Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Musical Meaning and Interpretation).

Intertextuality in Western Art Music (Musical Meaning and Interpretation), by Michael L. Klein. Indiana University Press (601 N. Morton St., Bloomington, IN 47404), 2005. 182 pp. $44.95.

Reading this book is like eating an artichoke. It takes both perseverance and technical knowledge to avoid discouragement and get to the good eats. Michael Klein buys heavily into the jargon of literary theory and its counterparts in other fields, lacing his musical discussions with references to semiotics, heuristics and hermeneutics, to deconstruction and post-structuralism. This five-chapter book reads like five related scholarly papers, connected primarily through the shared topic of intertexuality: a cross-referencing of texts (or music) both forward and backward in time. Klein argues that all the music and non-music one knows forms a web of relationships, both consciously recognized and hidden, that shapes the meaning you find in a given piece.

Such a premise hardly needs proving, since the vast majority of musicians is bound to agree with this relatedness, but the fun lies in the demonstration. When Klein analyzes music with which he strongly identifies and understands, such as in the fifth chapter, "The Logic of Suffering in Lutoslawski's Symphony No. 4," his probing investigation is emotionally compelling, and his intertextual references to parallel structural and affective elements in Chopin's first and fourth ballades are fascinating. Klein's involvement tends to celebrate and share the love of music rather than to show off a virtuosic analytical ability-though he definitely has chops. When, however, he's earnestly finding too many intertextual links to the writings of literary, anthropological, philosophical or psychological heavy hitters, his musical passion gets lost in translation. Even the translation guide itself, a glossary of terms in the back of the book, suffers from circular references, density and a presumption of a technical vocabulary not common to most applied music teachers, presumably not his intended audience.

For theorists of a certain persuasion, this book will make them feel perfectly at home. For others, it will seem just as it does in the study of literature, in which conflict among various methods of analysis and interpretation divides the world into them and us. For the rest of us, this book is worth exploring if you're curious, find satisfaction in pondering the puzzling relationship of art and meaning and are willing to put up with an undulating path that moves through self-conscious and sometimes thickly academic language to a clear and sometimes passionate appreciation of the music chosen for scrutiny. Before venturing into this book, it's best to know your tastes and tolerance for removing thorns along the way. Reviewed by Robert Mayerovitch, NCTM, Berea, Ohio.