Lydia Goehr is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetic Theory at Columbia University. She is also author The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy, the forthcoming Elective Affinities: Musical Essays of the History of Aesthetic Theory, and co-editor of The Don Giovanni Moment: Essays on the Legacy of an Opera.

• Foreword


• Introductory Essay: His Master's Choice


• Introduction


• Part I. The Analytic Approach


• 1: A Nominalist Theory of Musical Works


• 2: A Platonist Theory of Musical Works


• 3: The Limits of Analysis and the Need for History


• Part II. The Historical Approach


• 4: The Central Claim


• 5: Musical Meaning: From Antiquity to the Enlightenment


• 6From Romantic Transcendence and the Separability Principle: Musical Meaning:


• 7: Musical Production without the Work-Concept


• 8: After 1800: The Beethoven Paradigm


• 9: Werktreue: Confirmation and Challenge in Contemporary Movements


• Bibliography of Works Cited


• Index

In this book, Lydia Goehr describes how the concept of a musical work fully crystallized around 1800, and subsequently defined the norms, expectations, and behavioral patterns that have come to characterize classical musical practice. The description is set in the context of a more general philosophical account of the rise and fall of concepts and ideals, and of their normative functions; at the same time, debates amongst conductors, early-music performers, andavant-gardists are addressed.