This handbook for advanced students explains the various applications to music of methods derived from linguistics and semiotics. The book is aimed at musicians familiar with the ordinary range of aesthetic and theoretical ideas in music; no specialized knowledge of linguistic or semiotic terminology is necessary. In the two introductory chapters, semiotics is related ~o th.:: tradition of music aesthetics and to well-known works like Deryck Cooke's The Language of Music, and the methods of linguistics are explained in language intelligible to musicians. There is no limitation to one school or tradition; linguistic applications not avowedly semiotic, and semiotic theories not connected with linguistics, are all included. The book gives dear and simple descriptions with ample diagrams and music examples of the 'neutral level', 'semiotic analysis', transformation and generation, structural semantics and narrative grammar, intonation theory, the ideas of CS. Peirce, and applications in ethnomusicology.