This book explains music's comprehensive ontology, its way of existence and processing, as specified in its compact characterization: music embodies meaningful communication and mediates physically between its emotional and mental layers. The book unfolds in a basic discourse in everyday language that is accessible to everybody who wants to understand what this topic is about. Musical ontology is delayed in its fundamental dimensions: its realities, its meaningful communication, and its embodied utterance from musical creators to an interested audience.

The authors' approach is applicable to every musical genre and is scientific, the book is suitable for non-musicians and non-scientists alike.

Autorentext

Prof. Dr. Guerino Mazzola earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Zurich University. He wrote the groundbreaking book The Topos of Music in 2002, its formal language and models are used by leading researchers in Europe, India, Japan, and North America and have become a foundation of music software design. Prof. Mazzola has an appointment as professor in the School of Music at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota.

Maria Mannone and Yan Pang are completing their Ph.D. work in the School of Music of the University of Minnesota.

Margaret O'Brien and Nathan Torunsky are undergraduate students in the School of Music of the University of Minnesota.

Inhalt

Introduction.- Physical Reality.- Psychological Reality.- Mental Reality.- Generalities about Signs, Neumes, Periods and Development Sentences.- De Saussure and Peirce, the Semiotic Architecture, Digital vs. Analog Music Encoding.- Riemannian Harmony and The HarmonRubette Software.- De Saussure's Six Dichotomies.- The Babushka Principle in Semiotics: Connotation, Motivation, Metatheory.- The Musical Case of Iterated Imbrication of Semiotic Components.- What Is Art?.- MIDI Code.- Global Music.- Gesture Theory in Music.- Frege's Prison of Functions.- Music Without Scores. Neuroscience and Gestures.- Mathematical Gesture Theory.- Creativity Theory.