edited by Joan Grimalt, Turnhout, Brepols, 2025 (Applied Music Studies, 3).
Musical Rhetoric Beyond Figures offers a fresh exploration of musical rhetoric, moving beyond traditional catalogues of rhetorical figures to rediscover music as a living discourse rooted in historical and contemporary practice.
This groundbreaking volume challenges conventional musicological approaches by emphasising music as a form of expressive speech, as experienced and interpreted by performers.
Bringing together sixteen diverse chapters from leading scholars and practitioners, the book spans eras from the eighteenth century to the present, covering styles from Baroque to contemporary music. It reveals how rhetorical thought underpins musical interpretation, performance, and analysis, highlighting the dialogue between intuition and theory. Readers will find rich insights into how musical phrasing, gesture, and timing evoke rhetorical expression, transforming the way we understand and perform music.
Musical Rhetoric Beyond Figures bridges the gap between scholarly reflection and practical performance, offering a range of perspectives on the interplay of rhetoric, memory, and dramaturgy in music. Carefully curated thematic sections explore historical contexts, performance practice, and rhetorical analysis, while addressing modern voices and contemporary compositions.
This volume is essential for musicians, musicologists, and anyone passionate about the deeper communicative power of music. It opens new pathways to understanding music not merely as sound, but as a dynamic form of discourse that continues to shape artistic expression and audience experience in profound ways.
Conductor, linguist, and musicologist centred in hermeneutic and rhetorical music theory, Joan Grimalt teaches and researches at the Escola superior de música de Catalunya, Barcelona. After years conducting opera in Central Europe, his recent books, Mapping Musical Signification (2020) and Analysing Musical Signification (2025) offer a systematic exploration of hermeneutic issues, focusing on rhetoric, prosody, and dramaturgy. Both works have been hailed as breakthroughs in understading the relationships between analysis and performance.
