Playing with Signs by V. Kofi Agawu - 9780691273648

Playing with SignsA Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music\nAuthor(s): V. Kofi Agawu\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Princeton University Press, United States\nImprint: Princeton University Press\nISBN-13: 9780691273648, 978-0691273648\nSynopsis\nAn award-winning account of the importance of semiotic play in Classic instrumental music, including that of Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven\n\nOf all the repertories of Western Art music, none is as explicitly listener-oriented as that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet few attempts to analyze the so-called Classic Style have embraced the semiotic implications of this fact. In Playing with Signs, Kofi Agawu proposes a listener-oriented theory of Classic instrumental music that encompasses its two most fundamental communicative dimensions: expression and structure.\n\nUnits of expression, defined in reference to topoi, are shown here to interact with, confront, and merge into units of structure, defined in terms of the r.