The notion of musical import-meaning and significance-covers a wide spectrum of conferred plausibilities ranging from theories of expression and theories pertaining to aesthetic value, through symbolic theories of signification. from the editor's Introduction.
Exploring in greater detail the concept of Import mentioned in Volume I (Substance), the second of this four-volume anthology of musical thought contains, under Affect and Expression, excerpts from St. Augustine, Tinctoris, Vincenzo Galilei, Marin Mersenne, Johannes A. Scheibe, Wilhelm Wackenroder, Friedrich Vischer, Leonard B. Meyer, Peter Kivy, and Roger Scruton. Reason and Experience presents the writings of Ptolemy, Galilei, Gioseffo Zarlino, August Ambros, Henri Bergson, John Dewey, and Roger Sessions. Sensory Cognition and Unconscious Referentials includes essays of Rene Descartes, Francis Hutcheson, Alexander Baumgarten, Hermann Kretzschmar, Arnold Schering, Susanne K. Langer, Leon ard B. Meyer Claude Levi-Strauss, and Umberto Eco.