Music and the Historical Imagination

Paperback

ISBN 9780674591295

Publication date: 10/01/1990

Leo Treitler is a central figure in American musicology, both for his writings on medieval and Renaissance music and for his influential work on historical analysis. In this elegant book he develops a powerful statement of what music analysis and criticism in relation to historical understanding can be. His aim is an understanding of the music of the past not only in its own historical context but also as we apprehend it now, and as we assimilate it to our current interests and concerns. He elucidates his views through unique new interpretations of major works from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries.

Praise

A brilliant and thought-provoking collection of eleven essays on various aspects of understanding music, written…by one of our most distinguished musicologists…[a] profound and deeply personal view of music and history.

—Library Journal
[Treitler] argues for art as multilevel affirmative action… Treitler’s argument [is] buttressed, amplified, and intensified in beautifully fashioned essays.

—Musical America
Treitler is, in the truest sense, a contemporary scholar, completely open to all human endeavour, not subscribing to any doctrine except the willingness to admit ‘that the meaning of a text is not fixed within its boundaries but is ever contingent upon the interests and the circumstances of the community of readers or listeners’ …Should be required reading for all music lovers and students.

—Antioch Review