Review of Lawrence Kramer,The Thought of Music(University of California Press, 2016)

Abstract

Lawrence Kramer reveals the main aims of a trilogy that also includes Interpreting Music (2011) and Expression and Truth (2012a): to situate the brand of musicology that he has defended since the 1990s within the contemporary academic panorama, and to argue for its continued relevance. (1) The conceptual transformations of the last decade have pulled the rug out from under the objects that musical hermeneutics seemed to depend on: the work, its context, its meanings, and its emotional effects. In his new contribution, Kramer seeks to show that these recent turns in musicology toward affect and performance often depend on false oppositions-between work and performance, text and context, and meaning and ineffability. In clarifying their usage, he shows how these concepts serve to recalibrate musical hermeneutics as "an entirely open and open-ended project" undergoing constant change (The Thought of Music, 142; hereafter ThM ). In his final chapter, Kramer describes a "newer musicology" that focuses on works as much as performances, as well as genres, actions, institutions, and materials, arguing that all of these should be treated similarly, not as things but as events to be interpreted.