meaning" uncovers the historical importance of asking about meaning in the lived experience of musical works, styles, and performances. Kramer's writing, clear and full of memorable formulations, demonstrates that thinking about music can become a vital means of thinking about general questions of meaning, subjectivity, and value. In addition to providing theoretical advances and insights on particular pieces and repertoires, "Musical Meaning" will be provocative reading for those interested in issues of identity, gender, and cultural theory. This book includes a CD of Kramer's own composition, "Revenants: 32 Variations in C Minor", which he discusses in his final chapter.

Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Sounding Out: Musical Meaning and Modern Experience
1. Hermeneutics and Musical History: A Primer without Rules, an Exercise with Schubert
2. Hands On, Lights Off: The "Moonlight" Sonata and the Birth of Sex at the Piano
3. Beyond Words and Music: An Essay on Songfulness
4. Franz Liszt and the Virtuoso Public Sphere: Sight and Sound in the Rise of Mass Entertainment
5. Rethinking Schumann's Carnaval: Identity, Meaning, and the Social Order
6. Glottis Envy: The Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera
7. Hercules's Hautboys: Mixed Media and Musical Meaning
8. The Voice of Persephone: Musical Meaning and Mixed Media
9. Powers of Blackness: Jazz and the Blues in Modern Concert Music
10. Long Ride in a Slow Machine: The Alienation Effect from Weill to Shostakovich
11. Chiaroscuro: Coltrane's American Songbook
12. Ghost Stories: Cultural Memory, Mourning, and the Myth of Originality
Notes
Index
Author's Note on the CD: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/9293/9293.cdabs.php