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 OF MUSICAL MEANING | 1 |
DESIRE POWER AND THE SONORIC LANDSCAPE Early Modernism and the Politics of Musical Privacy | 15 |
THE POETICS OF ANGUISH PLEASURE AND PRESTIGE Hoarding Sound in a Culture of Silence | 43 |
SOCIAL ORDER AND THE DOMESTIC CONSUMPTION OF MUSIC The Politics of Sound in the Policing of Gender Construction | 63 |
MUSIC DOMESTICITY AND CULTURAL IMPERIALISM | 91 |
SEXUAL IDENTITY DEATH AND THE FAMILY PIANO IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY | 119 |
THE PIANO MISOGYNY AND THE KREUTZER SONATA | 153 |
MALE AGONY AWAKENING CONSCIENCE | 189 |
ASPIRING TO THE CONDITION OF SILENCE The Iconicity of Music | 213 |
Notes | 235 |
| 287 | |
| 307 | |
Other editions - View all
The Sight of Sound: Music, Representation, and the History of the Body Richard D. 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 British Brueghel Brussels Cambridge Chapter clavichord concern culture D'Oyly decoration desire difference discussion domestic drawing Dutch eighteenth century English especially Felix Mendelssohn female feminine gender gesture harmony harpsichord hear Hunt Hunt's ideological India Jacques Attali John Keeble keyboard instruments Kreutzer Sonata Laroon Leighton's London male Marcellus Laroon means metaphor moral Music and Image musical instruments musical sonority 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 practice Pre-Raphaelite produced Rameau relation representation Richard Leppert Roland Barthes scene semantic semiotic sexual sight silence sing sitters social sonata song sonoric sound Susan McClary Theodor W theory Tolstoy Tolstoy's trans University Press valorized Victorian viewer visual wife William Holman Hunt woman women words York Zoffany
Popular passages
Page 289 - M'HENRY, MD One volume, 18mo. Bennett's (Rev. John) Letters to a Young Lady, ON A VARIETY OF SUBJECTS CALCULATED TO IMPROVE THE HEART, TO FORM THE MANNERS, AND ENLIGHTEN THE UNDERSTANDING. "That our daughters may be as polished corners of the temple.