The ways of speaking of music are many. People chat about it every day and in everyday language, but they also treat it as a limit, as the boundary of what is sayable. Speech is in one sense different from music, but in another all speech is itself musical. By addressing different perspectives and traditions that form and inform the speaking of music in Western culture—musical, literary, philosophical, semiotic, political—this volume offers a unique and snapshot of today's scholarship on speech about music. All from the points of view of their own disciplines, the experts here treat the variet ... More

The ways of speaking of music are many. People chat about it every day and in everyday language, but they also treat it as a limit, as the boundary of what is sayable. Speech is in one sense different from music, but in another all speech is itself musical. By addressing different perspectives and traditions that form and inform the speaking of music in Western culture—musical, literary, philosophical, semiotic, political—this volume offers a unique and snapshot of today's scholarship on speech about music. All from the points of view of their own disciplines, the experts here treat the variety of types of speech about music and musical speech, from historical to contemporary, mundane to specialized. Even as they diverge and differ in their approaches, the scholars coalesce in adumbrating common issues and developing certain topoi: physicality and performance, limits and supplements, ineffability and space, and so forth. These common topoi, discussed in the introduction, show the ways that this subject continues to resonate in tones particular to the twenty-first century. The range of considerations and material is wide. Among others, they include the words used to interpret musical works, the words used to channel musical practices, and the words used to represent music. The contributors consider the ways that music may slide by words, and the ways that music may serve as an embodied figure.