Summary
In the final chapter, "Some Problems and Resources of Music Theory," Lewin suggests that Babbitt's serial technique enacts the central weaving imagery in Philomel (a suggestion, as we learn in an appendix added here, that was corroborated by the composer). Moreover, his methodological discussion alerts us to habits of mind that dangerously simplify our discourse: a predilection for the false dichotomies that he calls "political/ legal," that force us (often inappropriately) to choose a side or produce a verdict; the slovenly use of the article "the" and of the verb "to be" (to which Lewin returns in the final chapter, "Some Problems and Resources of Music Theory"); and "misleading expressions of the species 'merely/only/naught but/ simply/' " (p. 82).
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Extract
Studies in Music with Text
IN MEMORIAM DAVID LEWIN Studies in Music with Text. By David Lewin. (Oxford Studies in Music Theory.) New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. [xii, 409 p. ISBN 0-19-518208-1. $65.] Music examples, index.
David Lewin (1933-2003) was doubtless the most significant music theorist of the last half century. Oxford brilliantly inaugurates its new series, Studies in Music Theory, with a collection of essays that gives a more complete sense of L...See the full content of this document
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