A theory of virtual agency for Western art music

Author(s)

• Hatten, Robert S.

Bibliographic Information

A theory of virtual agency for Western art music

Robert S. Hatten

（Musical meaning and interpretation / Robert S. Hatten, editor）

Indiana University Press, c2018

• : pbk

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [293]-312) and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Description

In his third volume on musical expressive meaning, Robert S. Hatten examines virtual agency in music from the perspectives of movement, gesture, embodiment, topics, tropes, emotion, narrativity, and performance. Distinguished from the actual agency of composers and performers, whose intentional actions either create music as notated or manifest music as significant sound, virtual agency is inferred from the implied actions of those sounds, as they move and reveal tendencies within music-stylistic contexts. From our most basic attributions of sources for perceived energies in music, to the highest realm of our engagement with musical subjectivity, Hatten explains how virtual agents arose as distinct from actual ones, how unspecified actants can take on characteristics of (virtual) human agents, and how virtual agents assume various actorial roles. Along the way, Hatten demonstrates some of the musical means by which composers and performers from different historical eras have staged and projected various levels of virtual agency, engaging listeners imaginatively and interactively within the expressive realms of their virtual and fictional musical worlds.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction Prelude: From Gesture to Virtual Agency 1. Foundations for a Theory of Agency 2. Virtual Environmental Forces and Gestural Energies: Actants 3. Virtual Embodiment: From Actants to Agents 4. Virtual Identity and Actorial Continuity Interlude I: From Embodiment to Subjectivity 5. Staging Virtual Subjectivity 6. Virtual Subjectivity and Aesthetically Warranted Emotions 7. Staging Virtual Narrative Agency 8. Performing Agency 9. An Integrative Agential Interpretation of Chopin's Ballade in F Minor, Op. 52 Interlude II: Hearing Agency: A Complex Cognitive Task 10. Other Perspectives on Virtual Agency Postlude Bibliography Index of Names and Works Index of Concepts

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

• NCID: BB28773739
• ISBN:
  • 9780253037985
• LCCN: 2018021852
• Country Code: us
• Title Language Code: eng
• Text Language Code: eng
• Place of Publication: Bloomington, Ind.
• Pages/Volumes: x, 326 p.
• Size: 24 cm
• Classification:
  • LCC : ML3845
  • DC23 : 781.1
• Subject Headings:
  • LCSH : Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics
  • LCSH : Agent (Philosophy)
  • LCSH : Act (Philosophy)
• Parent Bibliography ID:
  • BA71183017