Description
Book SynopsisWho 'speaks' to us in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", in Wagner's operas, in a Mahler symphony? This title opens nineteenth-century operas and instrumental works to new interpretations as the author explores the voices projected by music.
Trade Review"Abbate establishes a critical dialogue between music's desire to convey narrative information and its sensual resistance to such signification... Abbate is the most original writer on Wagner to appear since Dahlhaus... Her essay 'Brunnhilde Walks by Night' is a tour de force of imaginative interpretation."--David Schiff, The New Republic "This important book concerns not only particular operas but certain general aspects of the way in which we hear music... We will ... want to reflect further on a good many of its arguments ... because what Abbate offers in Unsung Voices is not only ... a set of conclusions but a powerful machine to think with."--Lawrence Rosenwald, Opera Quarterly
Table of ContentsPreface CHAPTER ONE Music's Voices CHAPTER TWO What the Sorcerer Said CHAPTER THREE Cherubino Uncovered: Reflexivity in Operatic Narration CHAPTER FOUR Mahler's Deafness: Opera and the Scene of Narration in Todtenfeier CHAPTER FIVE Wotan's Monologue and the Morality of Musical Narration CHAPTER SIX Brunnhilde Walks by Night Notes Bibliography Index
