The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the BodyRichard Leppert boldly examines the social meanings of music as these have been shaped not only by hearing but also by seeing music in performance. His purview is the northern European bourgeoisie, principally in England and the Low Countries, from 1600 to 1900. And his particular interest is the relation of music to the human body. He argues that musical practices, invariably linked to the body, are inseparable from the prevailing discourses of power, knowledge, identity, desire, and sexuality. With the support of 100 illustrations, Leppert addresses music and the production of racism, the hoarding of musical sound in a culture of scarcity, musical consumption and the policing of gender, the domestic piano and misogyny, music and male anxiety, and the social silencing of music. His unexpected yoking of musicology and art history, in particular his original insights into the relationships between music, visual representation, and the history of the body, make exciting reading for scholars, students, and all those interested in society and the arts. |
Contents
MUSIC AS A SIGHT IN THE PRODUCTION | 1 |
DESIRE POWER AND THE SONORIC | 15 |
THE POETICS OF ANGUISH PLEASURE | 43 |
MUSIC DOMESTICITY AND CULTURAL | 91 |
SEXUAL IDENTITY DEATH AND | 119 |
THE PIANO MISOGYNY AND THE | 153 |
75 | 160 |
84 | 177 |
AWAKENING CONSCIENCE | 189 |
92 | 198 |
ASPIRING TO THE CONDITION OF SILENCE | 213 |
94 | 216 |
Notes | 235 |
287 | |
307 | |
311 | |
Other editions - View all
The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body Richard Leppert Limited preview - 1993 |
The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body Richard D. Leppert No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
Adorno aesthetics Annie Miller art music artist Awakening Conscience Barthes body bourgeois Broadwood Brussels Chapter concern culture D'Oyly desire Dialectic of Enlightenment difference discussion domestic drawing Dutch eighteenth century England English especially essay Felix Mendelssohn female feminine gender gesture harmony harpsichord hear Hunt Hunt's husband ideological India Jacques Attali John John Keeble Kreutzer Sonata Leighton's London male marriage Max Horkheimer means metaphor Molenaer's moral Music and Image musical instruments musicians nineteenth century nonetheless oil on canvas painter painting painting's peasant performance Photo copyright A.C.L. Photo courtesy physical piano picture played pleasure political portrait Pozdnyshev Pre-Raphaelite produced relation representation Richard Leppert Roland Barthes scene Schumann semantic semiotic sexual sight silence sing sitters social sonata song sonoric sound Susan McClary Teniers Theodor W theory Tolstoy Tolstoy's trans valorized Victorian viewer visual wife William Holman Hunt woman women words York Zoffany