8 /10 1 Votes
Country United Kingdom ISBN 978-0198161806 | 4/5 Goodreads Language English Originally published 1959 Subject Music | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Media type Print (Hardcover and Paperback) Pages 304 (1990 Clarendon Press edition) Page count 304 (1990 Clarendon Press edition) Similar I saw the world end, Emotion and Meaning i, The Piano Tuner | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Language of Music is a 1959 book about music by the critic and musician Deryck Cooke.
Contents
Summary
Cooke expounds the expressionist theory of art, according to which beauty in music depends upon the accurate representation of the emotions of its creators. He matches various predicates with musical phrases or chordal sequences. Cooke believes that memory for melodic contour and implicit harmony is allied to its affective character.
Scholarly reception
The Language of Music is an often cited representative of the expressionist theory of art. No systematic experimental study of Cooke's theory has emerged relating it to musical education, but one pilot study showed that for 22 non-musician students, his characterizations of musical phrases were not experienced. Douglas Hofstadter writes in his Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979) that Cooke's book is, "A valuable start down what is sure to be a long hard road to understanding music and the human mind."