A Theory of Art

Karol Berger Is Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts at Stanford University. He is the author of numerous studies in the history of music aesthetics and theory, vocal pholyphony from 1400 to 1600, and instrumental music from 1780 to 1850. His Musica Ficta (1987) won the Otto Kinkeldey Award of the American Musicological Society.

• Prologue. The Function and value of artPart I.Aesthetics: the end of artworks1.: Aesthetics I. The nature of art2.: Aesthetics II. The uses of art3.: Aesthetics III. The genealogy of modern European art musicPart II.Poetics and hermeneutics: the contents and interpretation of artworks4.: Poetics I. Diegesis and mimesis: the poetic modes and the matter of artistic presentation5.: Poetics II. Narrative and lyric: the poetic forms and the object of artistic presentation6.: Hermenetics. Interpretation and its validityEpilogue. The power of tasteNotes

Berger writes well, is suggestive and in places, particularly in relation to music and the nature of poetic forms, genuinely illuminating. As a book for generally interested non-specialists it is genuinely engaging and worth reading