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"...Grant draws consistently sharp, bold lines that provide unexpected focus. The historical scholarship impresses throughout, not only for its breadth but also for its unusually deep reading of sources. The endeavor brims with confidence and originality; at the end it is hard to escape the sense that some fog has been lifted. The author's clearheaded and original perspective will be welcomed by those engaged in music theory or affect theory.-- ""Choice"" . . .[B]y drawing attention to the persistence of a generalized sonic discourse in affect theory, Peculiar Attunements treads the path for future examinations of how a sound-inflected lexicon is deployed in works of affect theory and in the humanities more broadly.-- ""Eighteenth-Century Music"" Why is contemporary affect theory suffused with words like resonance, reverberation, tuning, vibration--language that conjures up music? Roger Grant, in posing that question, mounts a formidable and extraordinarily clear-headed critique of affect theory, while at the same time identifying and then demystifying its strange affinities with eighteenth-century theories about music's power. This rich theoretical harvest becomes the framework for Grant's novel take on mimesis and meaning in eighteenth-century instrumental music and opera, in a book that reimagines this repertory in ways that are subtle, surprising, revelatory--a tour-de-force.---Carolyn Abbate, Harvard University With unparalleled lucidity and in lively, nimble prose, Roger Grant unpacks the logic of the intertwining histories of affect theory and music theory. In doing so he offers us something sorely needed in two overlapping fields whose resonances have remained surprisingly underexamined. Affect theorists and musicologists have been waiting for a book like this for a very long time, and we are lucky to get it from a thinker as clear-sighted as Grant. For the historical perspective it brings to affect theory and refreshing critique of the 'sense-certainty' prevalent in its discourse in particular, Peculiar Attunements promises to be an instant classic in the study of affect and emotion.---Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago"

Why is contemporary affect theory suffused with words like resonance, reverberation, tuning, vibration-language that conjures up music? Roger Grant, in posing that question, mounts a formidable and extraordinarily clear-headed critique of affect theory, while at the same time identifying and then demystifying its strange affinities with eighteenth-century theories about music's power. This rich theoretical harvest becomes the framework for Grant's novel take on mimesis and meaning in eighteenth-century instrumental music and opera, in a book that reimagines this repertory in ways that are subtle, surprising, revelatory-a tour-de-force. -- Carolyn Abbate, Harvard University With unparalleled lucidity and in lively, nimble prose, Roger Grant unpacks the logic of the intertwining histories of affect theory and music theory. In doing so he offers us something sorely needed in two overlapping fields whose resonances have remained surprisingly underexamined. Affect theorists and musicologists have been waiting for a book like this for a very long time, and we are lucky to get it from a thinker as clear-sighted as Grant. For the historical perspective it brings to affect theory and refreshing critique of the 'sense-certainty' prevalent in its discourse in particular, Peculiar Attunements promises to be an instant classic in the study of affect and emotion. -- Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago

Author Information

Roger Mathew Grant is Associate Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. His first book, Beating Time and Measuring Music in the Early Modern Era (Oxford, 2014) won the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society for Music Theory.

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