Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Julian Hellaby -- Topics and Music Performance : Some Reflections and a Proposal for a Theory / Eero Tarasti -- "Rhetorical" Versus "Organicist" Performances : A Pragmatic Approach / Joan Grimalt -- 'es brennt mein Eingeweide' : Agitato in Settings of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt / William Dougherty -- Expanding the Parameters of Historically-Informed Performance : Topics in Nineteenth-Century Miniatures for Stringed Instruments / George Kennaway -- Piano Schools, Topics and Liszt's Sonata in B Minor / Daniela Tsekova-Zapponi -- Narrative Analysis, the Sonata Cycle and Implications for Performance : A Reading of Brahms's Piano Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp Minor / Janice Dickensheets -- From Performer to Conjuror : Topical Performance in the Piano Works of Scriabin / Darren Leaper and Cecilia Xi -- The Topic of the Gato in the Early Works of Alberto Ginastera and the Disambiguation of Pequeña Danza / Melanie Plesch -- Topics and Performance in Péter Eötvös's Violin Concerto Seven (2007) / Márta Grabócz -- Romantic Performance and Gestural Topic / Lina Navickaitė-Martinelli.

"The principal purpose of topics in musicology has been to identify meaning-bearing units within a composition that would have been understood by contemporary audiences and therefore also to later receivers, albeit in a different context and with a need for historically-aware listening. Since Leonard Ratner (1980) introduced the idea of topics, his relatively simple ideas have been expanded and developed by a number of distinguished authors. Topic theory has now become a well-established branch of musicology, often embracing semiotics, but its relationship to performance has received scant attention. Musical Topics and Musical Performance thus focuses on the interface of theory and practice, investigating how an appreciation of topical presence in a work may prompt interpretative thoughts for a potential performer as well as how performers have responded to such a presence in practice. The chapters focus on music from the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries with case studies drawn from composers as diverse as Beethoven, Scriabin and Pťer Et̲vs̲. Using both scores and recordings, the book presents a variety of original and innovative perspectives on the subject from a range of distinguished authors, and addresses a neglected area of musicology and musical performance"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher.