Music and the origins of language : theories from the French Enlightenment / Downing A. Thomas.

ISBN:

9780511582608

9780511001055

9780521473071

Title:

Music and the origins of language : theories from the French Enlightenment / Downing A. Thomas.

Author:

Thomas, Downing A.

Personal Author:

Thomas, Downing A.

Publication Information:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 195 pages).

Series:

New perspectives in music history and criticism

Contents:

Introduction -- Music and language -- Origins -- Music theory and the genealogy of knowledge in Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines -- Music and original loss in Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues -- Sensible sounds: music and theories of the passions -- Conclusion.

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Language and languages -- Origin.

Music and language.

Geographic Term:

France -- Intellectual life -- 18th century.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

1995

Publication Information:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
401 20	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The search for the origins of language was one of the most pressing philosophical issues of the eighteenth century. What has often escaped notice, however, is the fact that music figures prominently in this search. This study analyses instances of thinking or reasoning about music and music theory as they appear within the logical and narrative structure of contemporary texts, including writings by Rousseau, Diderot, Rameau and Condillac. These can only be properly understood as part of an interdisciplinary project, as situated within a field of larger cultural issues and concerns. The author is interested in the ways in which music functions within this discursive framework to facilitate links between language and meaning, and between conceptions of an original society and an ideal social order.

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

In this volume in the "New Perspectives in Music History and Criticism" series, Thomas (Univ. of Iowa) examines the epistemological role of music in the mosaic of cultural, social, linguistic, and scientific phenomena as seen and analyzed by Rameau, Rousseau, Diderot, Condillac, and other Enlightenment figures. The identification of music as the vocal expression of passion, emotion, or need leading eventually to speech and systematized language fits nicely into theories on the origin of language while raising further questions on music's function in culture. Rameau, the outstanding French musician and theorist of his age, described and promoted a theory of harmonics in opposition to Rousseau's postulation of melody as the foundation of a semiotic and aesthetic value. Reacting to, among other works, Catherine Kintzler's Jean-Philippe Rameau (1983, in French), Thomas points to the richness of associations between music on the one hand and anthropology, law, social bonding, passions, sensations, and thought. He throws valuable light on the extent to which music preoccupied the philosophes, not just as a pleasurable activity but as a medium with its own rhetoric linking sensation and language, sensibility and knowledge, and creativity and social revitalization. A penetrating monograph recommended for upper-division undergraduates upward. D. A. Collins; Kalamazoo College

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1 Music and language

2 Origins

3 Music theory and the genealogy of knowledge in Condillac's Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines

4 Music and original loss in Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues

5 Sensible sounds: music and theories of the passions

Conclusion

Biography

Index

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (1)

Choice Review

Table of Contents