From the Erotic to the Demonic demonstrates how different musical styles construct ideas of class, sexuality, and ethnic identity. This book will serve as a model for musicologists who want to take a postmodern approach to their inquiries. The clear and lively arguments are supported by ninety musical examples taken from such diverse sources as opera, symphonic music, jazz, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular songs. Derek Scott offers new insights on a range of "high" and "low" musical styles, and the cultures that produced them.

This reader collects some of the most important essays on the relationship between culture and music. The topic has received enormous attention over the last few decades, transforming musicology throughout much of the Western world. These essays examine the connections between music and such diverse areas as language, the body, class, production, and consumption. Among the contributors are Jacques Attali, John Blacking, Michel Foucault, Lydia Goehr, Lawrence Kramer, Portia Maultsby, Rose Rosengard-Subotnik, Theodor Adorno, and Ero Tarasti. The collection provides an ideal introduction for...

The phrase "popular music revolution" may instantly bring to mind such twentieth-century musical movements as jazz and rock 'n' roll. In Sounds of the Metropolis, however, Derek Scott argues that the first popular music revolution actually occurred in the nineteenth century, illustrating how a distinct group of popular styles first began to assert their independence and values. He explains the popular music revolution as driven by social changes and the incorporation of music into a system of capitalist enterprise, which ultimately resulted in a polarization between musical...