Open AccessTopics in Music – Definitions, History, and Meanings
Author(s) -
Michał S. Sołtysik
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
kwartalnik młodych muzykologów uj
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2956-4107
pISSN - 2353-7094
DOI - 10.4467/23537094kmmuj.20.041.13914
Subject(s) - musicology , presentation (obstetrics) , cicero , context (archaeology) , rhetoric , literature , field (mathematics) , epistemology , history , philosophy , linguistics , art , mathematics , archaeology , medicine , pure mathematics , radiology
The aim of the paper is to present the concept of topics (Gr. τοπικά) in music, which entails a presentation of its uses in the history of culture and literary studies. Thanks to such a broad context, it will be possible to interpret this Greek term more fully as applied to musicology and to the analysis of selected examples of musical works. The article consists of three complementary parts. The first deals with the origins of the concept, derived from ancient rhetoric and discussed, among others, by Aristotle, Cicero, and Boethius. The second part of the article presents topics in the context of analyses by Ernst Robert Curtius, Janina Abramowska, and Jacek Jadacki in the field of literary studies. The last and most extensive part of this paper is dedicated to the place of topics in musicology on the example of several authors. I discuss writings on topic theory, which since the 1980s has mainly been developed by researchers from Anglo-Saxon countries.