Theory, Analysis and Meaning in Music

Recent years have seen far-reaching changes in the way music theorists and analysts view the nature of their disciplines. Encounters with structuralist and post-structuralist critical theory, and with linguistics and cognitive sciences, have brought the theory and analysis of music into the orbit of important developments in present-day intellectual history. This book presents the work of a group of younger scholars who, without seeking to impose an explicit redefinition of either theory or analysis, explore the limits of both in this new context. Essays on the languages of analysis and theory, and on practical issues such as decidability, ambiguity, and metaphor, combine with studies of works by Debussy, Schoenberg, Birtwistle and Boulez, together making a major contribution to an important debate in the growth of musicology.