Conference Agenda

Topic theory, despite its apparent diversity, is unified by its adherence to a key tenet of Peircean semiotics: the notion that the semantic universe divides neatly into icons (resemblance-signs), indices (correlation-signs), and symbols (convention-signs). However, even those philosophers most sympathetic to Peirce (e.g. Short 2007) regard his taxonomy of signs as, ultimately, muddled and incoherent. Unsurprisingly, modern formal semantics has found little use for it. Most problematically, Peirce elides communicative content with the much more general phenomenon of informational content, and also fails to distinguish between the many different, overlapping explanatory roles that resemblance, correlation, and convention can play in metasemantics (the study of how meaningful things acquire meaning).

In my talk, I present a more defensible typology, one adapted from recent work in formal semantics and iconography (Greenberg 2023, Giardino & Greenberg 2015, Kulvicki 2025). This typology is based on an icon-symbol continuum, which has at its poles two distinct types of semantic function (i.e. interpretation rules or mappings from content-items to contents). Applying this classificatory framework to topics reveals that they are primarily motivated symbols—symbols whose form is non-arbitrary but not mimetic. Contrary to what many music theorists have thought, topics aren’t icons.

This revised understanding of topical semantics leads to a new view of topical pragmatics: Topical utterances are musical speech acts that use motivated sonic symbols to achieve illocutionary effect—recognition of meaning—without necessarily aiming for specific perlocutionary effects, such as persuasion, belief formation, or emotional response. This view helps clarify the “conversational” dynamics of topical “discourse,” which the Peircean apparatus obscures or distorts.

Motivated symbolism in service of purely illocutionary effects also shows up in the visual arts, particularly in iconographic paintings produced during the “golden age” of topical communication in music (roughly, the Baroque and Classical eras). A selling point of my view is that it highlights this deep semantic parallelism between certain types of music and certain types of pictures. By shifting away from Peirce’s model, my proposal provides a clearer understanding of musical topics, both on their own terms and in the context of wider artistic practices.

Since its inception in Leonard Ratner’s work and its development by his students Wye Jamison Allanbrook and Kofi V. Agawu, topic theory has gained increasing prominence in music studies. Indeed, William E. Caplin (2015, 113) calls it one of “the success stories of modern musicology.” Topic theorists typically assert: (1) that topics function as musical “signs,” making topic theory a form of musical semiotics (e.g., Agawu 1991); (2) that topic theory uncovers submerged meanings, constituting an “archaeology of hearing” (Byros 2012); and (3) that a “syntax” of topics, analogous to harmonic syntax, can be constructed or expected (Rumph 2011).

I argue that these three claims are pseudo-problems stemming from a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of musical topics. Rather than resolving them, we should dissolve them. To do so, I trace the intellectual (pre)history of the field. Standard accounts suggest topics emerged fully formed from Ratner, but as Allanbrook (2014) has shown, Ratner borrowed the idea from Ernst Robert Curtius, who in turn took it from Aby Warburg. Genealogically speaking, topics are Pathosformeln in Warburg’s sense.

Understanding this intellectual lineage clarifies and dispels these problematics, which have hindered the subdiscipline’s self-conception. The genealogy suggests that topics are not signs but rather the sonorous analogue of iconographic types. Consequently, topic theory is not a form of musical semiology but should instead be understood as a kind of musical iconography. This reframing invites topic theory to engage more deeply with the iconographical branch of art history.

In the final section, after outlining this genealogy and explicating Curtius’ and Warburg’s contributions, I consider what a reconceived theory of musical topics might entail. I draw particularly on Warburg’s protégés Edgar Wind, Fritz Saxl, and Erwin Panofsky. This reconceptualization, I suggest, opens new avenues for expanding the field, offering a more accurate and productive framework for future research.

Ratner’s theory of musical topics transformed studies of Viennese classicism, revealing its rich semantics. Yet it has left a misleading impression that topical representation—the evocation of external genres and styles—belongs uniquely to the late eighteenth century. This paper argues instead that topics are a distinctively modern mode of musical representation, emerging from cultural democratization and capitalist production. I will sketch five moments from the seventeenth century to today, illustrating how styles and genres have been extracted, commodified, and circulated.

1. Early modern keyboard culture. The dance suite brought Versailles courtly rituals to a broad audience, much as Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali did with Sistine Chapel polyphony. Keyboard publications targeting domestic consumers (suites, pedagogical works, sonatas, character pieces, opera transcriptions) were central to the spread of topical representation into the twentieth century. Yet transferring orchestral and vocal repertories to the keyboard required an indifference to timbre—the material conditions of production.

2. Late eighteenth-century art music. While most Ratnerian topics appear in early eighteenth-century music, they initially cluster by expressive genre (pastoral, festive, pathetic). By century’s end, shifting syntax and forms enabled freer mixing of styles and genres. Characteristic materials became more compact and fungible, often functioning, as Kofi Agawu has shown, as interchangeable paradigms within preordained formal structures.

3. The Wagnerian music drama. As mass musical culture grew in the nineteenth century, Wagner accelerated the commodification of musical character. His leitmotifs summon historical styles and genres while dissolving traditional operatic forms, subordinating topical allusions to narrative, especially in The Ring.

4. The Hollywood soundtrack. Max Steiner, Erich Korngold, and others built on Wagner’s model, creating a leitmotivic system of stereotypical styles and genres. Codified in silent-era anthologies and studio libraries, these allusions became fully subordinate to visual narrative. Recording technologies also restored timbre, an early casualty of topical representation.

5. Digital audio or postmodern keyboard culture. The electronic keyboard vastly expands timbral possibilities, offering beats and styles from every continent. Exploiting digital compression, online circulation, and synthesized timbre, this intensifies but essentially continues a process that began centuries earlier.

Present formulations of topic theory focus on the relationship of signifier to signified, situating meaning within historical referentiality. While this model frames topics as a “historically informed” mode of listening, it does not fully align with the lived experience of topical interpretation today. First, the topical lexicon was never fixed; it continues to grow, allowing for contemporaneity between the lexicon and its users. Second, listeners past and present learn topics differently. Some experience firsthand the decontextualization of signifier from signified (as when eighteenth-century listeners learned the minuet topic by dancing the minuet), but such contingency is not required. Topics are also learned through canon (e.g., a twentieth-century listener encountering the minuet topic in symphonies) or guided listening (e.g., a student who is taught to recognize the minuet). Most important, listeners can identify and interpret topics without access to their historical referential meanings. The minuet topic, for instance, can stimulate the imagination of a listener who lacks knowledge about its aristocratic dance origins. Thus, while valuable, the semiotic orientation of topic theory risks prioritizing historical reconstruction over contemporary listening experiences.

This talk builds on my reorientation of topics as “mnemonics of bodily movement (such as dance) that are conventional, ritualized, and meaningful” (Frymoyer 2025). This approach shifts focus from historical reference to embodied experience and culturally mediated cognition, emphasizing how listeners actively learn, categorize, and remember topics. Examining Koji Kondo’s Super Mario World (1990) soundtrack, I explore video games as sites for topical learning. The soundtrack employs both established topics (e.g., waltz, tango/habanera, fanfare, fantasia) and newer ones (e.g., calypso, salsa, hip hop), suggesting that video games may surpass traditional Western art music as vehicles for topical recognition. Moreover, while gaming is largely sedentary, topics stimulate mimetic participation (Cox 2011, 2016), not through visual or sonic mimesis but through the player’s covert mimetic engagement with topical affordances. I conclude by proposing that an embodied reorientation of topic theory could advance a more inclusive music theory pedagogy, encouraging students to reflect on their physical engagement with listening and analysis.