Whose Music?: A Sociology of Musical Languages

In relating musical 'languages' to wider social structures and media of communication, this book argues that any particular kind of music can only be understood in terms of the criteria of the group or society which makes and appreciates it. The chapters are as follows: Media, social process and music (Shepherd); The 'meaning' of music (Shepherd); The musical coding of ideologies (Shepherd); Musical writing, musical speaking (Wishart); Some observations on the social stratification of twentieth-century music (Virden and Wishart); Music and the mass culture debate (Vulliamy); Music as a case study in the 'new sociology of education' (Vulliamy); and On radical culture (Wishart). An explanation of musical terminology (Shepherd and Wishart) forms an appendix. (Nicholas Chadwick)