The music of Shostakovich has been at the centre of interest of both the general public and dedicated scholars throughout the last twenty years. Most of the relevant literature, however, is of a biographical nature. The focus of this book is musical irony. It offers new methodologies for the semiotic analysis of music, and inspects the ironical messages in Shostakovich's music independently of political and biographical bias. Its approach to music is interdisciplinary, comparing musical devices with the artistic principles and literary analyses of satire, irony, parody and the grotesque. Each one of these is firstly inspected and defined as a separate subject, independent of music. The results of these inspections are subsequently applied to music, firstly music in general and then more specifically to the music of Shostakovich. The composer's cultural and historical milieux are taken into account and, where relevant, inspected and analysed separately before their application to the music.

Contents: Part 1: Introduction; Part II: Irony: The concept of irony: philosophical background; Incongruities as indicators of irony; Part III: Satire: The structure of satire; The structure of musical satire; Satirizing techniques; Part IV: Parody: Definitions of parody; The structure of parody; Historical background; Techniques of parody; Part V: The Grotesque: Definition, structure and content of the grotesque; The satirical grotesque; The grotesque at the beginning of the 20th century; Part VI: Existential Irony: Compound messages; Notes; Bibliography; Indexes.