Hailed by the New Grove Dictionary of Music (2nd edition) as "the
most original and far-ranging theorist of his generation," David
Lewin (1933-2003) explored for over four decades how composers in
the German tradition set poetry and drama to music. He conceived
Studies in Music with Text as a unified collection, reproducing
papers on music by Mozart, Schubert, Wagner, Schoenberg, and
Babbitt, many of which have become classics in the fields of music
theory and historical musicology. He also included new analytical
essays on Mozart, Wagner, and Schubert, and provided fresh readings
of selected songs by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes
Brahms.
The analyses collected here focus on how the music, from its small
details to its large formal schemes, engages the poetic and
dramatic dynamics of the works at hand, and how music and text
enact each other reciprocally. A recurrent topic is the
theatricality of texted music for the concert as well as operatic
stage, and Lewin's perspectives offer many interpretive insights
and conceptual perspectives for the musical performer. A
methodological eclectic, Lewin cultivated a magisterial command of
historical theories and thought deeply about how those theories
could inform contemporary understanding. Analytical models by
Zarlino, Schenker, Riemann, Rameau, and Babbitt are brought into
play, and the range of poetic and dramatic questions that emerge
are explored, concerning inter alia psychological and social
identity, the relation of psychological inner worlds to phenomenal
reality, and the narrowly biographical and broadly historical
conditions of artistic creation. As it illuminates the richness and
profundity of the language/musicpartnership, Studies in Music with
Text offers incisive thinking about the scope--and limitations--of
descriptive and analytical discourse about music.
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