Overview

Topics are musical signs developed and employed primarily during the long eighteenth century. Their significance relies on associations that are clearly recognizable to the listener with different genres, styles and types of music making. Topic theory, which is used to explain conventional subjects of musical composition in this period, is grounded in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism, while drawing also from music cognition and semiotics. The concept of topics was introduced into by Leonard Ratner in the 1980s to account for cross-references between eighteenth-century styles and genres. As the invention of a twentieth-century academic, topic theory as a field is comparatively new, and The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory provides a much-needed reconstruction of the field's aesthetic underpinnings. The volume grounds the concept of topics in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism. Documenting the historical reality of individual topics on the basis of eighteenth-century sources, it traces the origins of topical mixtures to transformations of eighteenth-century musical life, and relates topical analysis to other methods of music analysis conducted from the perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners. Focusing its scope on eighteenth-century musical repertoire, The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory lays the foundation for further investigation of topics in music of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

Full Product Details

Author:   Danuta Mirka (Reader, Reader, University of Southampton)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 1.80cm , Length: 23.10cm
Weight:   0.408kg
ISBN:  

9780190618803

ISBN 10:   0190618809
Pages:   712
Publication Date:   18 August 2016
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Introduction Danuta Mirka Section I. Origins and Distinctions Chapter 1. Topics and Opera Buffa Mary Hunter Chapter 2. Symphonies and the Public Display of Topics Elaine Sisman Chapter 3. Topics in Chamber Music Dean Sutcliffe Section II. Contexts, Histories, Sources Chapter 4. Music and Dance in the Ancien Régime Lawrence Zbikowski Chapter 5. Ballroom Dances of the Late Eighteenth Century Eric McKee Chapter 6. Hunt, Military, and Pastoral Topics Andrew Haringer Chapter 7. Turkish and Hungarian-Gypsy Styles Catherine Mayes Chapter 8. The Singing Style Sarah Day-O'Connell Chapter 9. Fantasia and Sensibility Matthew Head Chapter 10. Ombra and Tempesta Clive McClelland Chapter 11. Learned Style and Learned Styles Keith Chapin Chapter 12. The Brilliant Style Roman Ivanovitch Section III. Analysing Topics Chapter 13. Topics and Meter Danuta Mirka Chapter 14. Topics and Harmonic Schemata: A Case from Beethoven Vasili Byros Chapter 15. Topics and Formal Functions: The Case of the Lament William Caplin Chapter 16. Topics and Tonal Processes Joel Galand Chapter 17. Topics and Form in Mozart's String Quintet in E flat major, K. 614/i Kofi Agawu Chapter 18. Topical Figurae: The Double Articulation of Topics Stephen Rumph Chapter 19. The Troping of Topics in Mozart's Instrumental Works Robert Hatten Section IV. Performing Topics Chapter 20. Performing Topics in Mozart's Chamber Music with Piano John Irving Chapter 21. Recognizing Musical Topics vs. Executing Rhetorical Figures Tom Beghin Chapter 22. Eloquent Performance: The Pronuntiatio of Topics Sheila Guymer Section V. Listening to Topics Chapter 23. Amateur Topical Competencies Melanie Lowe Chapter 24. Expectation, Musical Topics, and the Problem of Affective Differentiation Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis Chapter 25. Listening to Topics in the Nineteenth Century Julian Horton

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Author Information

Danuta Mirka is Reader in Music at the University of Southampton. She is the co-editor, with Kofi Agawu, of Communication in Eighteenth-Century Music. Her books include The Sonoristic Structuralism of Krzysztof Penderecki and Metric Manipulations in Haydn and Mozart: Chamber Music for Strings, 1787-1791, which won the 2011 Wallace Berry Award from the Society for Music Theory.

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