spitzer, michael. review monelle

The Sense of Music: Semiotic Essays by Raymond MonelleReview by: Michael SpitzerMusic & Letters, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Aug., 2002), pp. 506-509Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3526019 .Accessed: 03/02/2015 14:09

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Amsterdam in 1996), and composer of a succes- sion of agonizingly painful, brutalist scores, often with religious titles, she has become a living legend.

This book, by one of her pupils, amplifies the legend without throwing much light on it or seeking in any way to interpret, explain, or critically engage with it. Olga Gladkova is content to act as a spokesperson for her teacher's views, most of which are in any case well known to those who have followed the few publications devoted to her. The author shows no wish to examine the music historically or stylistically, resting content with superficial descriptions and quotations from enthusiastic critics. Nor does she examine what might underpin the composer's statements. Most of the latter are concerned with warding off lazy critical cliches. Ustvolskaya wants no truck with notions that her music is religious (though she says that she needs to be in a state of grace when she com- poses) or that it is Russian (though Gladkova traces its essential qualities to Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky), nor that any of her works should be described as 'chamber music' (though why she regards that as some kind of put-down remains unexplained). She abhors the fashion for religious music in post-glasnost Russia and, in Gladkova's words, has nothing to do with those who turned so easily from Lenin cantatas to counterfeit sacred works (p. xi).

She has little but bad to say about Shostakovich's music and his personality. In reality there is a clear and powerful influence from Shostakovich on Ustvolskaya; but Glad- kova is happy to parrot her teacher's rejection of this fact. One of the very few published inter- views with Ustvolskaya-about the nearest to a primary source we are likely to get-does not appear in Gladkova's bibliography (Sof'ya Khentova, V mire Shostakovicha (Moscow: Kom- pozitor, 1996), 171-5) which is instead padded out with programme notes, CD booklets, and dictionary articles.

At best, then, this is a useful compendium to which to turn for an authorized view of the life and works. It is clearly written, each of its nine chapters outlining an aspect of both biography and music. And there are snippets of information that I do not recall from other sources, such as Ustvolskaya's total lack of interest in Pro- kofiev, and the machinations against her in the Composers' Union. Not all of the passing com- ments should be read uncritically, however. When Ustvolskaya reports Shostakovich asking her whether to call his seventh symphony the 'Lenin' or the 'Leninsky', Gladkova assumes that this is the symphony that was to become

Amsterdam in 1996), and composer of a succes- sion of agonizingly painful, brutalist scores, often with religious titles, she has become a living legend.

This book, by one of her pupils, amplifies the legend without throwing much light on it or seeking in any way to interpret, explain, or critically engage with it. Olga Gladkova is content to act as a spokesperson for her teacher's views, most of which are in any case well known to those who have followed the few publications devoted to her. The author shows no wish to examine the music historically or stylistically, resting content with superficial descriptions and quotations from enthusiastic critics. Nor does she examine what might underpin the composer's statements. Most of the latter are concerned with warding off lazy critical cliches. Ustvolskaya wants no truck with notions that her music is religious (though she says that she needs to be in a state of grace when she com- poses) or that it is Russian (though Gladkova traces its essential qualities to Musorgsky and Tchaikovsky), nor that any of her works should be described as 'chamber music' (though why she regards that as some kind of put-down remains unexplained). She abhors the fashion for religious music in post-glasnost Russia and, in Gladkova's words, has nothing to do with those who turned so easily from Lenin cantatas to counterfeit sacred works (p. xi).

She has little but bad to say about Shostakovich's music and his personality. In reality there is a clear and powerful influence from Shostakovich on Ustvolskaya; but Glad- kova is happy to parrot her teacher's rejection of this fact. One of the very few published inter- views with Ustvolskaya-about the nearest to a primary source we are likely to get-does not appear in Gladkova's bibliography (Sof'ya Khentova, V mire Shostakovicha (Moscow: Kom- pozitor, 1996), 171-5) which is instead padded out with programme notes, CD booklets, and dictionary articles.

At best, then, this is a useful compendium to which to turn for an authorized view of the life and works. It is clearly written, each of its nine chapters outlining an aspect of both biography and music. And there are snippets of information that I do not recall from other sources, such as Ustvolskaya's total lack of interest in Pro- kofiev, and the machinations against her in the Composers' Union. Not all of the passing com- ments should be read uncritically, however. When Ustvolskaya reports Shostakovich asking her whether to call his seventh symphony the 'Lenin' or the 'Leninsky', Gladkova assumes that this is the symphony that was to become

the 'Leningrad' (p. 21); but if Ustvolskaya is correct in remembering that the encounter took place before the war, it must refer to the Lenin Symphony that Shostakovich had announced far and wide before eventually abandoning it.

The translation reads well, and spot checks against the original Russian (St Petersburg: MuzYka, 1999) suggest that it is accurate. One interesting short paragraph now appears in Ustvolskaya's preface to the book that was not in the Russian edition: 'I do not believe in those who write a hundred, two hundred, three hundred works. Including Dmitry Dmitryevich Shostakovich. In such a sea of works you can't write anything new. In each of these works! That's dishonest! There are many examples of this in history.'

DAVID FANNING

The Sense of Music. Semiotic Essays. By Raymond Monelle. pp. xvi + 248. (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2000. ?40/ ?26.95. ISBN 0-691-05715-X/05716-8.)

Raymond Monelle's first book, Linguistics and Semiotics in Music (1992), is an indispensable field guide to other people's work in the subject. His superb second book articulates a personal view, with a distinctive voice that has become familiar on the European and North American conference scene. Although the nine essays that make up The Sense of Music disclaim the unity of any overarching theory, they certainly add up to a coherent position, which carries music semiotics' 'semantic turn' (Lidov, Tarasti, Hatten) to a new stage. Robert Hatten's structuralist virtu- osity in his Musical Meaning in Beethoven nodded at, but did not reckon with, the parallel universe of postmodern theory represented by Lawrence Kramer's writings. Monelle attempts to accom- modate the technical and scholastic slant of 'hard' semiotics (epitomized by the difficult work of Peirce) to the more libertarian pro- grammes of the 'new musicology'. A tall order, to put it mildly. But Monelle's secret weapon, in addition to his semiotic expertise, is that, unlike many of 'new musicology's' practitioners, he knows the music (and music theory) inside out. There is a 'bottom-up' sense in The Sense of Music of a scholar using complex theory in order to validate musical or historical intuitions, in marked contrast to the sort of semiotic approaches which map from the theory down to the score, in the hope that something music- ally interesting will turn up (what turns up, of course, is usually trivial or impoverished). How ironic, then-and I know that the author would

the 'Leningrad' (p. 21); but if Ustvolskaya is correct in remembering that the encounter took place before the war, it must refer to the Lenin Symphony that Shostakovich had announced far and wide before eventually abandoning it.

The translation reads well, and spot checks against the original Russian (St Petersburg: MuzYka, 1999) suggest that it is accurate. One interesting short paragraph now appears in Ustvolskaya's preface to the book that was not in the Russian edition: 'I do not believe in those who write a hundred, two hundred, three hundred works. Including Dmitry Dmitryevich Shostakovich. In such a sea of works you can't write anything new. In each of these works! That's dishonest! There are many examples of this in history.'

DAVID FANNING

The Sense of Music. Semiotic Essays. By Raymond Monelle. pp. xvi + 248. (Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford, 2000. ?40/ ?26.95. ISBN 0-691-05715-X/05716-8.)

Raymond Monelle's first book, Linguistics and Semiotics in Music (1992), is an indispensable field guide to other people's work in the subject. His superb second book articulates a personal view, with a distinctive voice that has become familiar on the European and North American conference scene. Although the nine essays that make up The Sense of Music disclaim the unity of any overarching theory, they certainly add up to a coherent position, which carries music semiotics' 'semantic turn' (Lidov, Tarasti, Hatten) to a new stage. Robert Hatten's structuralist virtu- osity in his Musical Meaning in Beethoven nodded at, but did not reckon with, the parallel universe of postmodern theory represented by Lawrence Kramer's writings. Monelle attempts to accom- modate the technical and scholastic slant of 'hard' semiotics (epitomized by the difficult work of Peirce) to the more libertarian pro- grammes of the 'new musicology'. A tall order, to put it mildly. But Monelle's secret weapon, in addition to his semiotic expertise, is that, unlike many of 'new musicology's' practitioners, he knows the music (and music theory) inside out. There is a 'bottom-up' sense in The Sense of Music of a scholar using complex theory in order to validate musical or historical intuitions, in marked contrast to the sort of semiotic approaches which map from the theory down to the score, in the hope that something music- ally interesting will turn up (what turns up, of course, is usually trivial or impoverished). How ironic, then-and I know that the author would

506 506


take this as a compliment-that Monelle's musical voice evokes nothing so much as vintage Tovey. In the course of his analysis of Schumann's Second Symphony, Monelle tells us, with some pride, that he is using Tovey's personal score (Tovey also taught at Edin- burgh). Monelle's peppery, combative, debunk- ing tone is delightfully Toveyan. Toveyan also is his distaste (apres rather than avant la lettre) for formal music analysis. A 'score-analysis' of Mahler's Fourth Symphony would be 'utterly brainless' (p. 153), by which I think he means the sort of naively formalist analysis critically- informed brains have stopped doing anyway. The other side of the target, as it were, is the old syntactic mode of what Nattiez termed 'music semiotics', yet which actually amounted to little more than mechanical feature-counting ('taxo- nomic-empiricist', in Agawu's (1991) terse for- mulation). It is good that Nattiez gets hardly a mention in The Sense of Music. Obviously, Mo- nelle knows his Schenker; and I imagine he excluded elaborate analytical machinery from his book because it is more practical to hang semiotic readings on to 'basic-level' musical observations (Scruton makes the same gambit in his Aesthetics of Music). In other words, a musical 'sign' tends to be a foreground event.

The dense opening chapter (or 'essay') lays out Monelle's central thesis that music has 'inherent signification' irrespective of 'sender' or 'receiver'. That Monelle situates musical meaning at a 'neutral level', in between poiesis and aesthesis, may surprise readers, in view of Nattiez's rejection of semantics. But Monelle has grasped that Molino's notion of the neutral level, the putative inspiration behind Nattiez's tripartition model, is perfectly com- patible with Hjelmslevian structural semantics (i.e., Hjelmslev's insight that semantics has a structure too). Monelle's conception of musical signs as distinct entities brings him close to the nominalism of Nelson Goodman, except that he includes a sense of musical reference, albeit to a fictional (the musical 'work' as a fictional world) or cultural (Eco's 'cultural units') realm. Cen- tring musical meaning on the sign, rather than on, say, Kramer's 'cultural work', enables a much more nuanced and sober reading of signification than can be dreamt of by hermen- eutics. The glory of this new brand of semiotics is typology, as is already recognized in its more mainstream guise of topic theory, which is the topic of the next two chapters.

What can Monelle possibly add, one may ask, to Ratner, Agawu, and Sisman? Well, to put it bluntly, Monelle puts a bomb under topic theory, leaving a Ratner-shaped crater. We have

been led to believe that the justification of topics was their firm historical anchoring in theoretical texts (Mattheson, Kimberger, Koch, et al.). His wry deference to 'the American master' and his 'masterpiece Classic Music' (p. 14) notwithstand- ing, Monelle exposes Ratner's argument as little more than a swindle, but only so as to place topics on a firmly theoretical, rather than historical, founda- tion. Astonishingly, Monelle achieves this theoretical objective through painstaking historical labour-by out-historicizing the historians. Monelle's complaint against Ratner bears quot- ing at length:

In many cases the extraordinarily rich accounts of con- temporary writers have been abridged almost to nothing. In other cases, the translations presented are heavily tendentious or even wrong; passages are omitted, either because they fail to support the argument or for no apparent reason. Some of the most important topics find no support at all, though sources are given which lead nowhere. Even odder, texts which strongly support certain aspects of the theory are ignored (p. 24).

The topical universe as circumscribed by Ratner and Agawu is widened by Monelle to include Baroque Figuren on the one side and Wagnerian leitmotivs on the other (hence the 'desire' motif from Tristan is a Baroque pianto), and he argues his point by rehabilitating un- fashionable theorists such as Albert Schweitzer (on Bach). Apart from recuperating a host of unfamiliar topics, Monelle makes a case for considering them as holistic cultural systems ('a large semantic world', p. 79), instead of dry labels. His test case is a study of 'the noble horse', a mostly Romantic topic famous from the galloping figures of Erlkonig and 'The Ride of the Valkyries'. This elicits from Monelle a tour-de-force of historical bricolage, encompass- ing Isidore of Seville, Tieck, Prevot and Ribemont's study of the horse in the Middle Ages, and a picture of the Earl of Cardigan's horse en Galop Volant (i.e. with all four feet off the ground). Since the latter was not physically possible, this confirms Monelle's thesis that topics are intrinsically artificial-marks of convention, rather than historical record. By the same (cultural) token, metrical patterns such as the siciliana were never danced and were purely evocative (although Monelle, who elsewhere cites Hermann Jung's book on the pastoral (1980), will know that the siciliana originated in the gigue, which was danced); furthermore, the 'singing style', which wasn't really vocal, was closer to the salon than to the theatre (p. 33). How does this differ from Dahlhaus's theory of genre as progressive abstraction from social function, or indeed Kallberg's semiotic critique of Dahlhaus ('The Rhetoric of Genre'),

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which reads dance-patterns as a kind of 'inter- pretational contract' between composer and listener? The difference is Peirce: Monelle con- nects the 'constructedness' of topics with the semiotic categories of icon, index, and symbol. Thus, although a topic is 'essentially a symbol, its iconic or indexical features governed by convention and thus by rule' (p. 17), Monelle draws subtle distinctions between degrees of transparency (or isomorphism) and mediation. The pianto, for example, is an iconic imitation of someone in tears, and an indexical imitation of the emotion which is connected with crying- 'iconic with regard to its object; indexical with regard to its ultimate signification' (ibid.). The particular theme of indexicality, which stresses the intermediate steps of signification, opens up a path to postmodern concerns such as 'allegory', as in Monelle's (Paul) de Mannian broad- side against Romantic ideologies of symbolism, organicism, and immediacy. All this comes in chapters 4-9, essays which follow on nicely from Monelle's semiotic premiss.

These are all wide-ranging and intricately plotted, and continue more or less chronologic- ally through the nineteenth and twentieth cen- turies (with a swerve back to Bach in ch. 8). Monelle proposes a bold historical narrative which comports oddly with the caveats about overarching theories which book-end The Sense of Music. In Monelle's own summary, 'There is a fairly simple serial pattern in this story, pro- gressing through the establishment of binary temporality, its takeover for the purpose of subjective evocation, the dissolution of subjectivity, and the subsequent radical critique of the whole musical economy' (p. 230). The first stage of this narrative unfolds in chapter 4, entitled 'The Temporal Image', which argues provoca- tively that temporality can be a subject as well as a vehicle for music. Monelle thus sees Classical sonata form as a 'dialogue of two distinct temporalities', lyric and progressive, couching his argument with detailed readings of Riepel and A. B. Marx. Marx's Gang (athematic passage-work) epitomizes 'progressive time', and by relating Gang to Riepel's Italianate passaggio Monelle is able to demonstrate a historical continuum: 'The development of progressive time out of lyric time' (p. 99). Cunning, but unconvincing, since Monelle disregards the epistemic shift between Riepel and Marx from metrical to dynamic views of form, in which the two varieties of Gang (if it really is related to passaggio) are quite different. He then confus- ingly conflates two entirely distinct 'dialogues' in the Classical exposition: between thematic and transitional areas in general, and the more

commonplace notion of first-group/second- group opposition. There are some stimulating observations on the phenomenology of lyric experience. But it is curious that, given his postmodern leanings, Monelle has chosen to draw on the somewhat dated Evans-Pritchard, Poulet, and Francastel rather than on the more obvious writings on temporality by Fredric Jameson or David Harvey (the latter's The Condition of Postmodernity, Part III: 'The Experi- ence of Space and Time').

The lyric/progressive opposition is fleshed out in chapter 5 into the interplay in the symphonies of Schumann, Dvorak, and Tchai- kovsky between 'genre' and 'structure'; in other words, the conflicting obligations to formal process and lyrical 'evocation'. Persuasive use is made here of narratological theories by Todorov, Gillian Beer (on Thomas Hardy), and Graham Daldry (on Dickens). Showing how symphonic structures such as Schumann's Second repeatedly collapse into intermezzo-like fragments gives Monelle his entry into deconstruction, a seam he opens up in two chapters (6 and 7) devoted to Mahler. Here, he applies postmodern critiques of subjectivity and textuality in some beautiful readings of the early symphonies. The musical insights come thick and fast, as in his remark that the cuckoo in the First Symphony 'sings, absurdly, the interval of a fourth instead of a third' (p. 178), or in his detailed exposition of the ironic glissando mark- ings in the Andante moderato of the Second. I liked also his sensitive analysis of Bach's 'allegory of listening' in chapter 8 ('Allegory and Deconstruction'), although I would quibble that the 'symbolic' or 'metaphorical' process that allegory is supposed to deconstruct is caricatured, simplified, and unhistorical (as Todorov showed in his Theories of the Symbol).

This brings me to my main reservation about any 'semiotic' theory, Monelle's included, which tries to engage with either post-structur- alism or new historicism, namely, the implicit assumption that one's personal critical vantage- point can levitate above issues of historical grounding and theoretical contingency. Many of the deconstructive energies supposedly the preserve of postmodernism can actually be traced back to post-Kantian aesthetics, as the extensive writings of Andrew Bowie have taught us. Lessing and Novalis devised their own theories of the sign, so why are we justified in projecting Peirce back on to the Enlightenment? It is a simple trick to demonstrate that the Peircean/Saussurian assumptions underpin- ning Monelle's deconstruction of Bach's A flat fugue BWV 886 can themselves be 'decon-

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structed', by questioning the principles of binary polarity (why not asymmetrical 'mark- edness', or radially-distributed schemas?) and signifier/signified arbitrariness (why not 'motiv- ation' or 'embodiedness'?). But that is unfair, since Monelle's analysis is elegant and illumin- ating on its own terms. The problem, though, is that these terms are not reflected upon in the post-structuralist ethos the book espouses. Another problem-again, one that besets the field in general-is that semiotics and aesthetics pull in opposite directions: semiotics towards determinate signification, aesthetics towards the critique, negation, and overcoming of music's 'language character' (Adorno's phrase) in order to point towards a musical experience that is expressly irreducible to any theory, 'semiotic' or otherwise.

It is hard to see how Monelle's defence of the uniqueness of musical meaning ('the semantics of music is not verbal', p. 9; 'musical codes are proper to music', p. 19) at the beginning of The Sense of Music can be reconciled with the urge, at the end, to dissolve the musical economy into textuality in general a la Derrida, as if music were just a special and supreme case of aesthetic deferral or negativity ('Yet music is so pro- foundly deconstructive that it will shed oblique and puzzling lights even on our political certain- ties', p. 232). In brief, is Monelle expounding the sense of music, or the sense of music? I think the latter, and advisedly so, since the task of semioticians should be to explicate in detail precisely what it is that musical immanence is supposed to be negating anyway, a mediation that even aestheticians such as Adorno blithely take for granted: facts, facts, facts. Which brings us back to music's conventionality, and the importance of revealing it. In this respect, Monelle's The Sense of Music is a wonderfully rich and thought-provoking work-by far the most erudite, humanistically rounded, and mu- sically literate book on music semiotics I have read. It is engagingly written (although the politically correct female gendering of every common-practice composer, theorist, and listener as a 'she' may surprise the historians), and will be read with profit by anybody with an interest in music, not just by 'semioticians'. This very breadth and good common 'sense' may be enough, who knows, even to put the subject of music semiotics back on the Anglo- American map.

MICHAEL SPITZER

structed', by questioning the principles of binary polarity (why not asymmetrical 'mark- edness', or radially-distributed schemas?) and signifier/signified arbitrariness (why not 'motiv- ation' or 'embodiedness'?). But that is unfair, since Monelle's analysis is elegant and illumin- ating on its own terms. The problem, though, is that these terms are not reflected upon in the post-structuralist ethos the book espouses. Another problem-again, one that besets the field in general-is that semiotics and aesthetics pull in opposite directions: semiotics towards determinate signification, aesthetics towards the critique, negation, and overcoming of music's 'language character' (Adorno's phrase) in order to point towards a musical experience that is expressly irreducible to any theory, 'semiotic' or otherwise.

It is hard to see how Monelle's defence of the uniqueness of musical meaning ('the semantics of music is not verbal', p. 9; 'musical codes are proper to music', p. 19) at the beginning of The Sense of Music can be reconciled with the urge, at the end, to dissolve the musical economy into textuality in general a la Derrida, as if music were just a special and supreme case of aesthetic deferral or negativity ('Yet music is so pro- foundly deconstructive that it will shed oblique and puzzling lights even on our political certain- ties', p. 232). In brief, is Monelle expounding the sense of music, or the sense of music? I think the latter, and advisedly so, since the task of semioticians should be to explicate in detail precisely what it is that musical immanence is supposed to be negating anyway, a mediation that even aestheticians such as Adorno blithely take for granted: facts, facts, facts. Which brings us back to music's conventionality, and the importance of revealing it. In this respect, Monelle's The Sense of Music is a wonderfully rich and thought-provoking work-by far the most erudite, humanistically rounded, and mu- sically literate book on music semiotics I have read. It is engagingly written (although the politically correct female gendering of every common-practice composer, theorist, and listener as a 'she' may surprise the historians), and will be read with profit by anybody with an interest in music, not just by 'semioticians'. This very breadth and good common 'sense' may be enough, who knows, even to put the subject of music semiotics back on the Anglo- American map.

MICHAEL SPITZER

Music, Culture and Society: A Reader. Ed. by Derek B. Scott. pp. x + 238. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, ?35/f ?14.99. ISBN 0-19- 879011-2/-879012-0.)

With the proliferation of interest in the relation- ships between music and culture in the past fifteen years or so, a collection of essential readings about the subject seems a desirable under- taking. Derek Scott's compilation is indeed timely: it is long enough since the early throes of what, for want of an alternative, is referred to as 'new musicology', yet recent enough for the excitement of this challenge to the previous orthodoxy to be vividly remembered. Music, Culture and Society presents thirty-six extracts which, for Scott, are crucial for the perspectives they have brought to bear on the new musicological debate; their common thread, he points out in his preface, is that they offer an 'alternative of one kind or another to the musicological mainstream' and show evidence of the 'paradigmatic shift' that has taken place in musicology. The extracts are grouped in five sections: 'Music and Language', 'Music and the Body', 'Music and Class', 'Music and Criti- cism', and 'Music Production and Consump- tion'; each presents a diversity of viewpoints around the central subject which often bounce off each other in intriguing ways.

I would expect that the title of the book, and those of its five divisions, will whet the appetite of many prospective readers, especially as few of us are likely to have come across every extract before. Such a collection can perhaps be ima- gined as a kind of musicological party: some old friends (or perhaps enemies) are here, but there are plenty of new faces to get to know. How successful Scott's party is depends on one's point of view: I find that many of the old friends I expected to see are mysteriously absent, while the newcomers are not always as interesting as I might have hoped, resulting in a gathering that in some ways is slightly disappointing. Of course, any anthology will always reflect the compiler's tastes, which may not match one's own hypothetical choices: Scott's selection is strong on popular music and on issues relating to class, a bias which in many ways offers a refreshing alternative. He points out in his preface that he encountered major problems obtaining copyright permissions for some authors, with either permission being withheld or publishers' fees prohibitively high. This could explain what to me seem obvious omissions, such as Marcia J. Citron, Nicholas Cook, Susan McClary, Ruth A. Solie, and Gary Tom- linson. Moreover, none of the readings engages

Music, Culture and Society: A Reader. Ed. by Derek B. Scott. pp. x + 238. (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000, ?35/f ?14.99. ISBN 0-19- 879011-2/-879012-0.)

With the proliferation of interest in the relation- ships between music and culture in the past fifteen years or so, a collection of essential readings about the subject seems a desirable under- taking. Derek Scott's compilation is indeed timely: it is long enough since the early throes of what, for want of an alternative, is referred to as 'new musicology', yet recent enough for the excitement of this challenge to the previous orthodoxy to be vividly remembered. Music, Culture and Society presents thirty-six extracts which, for Scott, are crucial for the perspectives they have brought to bear on the new musicological debate; their common thread, he points out in his preface, is that they offer an 'alternative of one kind or another to the musicological mainstream' and show evidence of the 'paradigmatic shift' that has taken place in musicology. The extracts are grouped in five sections: 'Music and Language', 'Music and the Body', 'Music and Class', 'Music and Criti- cism', and 'Music Production and Consump- tion'; each presents a diversity of viewpoints around the central subject which often bounce off each other in intriguing ways.

I would expect that the title of the book, and those of its five divisions, will whet the appetite of many prospective readers, especially as few of us are likely to have come across every extract before. Such a collection can perhaps be ima- gined as a kind of musicological party: some old friends (or perhaps enemies) are here, but there are plenty of new faces to get to know. How successful Scott's party is depends on one's point of view: I find that many of the old friends I expected to see are mysteriously absent, while the newcomers are not always as interesting as I might have hoped, resulting in a gathering that in some ways is slightly disappointing. Of course, any anthology will always reflect the compiler's tastes, which may not match one's own hypothetical choices: Scott's selection is strong on popular music and on issues relating to class, a bias which in many ways offers a refreshing alternative. He points out in his preface that he encountered major problems obtaining copyright permissions for some authors, with either permission being withheld or publishers' fees prohibitively high. This could explain what to me seem obvious omissions, such as Marcia J. Citron, Nicholas Cook, Susan McClary, Ruth A. Solie, and Gary Tom- linson. Moreover, none of the readings engages

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Article Contentsp. 506p. 507p. 508p. 509

Issue Table of ContentsMusic & Letters, Vol. 83, No. 3 (Aug., 2002), pp. 351-523Front Matter [pp. 520 - 521]The First Musical Edition of the Troubadours: On Applying the Critical Method to Medieval Monophony [pp. 351 - 370]The Roman Triumph in Purcell's Odes [pp. 371 - 382]Vaughan Williams, the Romany Ryes, and the Cambridge Ritualists [pp. 383 - 418]In BriefNew Light on the Early Career of G. B. Viotti [pp. 419 - 425]

Review-ArticlesSchubert, Kramer, and Musical Meaning [pp. 426 - 437]Dialogue [pp. 438 - 440]

Reviews of Booksuntitled [pp. 441 - 443]untitled [pp. 443 - 447]untitled [pp. 447 - 448]untitled [pp. 449 - 453]untitled [pp. 453 - 454]untitled [pp. 455 - 458]untitled [pp. 458 - 460]untitled [pp. 460 - 462]untitled [pp. 462 - 463]untitled [pp. 463 - 465]untitled [pp. 465 - 466]untitled [pp. 467 - 469]untitled [pp. 469 - 472]untitled [pp. 472 - 473]untitled [pp. 474 - 476]untitled [pp. 476 - 480]untitled [pp. 480 - 482]untitled [pp. 482 - 485]untitled [pp. 485 - 491]untitled [pp. 491 - 492]untitled [pp. 492 - 493]untitled [pp. 493 - 498]untitled [pp. 498 - 499]untitled [pp. 499 - 501]untitled [pp. 501 - 503]untitled [pp. 503 - 505]untitled [pp. 505 - 506]untitled [pp. 506 - 509]untitled [pp. 509 - 511]untitled [p. 511]untitled [pp. 511 - 514]

CorrespondenceBruckner's Eighth Symphony [pp. 515 - 518]Music and British Culture [pp. 518 - 519]

Books Received [pp. 522 - 523]Back Matter

spitzer, michael. review monelle

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