Music As Metaphor

"The scholarship of Michael Spitzer's new book is impressive and thorough. The writing is impeccable and the coverage extensive. The book treats the history of the use of metaphor in the field of classical music. It also covers a substantial part of the philosophical literature. The book treats the topic of metaphor in a new and extremely convincing manner."-Lydia Goehr, Columbia University The experience of music is an abstract and elusive one, enough so that we're often forced to describe it using analogies to other forms and sensations: we say that music moves or rises like a physical form; that it contains the imagery of paintings or the grammar of language. In these and countless other ways, our discussions of music take the form of metaphor, attempting to describe music's abstractions by referencing more concrete and familiar experiences. Michael Spitzer's Metaphor and Musical Thought uses this process to create a unique and insightful history of our relationship with music—the first ever book-length study of musical metaphor in any language. Treating issues of language, aesthetics, semiotics, and cognition, Spitzer offers an evaluation, a comprehensive history, and an original theory of the ways our cultural values have informed the metaphors we use to address music. And as he brings these discussions to bear on specific works of music and follows them through current debates on how music's meaning might be considered, what emerges is a clear and engaging guide to both the philosophy of musical thought and the history of musical analysis, from the seventeenth century to the present day. Spitzer writes engagingly for students of philosophy and aesthetics, as well as for music theorists and historians.

?In a word, I shall endeavour to show how our music, having been originally a shell-fish, with its restrictive skeleton on the outside and no soul within, has been developed by the inevitable laws of evolution, through natural selection and the survival of the fittest, into something human, even divine, with the strong, logical skeleton of its science inside, the fair flesh of God-given beauty outside, and the whole, like man himself, animated by a celestial, eternal spirit....? W.J. Henderson, The Story of Music (1889) Critical writing about music and music history in nineteenth-century Britain was permeated with metaphor and analogy. Music and Metaphor examines how over-arching theories of music history were affected by reference to various figurative linguistic templates adopted from other disciplines such as art, religion, politics and science. Each section of the book discusses a wide range of musicological writings and their correspondence with the language used to convey contemporary ideas such as the sublime, the ancient and modern debate, and, in particular, the theory of evolution. Bennett Zon reveals that through their application of metaphorical frameworks taken from art, religion and science, these writers and their work shed light on nineteenth-century perceptions of music history and illuminate the ways in which these disciplines affected notions of musical development.

This practical and enlightening book gives insight into almost every aspect of jazz musicianship---scale/chord theory, composing techniques, analyzing tunes, practice strategies, etc. For any level of player, on any instrument. Endorsed by Jessica Wiliams, Jerry Bergonzi, Bill mays, etc.

Steve Larson drew on his 20 years of research in music theory, cognitive linguistics, experimental psychology, and artificial intelligence—as well as his skill as a jazz pianist—to show how the experience of physical motion can shape one's musical experience. Clarifying the roles of analogy, metaphor, grouping, pattern, hierarchy, and emergence in the explanation of musical meaning, Larson explained how listeners hear tonal music through the analogues of physical gravity, magnetism, and inertia. His theory of melodic expectation goes beyond prior theories in predicting complete melodic patterns. Larson elegantly demonstrated how rhythm and meter arise from, and are given meaning by, these same musical forces.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Speech Science / Linguistics, grade: 1, University of Innsbruck (Anglistik), course: Linguistics, language: English, abstract: In the following paper, I am going to talk about how music is described out of a linguistic point of view. I am going to show how and which metaphors are used and how categorization works. Right at the beginning I have to mention that I am more into modern music, in particu-lar the Rock genre, therefore the majority of examples in this paper will come from this one. However, when reading it, one should always bare in mind that all the theories mentioned below can be applied to any kind of music.

As the complicated relationship between music and theatre has evolved and changed in the modern and postmodern periods, music has continued to be immensely influential in key developments of theatrical practices. In this study of musicality in the theatre, David Roesner offers a revised view of the nature of the relationship. The new perspective results from two shifts in focus: on the one hand, Roesner concentrates in particular on theatre-making - that is the creation processes of theatre - and on the other, he traces a notion of ‘musicality’ in the historical and contemporary discourses as driver of theatrical innovation and aesthetic dispositif, focusing on musical qualities, metaphors and principles derived from a wide range of genres. Roesner looks in particular at the ways in which those who attempted to experiment with, advance or even revolutionize theatre often sought to use and integrate a sense of musicality in training and directing processes and in performances. His study reveals both the continuous changes in the understanding of music as model, method and metaphor for the theatre and how different notions of music had a vital impact on theatrical innovation in the past 150 years. Musicality thus becomes a complementary concept to theatricality, helping to highlight what is germane to an art form as well as to explain its traction in other art forms and areas of life. The theoretical scope of the book is developed from a wide range of case studies, some of which are re-readings of the classics of theatre history (Appia, Meyerhold, Artaud, Beckett), while others introduce or rediscover less-discussed practitioners such as Joe Chaikin, Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Michael Thalheimer and Karin Beier.

This book examines how Berlioz used musical forms to represent a narrative, and to depict emotions such as madness or love.