Hermeneutics and musical history: a primer without rules, an exercise with Schubert -- Hands on, lights off: the Moonlight Sonata and the birth of sex at the piano -- Beyond words and music: an essay on songfulness -- Franz Liszt and the virtuoso public sphere: sight and sound in the rise of mass entertainment -- Rethinking Schumann's Carnaval: identity, meaning, and the social order -- Glottis envy: the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera -- Hercules' hautboys: mixed media and musical meaning -- The voice of Persephone: musical meaning and mixed media -- Powers of blackness: jazz and the blues in modern concert music -- Long ride in a slow machine: the alienation effect from Weill to Shostakovich -- Chiaroscuro: Coltrane's American songbook -- Ghost stories: cultural memory, mourning, and the myth of originality