Includes bibliographical references (p. 380-390) and index.

1. Wagner and the problematics of "absolute music" in the ninetee nth century: Ideas of absolute music ; Questions of autonomy ; Content and/or/as form ; Absolute music and "ideas: a new determ inacy? -- 2. Beethoven reception and the hermeneutic impulse: "po etic ideas" and new forms: Beethoven's "poetic ideas": notes on the genesis of a critical tradition ; Poetics, heroics, funérailles ; Fear of the Fifth: the uncanniness of instrumental speech ; Beet hoven's "sketches" (poetic intentions and musical consequences) -- 3 . Engendering music drama: Opera and Drama and its metaphors: Met aphors of gender, and others; Natural sciences: reproductive biology and a theory of "evolution"; Music mastered, poetic reason (nearly) seduced: allegory and antithesis -- 4. The "poetic-musical perio d" and the "evolution" of Wagnerian form: Periode and Entwicklung ; "Evolving" period-complexes and Wagner's evolution: three dialogues -- 5. Endless melodies: Wagner and his critics around 1860 (W agner's melody--all or none?) ;

Melody, origins, and utopias of regression (melody as the origin of speech and poetry in Opera and Drama) ; Melody as form -- 6. M otives and motivations: leitmotif and "symphonic" drama: Warum? (mot ives to musical form) ; The birth of the music drama from the "labor -pains of program music" ; Motif, motive, Motiv: dramatic motivation s and "symphonic form" ; Delirium and death as transgressive motives : "dramatic symphony" and "symphonic drama" ; Dénouements (motivic threads, dramatic plots, musical knots and resolutions).

Electronic text and image data. Ann Arbor, Mich. : University of Michigan, Michigan Publishing, 2010. Includes both TIFF files and keyword searchable text. ([ACLS Humanities E-Book]) ([New per spectives in music history and criticism]) Mode of access: Intranet.