The Musical Topic: Hunt, Military and Pastoral

The Musical Topic discusses three tropes prominently featured in Western
European music: the hunt, the military, and the pastoral. Raymond Monelle provides
an in-depth cultural and historical study of musical topics -- short melodic
figures, harmonic or rhythmic formulae carrying literal or lexical meaning --
through consideration of their origin, thematization, manifestation, and meaning.
The Musical Topic shows the connections of musical meaning to literature, social
history, and the fine arts.