ABSTRACT

Musical topics match what philosophy calls 'categories', here musical categories to cultural concepts. In The Sense of Music, Raymond Monelle's first score example illustrating a topic is a passage from a monody by Andrea Falconieri, where the lover's 'fiery eyes' in the sung text are depicted musically by a conventional instrumental sign for fire. For musical semiotics, Raymond Monelle's topic theory is a crown jewel. It provides an anchorage of musical representation in the semantics of culture. The musical sign of fire combines a fanfare-like bass part, rapid triple time and rushing violin figures. These features, when present together, take their reference by what he identifies as ratio facilis, a culturally coded signification shared by a musical community. The chapter describes that Eco's definitions can miscue the authors and need some reinterpretation.