Irony, Satire, Parody and the Grotesque in the Music of Shostakovich

A Theory of Musical Incongruities

Esti Sheinberg

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138253896
• eBook ISBN: 9781351562058
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

The music of Shostakovich has been at the centre of interest of both the general public and dedicated scholars throughout the last twenty years. Most of the relevant literature, however, is of a biographical nature. The focus of this book is musical irony. It offers new methodologies for the semiotic analysis of music, and inspects the ironical messages in Shostakovich's music independently of political and biographical bias. Its approach to music is interdisciplinary, comparing musical devices with the artistic principles and literary analyses of satire, irony, parody and the grotesque. Each one of these is firstly inspected and defined as a separate subject, independent of music. The results of these inspections are subsequently applied to music, firstly music in general and then more specifically to the music of Shostakovich. The composer's cultural and historical milieux are taken into account and, where relevant, inspected and analysed separately before their application to the music.

General index

accummulation 59, 113, 115, 120–23, 127–9, 132–3, 137, 145, 200, 208–10, 212, 232, 261, 274, 277, 280–81, 291–2, 294, 296–7, 309, 337n27

aestehtics 11, 34–41, 49–51, 53–54, 56, 58, 77–78, 84, 89, 97, 105, 110, 125, 144—5, 147, 150, 156, 169, 207, 213, 228, 240, 298, 323n10, 325n2, 324n3

aesthetic axis 78–9, 93

aesthetic distance (also artistic distance) 60–61, 63, 144, 152, 189

aesthetics norms 106

see also norms, aesthetic value system

alienation 33, 37, 41, 44–45, 49–53, 149, 158–9, 193, 247–8, 331no9 see also defamiliarization, estrangement, ostranenye

allusion 28, 60, 97, 103, 106, 144, 166, 185, 187–8, 193, 195, 198, 239, 303, 336n14, 333n5

musical allusions 111

stylistic allusions 62, 97

ambiguity 3–4, 13–19, 23, 25, 27–8, 60, 81, 91, 108, 115, 148, 157, 172, 179, 183, 190–91, 208, 257, 306–7, 317, 322n37, 323n45, 333n27

modes of ambiguity 14, 27, 28

modes of musical ambiguity 58

musical ambiguity 4, 19, 61

semantic ambiguity 321n35

structure of ambiguity 13–16, 23, 28, 321n29

ambivalence 122, 208, 214, 274

analogy 9, 12–13, 17, 77, 211

musical analogies 316

analysi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of plates
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Transliteration from the Russian
• I Introduction
• II Irony
• III Satire
• IV Parody
• V The Grotesque
• VI Existential irony
• Notes
• Bibliography
• General Index
• Index of names