Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Hardcover) by Carolyn Abbate

Hard cover. Language: English. Pages: 304. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. 304 p. Princeton Studies in Opera, 1. Who "speaks" to us in The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in Wagner's operas, in a Mahler symphony? In asking this question, Carolyn Abbate opens nineteenth-century operas and instrumental works to new interpretations as she explores the voices projected by music. The nineteenth-century metaphor of music that "sings" is thus reanimated in a new context, and Abbate proposes interpretive strategies that "de-center" music criticism, that seek the polyphony and dialogism of music, and that celebrate musical gestures often marginalized by conventional music analysis.