Edward Said and the study of music

Authors

Kofi Agawu, CUNY Graduate CenterFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

My first encounter with Edward Said’s work was in the 1980s with the book, Beginnings: Intention and Method (1975). I was exploring a semiotic approach to late 18^th-century music, specifically, a beginning-middle-ending paradigm (an Aristotelian paradigm) that seemed to me to capture the rhetorical intentions of Classic composers. Said’s wide-ranging reflections and ruminations on beginnings – as inaugural moments, as sites for the establishment of difference, as authorially privileged moments, and as "first steps in the intentional production of meaning" – proved inspiring. My enduring impression of him at the time was that he was a very good analyst who had also read a lot of books and maintained a humane stance as critic.

Comments

This article was originally published in Philomusica On-Line, available at http://dx.doi.org/10.6092/1826-9001.6.119