How can we define the referential systems by which music is determined and through which music gets its own sense and meaning? What is the relation between these systems? Such questions are of particular weight in relation to current music practices, characterized by a great many of analytical procedures and hermeneutical views. The questions raised open a series of different thematic fields presented in this book. The authors allocate the place of music to the field of aesthetic autonomy or describe its specific sign system(s). Special attention is focused on the systems of musicological contextualization and the meaning/understanding of music in different historical and/or functional contexts, from traditional liturgical chant up to recent compositions. Various contributions in the collection are dedicated to the relation between music and film, while others deal with the special sociological conditions that constitute some specific musical praxis, such as folk or rock music.

Film Music in the Sound Era: A Research and Information Guide offers a comprehensive bibliography of scholarship on music in sound film (1927–2017). Thematically organized sections cover historical studies, studies of musicians and filmmakers, genre studies, theory and aesthetics, and other key aspects of film music studies. Broad coverage of works from around the globe, paired with robust indexes and thorough cross-referencing, make this research guide an invaluable tool for all scholars and students investigating the intersection of music and film. This guide is published in two volumes: Volume 1: Histories, Theories, and Genres covers overviews, historical surveys, theory and criticism, studies of film genres, and case studies of individual films. Volume 2: People, Cultures, and Contexts covers individual people, social and cultural studies, studies of musical genre, pedagogy, and the Industry. A complete index is included in each volume.

"This volume contains a wide-ranging survey of musics of the world in historical and social contexts, from ancient times to the present day. It begins by describing aspects of musical style and function in relation to the early developments of civilizations, as background to a study of later transformations. It then describes, in some detail, musical traditions of Africa and Asia, in relation to history/geography and to other aspects of culture. A compendium of information currently available as well as a dialectical examination of musical causation and function, this book aims to lead students, teachers, and those who practice Western music towards a deeper understanding of the various musical traditions that contribute to the modern, multicultural environment."--Publisher's description

"The Treatise on musical objects by Pierre Schaeffer is regarded as his most important work on music and its relationship with technology. Schaeffer refers to his earlier research in musique concráete and expands this to suggest a methodology of working with sounds resulting from the recording process. Drawing on acoustics, physics, and physiology, but also philosophy and the relationship between subject and object, Schaeffer's book summarizes his theoretical and practical work in music composition. North and Dack present an important book in the history of ideas in Europe that will resonate far beyond electroacoustic music."--Provided by publisher.

The purpose of Preparing Graduate Papers in Music is to provide music students with some guidelines to assist in the preparation of theses, essays, dissertations, and other papers that may be written as part of their graduate program. This manual includes information and examples for preparing such papers and is designed specifically to assist students in writing about music and in documenting references to music, music notation, recordings, and other musical resources. It is intended to complement guidelines provided by a university's graduate office and the two style manuals most used by music students, A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian 1996) and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA 1994).

"Bringing together leading researchers from a variety of academic and applied backgrounds, this book examines how music can be used to communicate, as well as the biological, cognitive, social, and cultural processes which underlie such communication."--BOOK JACKET.

Starting from the late Renaissance, efforts to make vocal music more expressive heightened the power of words, which, in turn, gave birth to the modern semantics of musical expression. As the skepticism of seventeenth-century science divorced the acoustic properties from the metaphysical qualities of music, the door was opened to dicern the rich links between musical perception and varied mental faculties. In Tuning the Mind, Ruth Katz and Ruth HaCohen trace how eighteenth century theoreticians of music examined anew the role of the arts within a general theory of knowledge. As the authors note, the differences between the physical and emotional dimensions of music stimulated novel conceptions and empirical inquiries into the old aesthetic queries. Tracing this development, their opening chapter deals with seventeenth-century epistemological issues concerning the artistic qualities of music. Katz and HaCohen show that painting and literature displayed a comparable tendency toward "musicalization," whereby the dynamic of forms-the modalities specific to each artistic medium-rather than subject matter was believed to determine expression. Katz and HaCohen explore the ambiguities inherent in idealization of an art form whose mimetic function has always been problematic. They discuss the major outlines of this development, from Descartes to Vico through Condillac. Particular emphasis is placed on eighteenth-century British thinkers, from Shaftesbury to Adam Smith, who perceived these problems in their full complexity. They also explore how the French and the Germans dealt differently with questions that preoccupied the British, each nation in accordance with their own past tradition and tendencies. The concluding chapter summarizes the parallel development of abstract art and basic hypotheses concerning the mind and explores basic theoretical questions pertaining to the relationship between perception and cognition. In addressing some of the most complex problems in musical aesthetics, Katz and HaCohen provide a unique historical perspective on the ways their art creates and develops coherent worlds, and, in so doing, contribute to our understanding of the workings of the mind.

For thousands of years music in India has been considered a signifying art. Indian music creates and represents meanings of all kings, some of which extend outwardly to the cosmos, while others arise inwardly, in the refined feelings which a musical connoisseur experiences when listening to it. In this book the author explores signification in Hindustani classical music along a two-fold path. Martineq first constructs a theory of musical semiotics based on the sign-theories of Charles Sanders Peirce. He then applies his theory to the analysis of various types of Hindustani music and how they generate significations. The author engages such fundamental issues as sound quality, raga, tala and form, while advancing his unique interpretations of well-known semiotic phenomena like iconicity, metalanguage, indexicality, symbolism, Martinez`s study also provides deep insight into semiotic issues of musical perception, performance, scholarship, and composition. An specially innovative and extensive section of the book analyzes representations in Hindustani music in terms of the Indian aesthetic theory of rasa. The evolution of the rasa system as applied to musical structures is traced historically and analyzed semiotically. In the light of Martinez`s theories, Hindustani music reveals itself to be both a delightfully sensuous and highly sophisticated system of acoustic representations.