Foreword -- Contents -- Part one: Music as sign -- Chapter 1 Is music sign? -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 Music as semiotic: A historical perspective -- 1.3 Peirce, Greimas, and music-semiotic analysis -- 1.4 Understanding / misunderstanding musical signs -- Chapter 2 Signs in music history, history of music semiotics -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 Signs in music itself -- 2.3 History of musical scholarship in the light of semiotics -- 2.4 Main lines in the development of musical semiotics -- Chapter 3 Signs as acts and events: On musical situations -- 3.1 Situation as communication and signification -- 3.2 Situation as act and event -- 3.3 Situations as intertextuality -- 3.4 Articulation of situations -- Part two: Gender, biology, and transcendence -- Chapter 4 Metaphors of nature and organicism in music: A "biosemiotic" approach -- 4.1 On the musically organic -- 4.2 Sibelius and the idea of the "organic" -- 4.3 Organic narrativity -- Chapter 5 The emancipation of the sign: On corporeal and gestural meanings in music -- Chapter 6 Body and transcendence in Chopin -- 6.1 Are corporeal signs iconic? -- 6.2 Are corporeal signs indexical? -- 6.3 Analysis -- Part three: Social and musical practices -- Chapter 7 Voice and identity -- 7.1 Voice and signification -- 7.2 Text -- 7.3 Transcendence -- 7.4 Orality -- 7.5 Singing as social identity -- 7.6 National voice types -- 7.7 Gender -- 7.8 Education -- 7.9 Empirical methods -- 7.10 Conclusion -- Chapter 8 On the semiosis of musical improvisation: From Mastersingers to Bororo indians -- 8.1 Musical improvisation and semiotics -- 8.2 Improvisation as communication -- 8.3 Improvisation as signification: A peircean view -- 8.4 Improvisation as signification: A greimassian view -- 8.5 Conclusion: Improvisation and existential semiotics -- Notes -- References -- Name index.