Offers a fresh approach to the problem of expressive meaning in music. Beginning with an analysis of the slow movement of the Hammerklavier piano sonata, this book examines the roles of markedness, Classical topics, expressive genres, and musical tropes in fostering expressive interpretation at various levels of structure.
Prelude: from gesture to virtual agency -- Foundations for a theory of agency -- Virtual environmental forces and gestural energies: actants as agential -- Virtual embodiment: from actants to virtual human agents -- Virtual identity and actorial continuity -- Interlude I: from embodiment to subjectivity -- Staging virtual subjectivity -- Virtual subjectivity and aesthetically warranted emotions -- Staging virtual narrative agency -- Performing agency -- An integrative agential interpretation of Chopin's Ballade in F minor, op. 52 -- Interlude II: hearing agency: a complex cognitive task -- Other perspectives on virtual agency -- Postlude
This book continues to develop the semiotic theory of musical meaning presented in Robert S. Hatten's first book, Musical Meaning in Beethoven. In addition to expanding theories of markedness, topics, and tropes, Hatten offers a fresh contribution to the understanding of musical gestures, as grounded in biological, psychological, cultural, and music-stylistic competencies. By focusing on gestures, topics, tropes, and their interaction in the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, Hatten demonstrates the power and elegence of synthetic structures and emergent meanings within a changing Viennese Classical style. -- from back cover.