Music, Words and Voice: A Reader is a new and exciting interdisciplinary resource which integrates the worlds of music and literature. It is the first primary and secondary source collection of its kind to focus on the relationships between words and music, and between musical and verbal forms. Featured alongside key writings on music, speech and their relationship are previously unpublished articles and interview transcripts, and a new translation of an extract from Wagner's theoretical works.

Designed for undergraduate students, the book uniquely:

- examines a historically and geographically diverse selection of genres from a variety of academic perspectives

- explores issues of language, musical form, performance, song, narrative, sound and action, and identity

- enables readers to connect with different histories, cultures and technologies via the linkages between musical and literary texts.

This anthology is an important contribution to the growing field of music and literature studies, and an engaging read for anyone interested in a culturally rich musical and literary inheritance.

1. Introduction. Martin Clayton
Part I. Words and music
2. The first voices, Jean Jacques Rousseau
3. The beginnings of music, Charles S. Myers
4. The boundaries of speech and song, George List
5. The separation of speech and song, Jacques Derrida
6. Poetry and music, Richard Wagner
7. Oral mnemonics for the Japanese noh flute, David Hughes
8. Drum signalling in a West African tribe, George Herzog
Part II. Song, text and voice
9. The voice as a musical instrument, Simon Frith
10. Working class 'country', Steven Feld, Aaron A. Fox, Thomas Porcello and David Samuels
11. Music, voice, language, Roland Barthes
12. 'Hey Jude', Tim Riley
13. The voice of Egypt, Virginia Danielson
14. Siddheshwari Devi sings Sheila Dhar
15. Text and performance in thumri, Peter Manuel
Part III. Song performance and society
16. The meaning of song, Victor Zuckerkandl
17. Hazara lullabies, Hiromi Lorraine Sakata
18. Race, class and gender in Carmen, Susan McClary
19. Oh Brother where art thou? and the blues, Richard Middleton
20. Jùjú live, Christopher Waterman
21. Rhythm, rhyme, and rhetoric in the music of Public Enemy, Robert Walse
22. The Maori haka, Jan Bolwell and Keri Kaa
Part IV. Song and ritual
23. Wassailing in Somerset, Kingsley Palmer and Bob Patten
24. The carol revival, Frank Howes
25. Papal legislation on sacred music, Robert F. Hayburn
26. Jungle paths and spirit songs, Marina Roseman
27. The Karelian lament, Elizabeth Tolbert
28. Russian wedding rituals and Stravinsky, Richard Taruskin
29. Lamenting in Stravinsky's Les Noces, Pieter C. Van den Toorn
Part V. Words, music and narrative
30. The Sicilian cantastorie, Mauro Geraci
31. Song and performance, Edward Cone
32. The 'Bell Song', Carolyn Abbate
33. The little blueprint - an amplification of the meaning of 'libretto', Gordon Kalton Williams
34. Sondheim's technique, Stephen Sondheim and Trevor Herbert
35. Writing lyrics, Oscar Hammerstein
36. Afternoon Raag, Amit Chaudhuri
37. The Vinteuil Sonata, Marcel Proust
List of illustrations
List of sources