The Art of Musical Ciphers, Riddles and Sundry Curiosities
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19 105 Ft (18 195 Ft + 5% VAT)
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19 105 Ft
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Product details:
- Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Date of Publication 10 February 2026
- Number of Volumes Print PDF
- ISBN 9781837653041
- Binding Paperback
- No. of pages464 pages
- Size 234x156 mm
- Weight 666 g
- Language English
- Illustrations 240 music exx. and 10 b/w illus. 700
Categories
Short description:
Offers the first comprehensive account of a centuries-old tradition of encrypting covert messages into music, from the Middle Ages to the present day.
MoreLong description:
Offers the first comprehensive account of a centuries-old tradition of encrypting covert messages into music, from the Middle Ages to the present day. What do J. S. Bach, beef cabbage, coffee, the SATOR Square, and Marlene Dietrich have in common? Composers have enciphered these and many other words into music. Since time immemorial riddles have intrigued us, partly for their mirthful manner of connecting incongruous ideas, partly for their arresting way of opening fresh perspectives on our shared human condition. When we think of riddles, we normally recall verbal conundrums from cultures around the globe. But riddles can penetrate non-verbal aspects of our existence as well. Masking messages in music so that they lurk beneath the sonorous surface is an august Western tradition spanning the Middle Ages to the present. Known as musical cryptography, these puzzling pursuits form the subject of this book, construed broadly enough to capture not just musical ciphers and codes but also a curiosity shop of related techniques, which arguably can advance the greater virtue. They entertain, edify, and enthral, but also bewitch and bewilder, and, when unsolved, perplex and perturb.
MoreTable of Contents:
1 A Musical Riddle 2 The Riddles of Music 3 The Rise of Cryptography 4 Sounding Numbers, Fickle Anagrams, Chameleonic Alphabets and Carved Vowels 5 Sonic Monuments, Alchemy, Hexachords and Lunar Discourses 6 BACH: His Way and Ours 7 Enlightened Ciphers, Ars combinatoria and Masonic Secrets 8 Censors, Unsinn, Nominal Ciphers and Solrésol 9 Riddles of the Sphinx 10 Stenographic Mysteries, Dark Sayings, Magic Squares and Foul Balls 11 Queer Liaisons, Mystic Chords, DSCH and Tombstone Monograms 12 Hommages, Tombeaux, Triskaidekaphilia and Langage communicable 13(12a) Mystics, Numerologists and Modernists 14 Round Trips, Gothic Skyscrapers, Thunderwords and Fallen Angels Bibliography General Index
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