Music As Disourse: Semiotic Adventures In Romantic Music Translation With A Book Review

Music as Discourse:Semiotic Adyentures in Romantic Music is, after the author Kofi Agawu finishing his Playing with Signs:A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music, another sequel by applying the methods of musical semiotics but to the analysis of the music pieces of Romantic period.The translator first combs the academic background and sources of musical semiotics—linguistics and semiotics, in order to point out the methodologies and the process of analysis that was borrowed by musical semiotics. Then, in a comprehensive discussion of the book, the translator summarizes the core theories in each chapter, and gives a detailed interpretation and explanation to its central approaches:the paradigmatic analysis and the transformational-generative analysis. The translator concludes with some of the shortcomings in this book for further improvements. Understandings and perceptions gained in the process of translation are also included in this essay.