Interpreting Music by Lawrence Kramer

by Lawrence Kramer

"Interpreting Music" is a comprehensive essay on understanding musical meaning and performing music meaningfully--"interpreting music" in both senses of the term. Synthesizing and advancing two decades of highly influential work, Lawrence Kramer fundamentally rethinks the concepts of work, score, performance, performativity, interpretation, and meaning--even the very concept of music--while breaking down conventional wisdom and received ideas. Kramer argues that music, far from being closed to interpretation, is ideally open to it, and that musical interpretation is the paradigm of interpretation in general. The book illustrates the many dimensions of interpreting music through a series of case studies drawn from the classical repertoire, but its methods and principles carry over to other repertoires just as they carry beyond music by working "through" music to wider philosophical and cultural questions.

Genres: Music

Paperback Bunko

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Lawrence 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.

Reviews

[M.R.K M.R.K · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a good starter for understanding music. Summaries the way music is interpreted and viewed. It is the ability of music interpretation skills to be displayed differently. According to Kant, he describes music as "reflexive." He further stated that musicology is primarily active listening to music, so humans do not happen to experience passively while listening to music. Besides, the music becomes more understandable during the performance because it also deals with what kind of feelings of the performer is conveyed. The music should show how meaningful the performance is.
I liked this particular quote: "Art is what people do with it."