Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Prelude: From Gesture to Virtual Agency
1. Foundations for a Theory of Agency
2. Virtual Environmental Forces and Gestural Energies: Actants
3. Virtual Embodiment: From Actants to Agents
4. Virtual Identity and Actorial Continuity
Interlude I: From Embodiment to Subjectivity
5. Staging Virtual Subjectivity
6. Virtual Subjectivity and Aesthetically Warranted Emotions
7. Staging Virtual Narrative Agency
8. Performing Agency
9. An Integrative Agential Interpretation of Chopin's Ballade in F Minor, Op. 52
Interlude II: Hearing Agency: A Complex Cognitive Task
10. Other Perspectives on Virtual Agency
Postlude
Bibliography
Index of Names and Works
Index of Concepts

About the Author

Robert S. Hatten is Marlene and Morton Meyerson Professor in Music at The University of Texas at Austin and President of the Society for Music Theory. He is the author of Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation and Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert.

Reviews

The book represents a major effort and achievement from one the era's most influential music theorists. . . . Essential.
*Choice*

In A Theory of Virtual Agency for Western Art Music, Robert S. Hatten examines agency as it is projected by music and perceived by listeners. . . . Scholars and performers eager to discover imaginative yet authentic ways to experience and understand music will enjoy this book and relish finding themselves within it.
*Notes*