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Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History. (Book Reviews: Diverse Topics).(Book Review)-

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Musical Meaning: Toward a Critical History. By Lawrence Kramer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. [ix, 335 p. ISBN 0-520-22824-3. $55. (hbk.); ISBN 0-520-23272-0. $22.50 (pbk.).] Compact disc, music examples, index.

In Musical Meaning, Lawrence Kramer continues the trajectory of his contention (in Music as Cultural Practice [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990] and Classical Music and Postmodern Knowledge [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995]) that music's meaning exceeds the self-limiting concept of music's aesthetic autonomy. Kramer proposes to extend his critique of this historically constructed concept by examining the interplay of social contingency and the projection of autonomy, which he claims comprises the "higher-order" context and condition of intelligibility for most modern Western music. This higher-order context defines the "a priori ambiguity" (p. 2) that historically grounds music's meaning. By refraining questions of music's meaning within this higher-order context, Kramer ascribes semantic contents to music without, he contends, dismissing the historical, ideological, and functional importance of its autonomy. By identifying the contingencies of socially constructed meanings as the primary term, he reverses the inclination to value music s self-sufficiency in order to stress music's engagement with the world....

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