The Musical Topoi between Rhetoric and Semiotics: A Mini Archeological History
The Musical Topoi between Rhetoric and Semiotics: A Mini Archeological History

Summary/Abstract: In the last two or three decades, classic music studies seem to have been dominated by a renewed interest in the issue of musical expression. One of the key-concepts that encapsulated this idea of musical expression is that of “topos,” or topic. I propose in these pages a mini-history and “archeology” of the topos concept, as it is reflected in the books on classical style by Leonard Ratner, Wye Jamison Allanbrook, Elaine R. Sisman, Kofi Agawu, and Robert S. Hatten. My undertaking is historical in that it follows a chronology of writings between 1980 and 1994. At the same time, it is “archeological,” in that it presents rhetoric and semiotics as the deep, and often hidden epistemic fundaments of the topoi.

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