Music as Social Text

..". the appearance of this important book is both timely and significant... a text which is ambitious, theoretically innovative, and immensely stimulating." Sociology, February 1992. . "undoubtedly rich and suggestive book." Music and Letters .

The study of music in its social context has expanded rapidly over the last 15 years, yet little of this work discusses the music itself: the processes, textures and structures of sound which so powerfully affects us as individuals. "Music as Social Text" begins by analysing the forces which have made this kind of discussion difficult within the intellectual tradition of the western world. The book argues that a society in which reality is grasped in an overwhelmingly visual way has difficulty with expression that is non-designative in its use of sound.