Theorizing Musical Meaning

Sectarianism in Scotland: A ‘West of Scotland’ Problem, a Patchwork or a Cobweb?

“…Therefore we argue for retaining the plurality and ambiguity of cultural meanings such as those heard in song, because they can be understood in so many different ways, and at different times. Cook (2001) attributes this to music's semantic ambiguity, its having various emotional and semantic affordances. Each act of listening can have both personal or individual 'nuanced' meanings, as well as shared or broad 'un-nuanced' meanings.…”

‘Understood at Last’?: A Memetic Analysis of Beethoven’s ‘Bloody Fist’

“…Its treatment is irregular, in that, apart from the 'incorrect' notation, it is initially presented in the 'wrong' inversion (iv 4 2, last quaver beat of b. 312), and then resolved -via Chua's 'unorthodox' voice leading [25] -not to a chord of dominant function (i 6 4 or V) but to a tonally unsatisfying i 6 3 (b. 315) which might tentatively be aligned with Rich's image of the 'terror of impotence'.…”

“…This proposes that even notionally 'absolute' music can be treated as an instance of multimedia, in that it integrates a number of spaces: a 'music space' (encompassing a 'selection of attributes from the musical trace'); a 'text space' (encompassing either the explicit text of a vocal work, or an implicit/inferred verbal-conceptual abstract or image in the case of an instrumental composition; the latter constitutes 'a discovery within the music of these qualities, in the sense that the interpretation builds upon the music's semantic potential'); a 'generic space' (characterized by an 'enabling similarity', meaning 'there must be common attributes presented by the various media in question … in the absence of which there would be no perceptual interaction between them'); and a 'blended space' ('in which the attributes unique to each medium are combined, resulting in the emergence of new meaning') [25,28].…”

“…Figure 1 (after [25]) shows such a composite CIN, formed of networks for Don Giovanni and the first movement of the Ninth Symphony, and a 'meta-blended space' arising from their interaction. The CIN for Don Giovanni identifies the text space concepts of aggressive and hedonistic masculinity, Anna as the object of desire and violence, and punishment for the transgression of societal and class norms (these concepts being derived from the italicized terms in Table 1); the music space elements of Musemes a-f and the bold D major/minor sonorities; the generic space concepts of resoluteness, fearless audacity, and terror; and the blended space concepts of vengeance and retribution, and fratricide.…”

“…The CIN for Op. 125, I is adapted from that abstracted by Cook from McClary's (revised) reading [25]. It identifies the music space elements of Musemes a-f and the bold D major/minor sonorities; the text space concepts (from McClary) of 'violence, mindlessness, the maintenance of identity, and desire'; the generic space concepts of forcefulness, power, and violence; and the blended space concepts of pent-up aggression, Johanna as the object of desire, violence and retribution, and fratricide.…”