Interpreting Music is a comprehensive essay on understanding musical meaning and performing music meaningfully―“interpreting music” in both senses of the term. Synthesizing and advancing two decades of highly influential work, Lawrence Kramer fundamentally rethinks the concepts of work, score, performance, performativity, interpretation, and meaning―even the very concept of music―while breaking down conventional wisdom and received ideas. Kramer argues that music, far from being closed to interpretation, is ideally open to it, and that musical interpretation is the paradigm of interpretation in general. The book illustrates the many dimensions of interpreting music through a series of case studies drawn from the classical repertoire, but its methods and principles carry over to other repertoires just as they carry beyond music by working through music to wider philosophical and cultural questions. “Thoughtful and thought-provoking. . . . All present are the qualities noted of Kramer’s impeccable writing: grace, deftness of touch, wide reading.” -- Michael Spitzer, University of Liverpool ― Music & Letters Published On: 2012-11-01 “Well documented. . . . Recommended.” ― Choice Published On: 2011-05-09 "Clear, trenchant, delightfully opinionated, and thick with virtuosic word play. This book will not disappoint."--Nicholas Cook, author of The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-de-siecle Vienna "Eloquently formulated and laced with wit. A major contribution to critical musicology."--Derek B. Scott, author of Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna "In this astonishing performance, Lawrence Kramer challenges us to rethink what it can mean to interpret music as listeners, as scholars, and as performers. Virtuosic, exhilarating, and provocative, this book confronts the conventional wisdom around such topics as hermeneutics, subjectivity, history, analysis, modernism, metaphor, and performance to shape our understanding of music into a virtual new order of things. Kramer's wide-ranging and humane outlook in Interpreting Music compels us to question what we thought we knew about music and meaning." --Michael Klein, author of Intertextuality in Western Art Music "Clear, trenchant, delightfully opinionated, and thick with virtuosic word play. This book will not disappoint."―Nicholas Cook, author of The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-de-siecle Vienna "Eloquently formulated and laced with wit. A major contribution to critical musicology."―Derek B. Scott, author of Sounds of the Metropolis: The 19th-Century Popular Music Revolution in London, New York, Paris, and Vienna "In this astonishing performance, Lawrence Kramer challenges us to rethink what it can mean to interpret music as listeners, as scholars, and as performers. Virtuosic, exhilarating, and provocative, this book confronts the conventional wisdom around such topics as hermeneutics, subjectivity, history, analysis, modernism, metaphor, and performance to shape our understanding of music into a virtual new order of things. Kramer's wide-ranging and humane outlook in Interpreting Music compels us to question what we thought we knew about music and meaning." ―Michael Klein, author of Intertextuality in Western Art Music Lawrence Kramer is Distinguished Professor of English and Music at Fordham University. He is the author of many books, including Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History; Opera and Modern Culture ; and Why Classical Music Still Matters , all from UC Press. Interpreting Music By Lawrence Kramer UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Copyright © 2011 The Regents of the University of California All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-520-26706-0 Contents List of Musical Examples, vii, 1. Hermeneutics, 1, 2. Language, 20, 3. Subjectivity, 46, 4. Meaning, 63, 5. Metaphor, 81, 6. History, 96, 7. Influence, 113, 8. Deconstruction, 128, 9. Analysis, 144, 10. Resemblance, 162, 11. Things, 184, 12. Classical, 204, 13. Modern, 220, 14. Works, 241, 15. Performance, 258, 16. Musicology, 278, Notes, 291, Index of Concepts, 315, Index of Names, 319, CHAPTER 1 Hermeneutics This is a book about musical hermeneutics. A generation ago, no one would have wanted to write it. Music by nature seemed to rule it out. Music did not seem to mean the way other things do if it seemed to mean at all. This book tries to show why and how that situation has changed—changed dramatically. Each chapter examines a different concept or practice associated with the deceptively simple phrase interpreting music. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation. What do we do when we interpret music? What do we learn by doing it? What is at stake? Why should we care? To begin answering, we need to reconsider hermeneutics generally. For this book about what hermeneutics can do for music is also about what musi