This handbook explains the various applications to music of analytical methods derived from linguistics and semiotics. Semiotics are related to the tradition of music aesthetics and to works such as Deryck Cooke's "The Language of Music", and the methods of linguistics are explained in language intelligible to musicians. It contains descriptions of the "neutral level", "semiotic analysis", transformation and generation, structural semantics and narrative grammar, intonation theory, the ideas of C.S. Peirce and applications in ethnomusicology with diagrams and music examples.

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."