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Expression and Truth: On the Music of Knowledge
Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. Expression and Truth rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application to the humanities. These models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.
“Recent years have seen the return of the claim that music’s power resides in its ineffability. In Expression and Truth , Lawrence Kramer presents his most elaborate response to this claim. Drawing on philosophers such as Wittgenstein and on close analyses of nineteenth-century compositions, Kramer demonstrates how music operates as a medium for articulating cultural meanings and that music matters too profoundly to be cordoned off from the kinds of critical readings typically brought to the other arts. A tour-de-force by one of musicology’s most influential thinkers.”―Susan McClary, Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music .
“Recent years have seen the return of the claim that music’s power resides in its ineffability. In Expression and Truth , Lawrence Kramer presents his most elaborate response to this claim. Drawing on philosophers such as Wittgenstein and on close analyses of nineteenth-century compositions, Kramer demonstrates how music operates as a medium for articulating cultural meanings and that music matters too profoundly to be cordoned off from the kinds of critical readings typically brought to the other arts. A tour-de-force by one of musicology’s most influential thinkers.”―Susan McClary, Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music .
- GenresMusic
184 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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About the author
Lawrence Kramer
56 books10 followersLawrence Kramer is Professor of English and Music at Fordham University
and co-editor of the journal 19th-Century Music. He has held visiting
professorships at Yale, Columbia, the University of Graz, the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, and McMaster University. His work, focused on the
interrelations of music, culture, and society, comprises numerous essays
and a series of seven books, most recently including Musical Meaning:
Toward a Critical History (2001) and Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and
Strauss (2004), both published by the University of California Press.
Next year California will bring out Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing
Music in Cinema, a collection he edited with Daniel Goldmark and Richard
Leppert on the basis of an international conference that the three
organized in 2004.
and co-editor of the journal 19th-Century Music. He has held visiting
professorships at Yale, Columbia, the University of Graz, the University of
Newcastle upon Tyne, and McMaster University. His work, focused on the
interrelations of music, culture, and society, comprises numerous essays
and a series of seven books, most recently including Musical Meaning:
Toward a Critical History (2001) and Opera and Modern Culture: Wagner and
Strauss (2004), both published by the University of California Press.
Next year California will bring out Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing
Music in Cinema, a collection he edited with Daniel Goldmark and Richard
Leppert on the basis of an international conference that the three
organized in 2004.
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