Is Language a Music?

David Lidov is a composer whose theoretical investigations were an early and influential source of the musical semiotics movement of recent decades. He teaches at York University in Toronto.

• Foreword1. Prelude-Is Language a Music?Part I. Structuralist Pespectives-Introduction 2. Structure and Function in Repetition.3. The Allegretto of Beethoven's Seventh.4. Mediation as a Formal Principle in Music: Three Examples.Part II. Semiotic Polemics-Introduction 5. Nattiez's Fondements.6. Our Time with Druids.7. Why We Still Need Peirce.Part III. From Gestures to Discourses-Introduction 8. Mind and Body in Music.9. Opera Operta: Realism and Rehabilitation in La Traviata 10. A Monument in Song: Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Beverley (Buffy) St. Marie.Part IV. The Messages of Methods-Introduction 11. Bartok the Progessive.12. The Art of Music Theory and the Aesthetic Category of the Possible13. Technique and Signification in the Twelve-Tone Method14. The Project of Abstraction in Painting and Music.Part V. Resisting Representation-Introduction 15. Replaying my Voice MailNotesReferencesIndex

"David Lidov's new book is highly recommended. . . Not only has Lidov's collection of essays established a secure base in the imposing terrain associated with the study of musical signification, but it also has laid some vital programmatic depots over that terrain that will aid future treks across the rugged musico-semiotic landscape. 31.2 Fall 2009"—Music Theory Spectrum