Books by Danuta (Reader in Music Mirka

The concept of musical topics describes the aural cross-references between styles and genres. The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory grounds this concept in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism, while also documenting historical reality of individual topics, and relating topical analysis to other methods of analyzing eighteenth-century musical repertoire.

Focusing on the period of most intense metric experimentation in the work of both Haydn and Mozart, author Danuta Mirka presents here a systematic discussion of the composers' metric strategies. Combining historical music theory with the cognitive study of music, Mirka's award-winning book sheds new light on this repertoire and redefines the role of meter and rhythm in Classical music.