Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert

This book continues to develop the semiotic theory of musical meaning presented in Robert S. Hatten's first book, Musical Meaning in Beethoven (IUP, 1994). 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 elegance of synthetic structures and emergent meanings within a changing Viennese Classical style.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Markedness, Topics, and Tropes
1. Semiotic Grounding in Markedness and Style: Interpreting a Style Type in the Opening of Beethoven's Ghost Trio, Op. 70, no. 1
2. Expressive Doubling, Topics, Tropes, and Shifts in Level of Discourse: Interpreting the Third Movement of Beethoven's String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
3. From Topic to Premise and Mode: The Pastoral in Schubert's Piano Sonata in G Major, D. 894
4. The Troping of Topics, Genres, and Forms: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler
Part II. Musical Gesture
Introduction to Part II
5. Foundational Principles of Human Gesture
6. Toward a Theory of Musical Gesture
7. Stylistic Types and Strategic Functions of Gestures
8. Thematic Gesture in Schubert: The Piano Sonatas in A Major, D. 959, and A Minor, D. 784
9. Thematic Gesture in Beethoven: Sonata for Piano and Cello in C Major, Op. 102, no. 1
10. Gestural Troping and Agency
Conclusion to Part II
Part III. Continuity and Discontinuity
Introduction to Part III
11. From Gestural Continuity to Continuity as Premise
12. Discontinuity and Beyond
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names and Works
Index of Concepts