This book is an attempt to decode, explain, and account for the way that social meaning in music is perceived. It is concerned throughout with the socially constituted values of musical styles, and contains a collection of wide-ranging chapters exploring aspects of sound and meaning, production and status, dissemination and reception, and criticism and aesthetics. Each chapter considers the workings of a particular relationship between ideology and musical style, offering different perspectives on how ideas are communicated through music. The book illustrates how musical styles construct ideas ... More

This book is an attempt to decode, explain, and account for the way that social meaning in music is perceived. It is concerned throughout with the socially constituted values of musical styles, and contains a collection of wide-ranging chapters exploring aspects of sound and meaning, production and status, dissemination and reception, and criticism and aesthetics. Each chapter considers the workings of a particular relationship between ideology and musical style, offering different perspectives on how ideas are communicated through music. The book illustrates how musical styles construct ideas of class, sexuality, and ethnic identity. In doing so, it is concerned to demonstrate how such constructions relate to particular stylistic codes in particular cultural and historical contexts. The book is divided into four parts, covering the areas of gender and sexuality, ideology in relation to popular music, the sacred and profane, and ideology and cultural identity. The subjects debated include erotic representation from Monteverdi to Mae West, the sexual politics of 19th-century musical aesthetics, the Native American in popular music, the sacred and the demonic, Orientalism, and the initial impact of African-American music-making on the European classical tradition. The book's arguments are supported by ninety musical examples taken from such diverse sources as baroque and romantic opera, symphonic music, jazz, and 19th- and 20th-century popular songs.