Critical Musicology and the Responsibility of Response: Selected Essays

Why does music move us? Lawrence Kramer suggests we should ask this old question in a different way: what is responsible for our response to music, and to what is our response responsible? The essays in this outstanding collection try to answer this question amongst many others, and by finding cultural meaning in music they exemplify the critical turn in musicology. Sixteen essays have been selected, most of them previously published, from the late 1980s to the present day. These are prefaced by an introduction which traces the intellectual development of critical musicology and discusses the part these essays have had to play in that movement.

Lawrence Kramer is Professor of English and Music at Fordham University, New York, USA, and is an active composer.