Monelle Raymond. The Musical Topic. Hunt, Military and Pastoral

Indiana University Press, 2006. — 321 p.: musical examples. — (Musical meaning and interpretation).The Musical Topic discusses three tropes prominently featured in Western European music: the hunt, the military, and the pastoral. Raymond Monelle provides an in-depth cultural and historical study of musical topics―short melodic figures, harmonic or rhythmic formulae carrying literal or lexical meaning―through consideration of their origin, thematization, manifestation, and meaning. The Musical Topic shows the connections of musical meaning to literature, social history, and the fine arts.Topic theory
Topic and expression
The literary source of topic theory
Signifier and signified in music
Huntsmen
Signifier : the hunting horn
Signified : hunts noble and ignoble
Musical hunts
The topic established
Soldiers
The military signifier : The march
The military signifier : The military trumpet and its players
The military signified
The soldier represented --
Shepherds
The pastoral signified : the myth
The pastoral signifier
The pastoral in music
New pastorals
Epilogue.