Music as Narrative

Abstract

Fred Everett MausFor many listeners, some instrumental music, especially in the tradition from Haydn and Mozart through Brahms, invites comparison to drama or narrative.l The comparisons are not between individual compositions and individual plays or novels; rather, individual compositions, or genres of composition, are thought to be dramatic or narrative in some more general way.What about the music encourages such comparisons?In order to think about relations between literary narrative and classic or romantic instrumental music, one might draw on the study lThis paper is a revised and expanded version of a chapter from Humanism and Musical Experience (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton, 1990).

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