Paul Griffiths: The Substance of Things Heard. Writings about Music (2005)
Filed under book | Tags: · criticism, history of music, music, sound
Paul Griffiths offers his own personal selection of some of his most substantial and imaginative articles and concert reviews from over three decades of indefatigable concertgoing around the world. He reports on premieres and other important performancesof works by such composers as Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Steve Reich, as well as Harrison Birtwistle and other important British figures.
Griffiths vividly conveys the vision, aura, and idiosyncrasies of prominent pianists, singers, and conductors (such as Herbert von Karajan), and debates changing styles of performing Monteverdi and Purcell. A particular delight is his response to the world of opera, including Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (sting productions), Pavarotti and Domingo in Verdi at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Schoenberg’s Moses and Aaron, and two wildly different Jonathan Miller versions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
From the author’s preface: “We cannot say what music is. Yet we are verbal creatures, and strive with words to cast a net around it, knowing most of this immaterial stuff will evade capture. The stories that follow cover a wide range of events over a period of great change. Yet the net’s aim was always the same, to catch the substance of things heard.
“Criticism has to work largely by analogy and metaphor. This is no limitation. It is largely through such verbal ties that music is linked to other sorts of experience, not least the naturalworld and the orchestra of our feelings.”
Publisher University of Rochester Press, 2005
Volume 31 of Eastman studies in music
ISBN 1580462065, 9781580462068
Length 378 pages
Joscelyn Godwin: Music and the Occult: French Musical Philosophies, 1750-1950 (1995)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1700s, 1800s, 1900s, esotericism, france, history of music, music, occultism, philosophy, philosophy of music
This book is an adventure into the unexplored territory of French esoteric philosophies and their relation to music. Occultism and esotericism flourished in nineteenth-century France as they did nowhere else. Many philosophers sought the key to the universe, some claimed to have found it, and, in the unitive vision that resulted, music invariably played an important part. These modern Pythagoreans all believed in the Harmony of the Spheres and in the powerful effects of music on the human soul and body. Faced with the challenge of the rationalist Enlightenment, then with that of modern scientism, they adapted their occultism to the prevailing style. A widely published musicologist and authority on esotericism, Godwin is able to give a clear and concise context for these philosophers’ often surprising beliefs, and he demonstrates how this “speculative music” influenced composers such as Satie and Debussy, who were familiar with occultism. His long study of music and the Western esoteric tradition makes him uniquely qualified to unravel the strange story of these forgotten sages.
Publisher University of Rochester Press, 1995
Volume 3 of Eastman studies in music
ISBN 1878822535, 9781878822536
Length 261 pages
Robert Adlington (ed.): Sound Commitments. Avant-garde Music and the Sixties (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · 1960s, aesthetics, avantgarde, electronic music, fluxus, history of music, music, sound
The role of popular music is widely recognized in giving voice to radical political views, the plight of the oppressed, and the desire for social change. Avant-garde music, by contrast, is often thought to prioritize the pursuit of new technical or conceptual territory over issues of human and social concern. Yet throughout the activist 1960s, many avant-garde musicians were convinced that aesthetic experiment and social progressiveness made natural bedfellows. Intensely involved in the era’s social and political upheavals, they often sought to reflect this engagement in their music. Yet how could avant-garde musicians make a meaningful contribution to social change if their music remained the preserve of a tiny, initiated clique? In answer, Sound Commitments, examines the encounter of avant-garde music and “the Sixties” across a range of genres, aesthetic positions and geographical locations. Through music for the concert hall, tape and electronic music, jazz and improvisation, participatory “events,” performance art, and experimental popular music, the essays in this volume explore developments in the United States, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, Japan and parts of the “Third World,” delving into the deep richness of avant-garde musicians’ response to the decade’s defining cultural shifts.
Featuring new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period in each chapter, Sound Commitments will appeal to researchers and advanced students in the fields of post-war music, cultures of the 1960s, and the avant-garde, as well as to an informed general readership.
The book
* Explores the rich and complex encounter between avant-garde music and the cultural upheavals of the 1960s
* Draws on new archival research and/or interviews with significant figures of the period
* Explores the relevance of avant-garde music to implementing social change
Publisher Oxford University Press US, 2009
ISBN 019533664X, 9780195336641
Length 292 pages
Trevor Pinch, Frank Trocco: Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog Synthesizer (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · electronic music, history of music, music, sound
Though ubiquitous today, available as a single microchip and found in any electronic device requiring sound, the synthesizer when it first appeared was truly revolutionary. Something radically new–an extraordinary rarity in musical culture–it was an instrument that used a genuinely new source of sound: electronics. How this came to be–how an engineering student at Cornell and an avant-garde musician working out of a storefront in California set this revolution in motion–is the story told for the first time in Analog Days, a book that explores the invention of the synthesizer and its impact on popular culture.
The authors take us back to the heady days of the 1960s and early 1970s, when the technology was analog, the synthesizer was an experimental instrument, and synthesizer concerts could and did turn into happenings. Interviews with the pioneers who determined what the synthesizer would be and how it would be used–from inventors Robert Moog and Don Buchla to musicians like Brian Eno, Pete Townshend, and Keith Emerson–recapture their visions of the future of electronic music and a new world of sound.
Tracing the development of the Moog synthesizer from its initial conception to its ascension to stardom in Switched-On Bach, from its contribution to the San Francisco psychedelic sound, to its wholesale adoption by the worlds of film and advertising, Analog Days conveys the excitement, uncertainties, and unexpected consequences of a new technology that would provide the soundtrack for a critical chapter of our cultural history.
Publisher Harvard University Press, 2004
ISBN 0674016173, 9780674016170
Length 368 pages
Steven Shaviro: Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales (2010)
Filed under paper | Tags: · affect, capitalism, cinema, critique, emotion, film, labor, music, music video, neoliberalism, philosophy, post-cinema
Steven Shaviro: “The new issue (14.1) of the open-access journal Film-Philosophy is now online.
Featured in this issue as an ‘extended article’ (it comes out to 100 pages!) is my latest: Post-Cinematic Affect: On Grace Jones, Boarding Gate and Southland Tales.
The article is freely available for download; it comprises about two thirds of my forthcoming book Post-Cinematic Affect, appearing sometime later this year from Zero Books. (The book version will include two additional chapters: one on Neveldine/Taylor’s Gamer, and a general conclusion).” (from author’s blog)
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View / Download other articles in Film Philosophy journal, issue 14.1
Jacques Barzun: Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage, 2nd ed (1941/1981)
Filed under book | Tags: · art, culture, darwinism, evolution, history, marxism, music, philosophy, politics, revolution, science
The nomination of Wagner rather than Freud in the trinity of emblematic modern minds is a sign of Barzun’s profound interest in music and the arts. He argued that these men achieved their reputations by catching the spirit of the age, like surfers on a wave, backed by the formidable public relations exercises mounted by their followers . This earned them the status of intellectual icons despite their lack of originality and the significant flaws in their systems. He described in some detail how all the leading ideas of evolutionary theory, socialism and the leading role of the artist were commonplace for decades before the big three started work.
Barzun was especially critical of the way that their adherents promoted determinism and scientism, with truly disastrous political consequences in the twentieth century. In addition to the shortcomings of their systems, two of the three titans were monstrously egocentric and unprincipled exploiters of their friends and denigrators of their enemies. These personal characteristics became prominent in the modus operandi of their followers, setting the tone for bad manners in transactions between intellectuals that have persisted to the present time.
Second Edition with a new Preface
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
ISBN 0-226-03859-9
373 pages
John Cage: Silence: Lectures and Writings (1961)
Filed under book | Tags: · composing, composition, experimental music, history of music, music, poetry, sound
Silence, A Year from Monday, M, Empty Words and X (in this order) form the five parts of a series of books in which Cage tries, as he says, “to find a way of writing which comes from ideas, is not about them, but which produces them.” Often these writings include mesostics and essays created by subjecting the work of other writers to chance procedures using the I Ching (what Cage called “writing through”).
Publisher Wesleyan University Press, 1961
ISBN 0819560286, 9780819560285
Length 276 pages
Rainey, Poggi, Wittman (eds.): Futurism: An Anthology (2009)
Filed under book | Tags: · architecture, art, art history, avantgarde, futurism, history of music, literature, music
In 1909, F.T. Marinetti published his incendiary Futurist Manifesto, proclaiming, “We stand on the last promontory of the centuries!!” and “There, on the earth, the earliest dawn!” Intent on delivering Italy from “its fetid cancer of professors, archaeologists, tour guides, and antiquarians,” the Futurists imagined that art, architecture, literature, and music would function like a machine, transforming the world rather than merely reflecting it. But within a decade, Futurism’s utopian ambitions were being wedded to Fascist politics, an alliance that would tragically mar its reputation in the century to follow.
Published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the founding of Futurism, this is the most complete anthology of Futurist manifestos, poems, plays, and images ever to bepublished in English, spanning from 1909 to 1944. Now, amidst another era of unprecedented technological change and cultural crisis, is a pivotal moment to reevaluate Futurism and its haunting legacy for Western civilization.
Editors Lawrence Rainey, Christine Poggi, Laura Wittman
Publisher Yale University Press, 2009
Henry McBride Series in Modernism and Modernity
ISBN 0300088752, 9780300088755
Length 604 pages
Christopher Small: Musicking: The Means of Performing and Listening (1998)
Filed under book | Tags: · aesthetics, culture, ethnomusicology, music, philosophy
Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms “musicking,” a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.
Using Gregory Bateson’s philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.
Publisher Wesleyan University Press, 1998
ISBN 0819522570, 9780819522573
Length 230 pages
Leo Beranek: Riding the Waves. A Life in Sound, Science, and Industry (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, arpanet, biography, engineering, music, sound, television
Leo Beranek, an Iowa farm boy who became a Renaissance man—scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, musician, television executive, philanthropist, and author—has lived life in constant motion. His seventy-year career, through the most tumultuous and transformative years of the last century, has always been propelled by the sheer exhilaration of trying something new. In Riding the Waves, Leo Beranek tells his story.
Beranek’s life changed direction on a summer day in 1935 when he stopped to help a motorist with a flat tire. The driver just happened to be a former Harvard professor of engineering, who guided the young Beranek toward a full scholarship at Harvard’s graduate school of engineering. Beranek went on to be one of the world’s leading experts on acoustics. He became Director of Harvard’s Electro-Acoustic Laboratory, where he invented the Hush-A-Phone—a telephone accessory that began the chain of regulatory challenges and lawsuits that led ultimately to the breakup of the Bell Telephone monopoly in the 1980s. Beranek moved to MIT to be a professor and Technical Director of its Acoustics Laboratory, then left academia to manage the acoustical consulting firm Bolt Beranek and Newman. Known for his work in noise control and concert acoustics, Beranek devised the world’s largest muffler to quiet jet noise and served as acoustical consultant for concert halls around the world (including the Tanglewood Music Shed, the storied summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra). As president of BBN, he assembled the software group that invented both the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, and e-mail.
In the 1970s, Beranek risked his life savings to secure the license to operate a television station; he turned Channel 5 in Boston into one of the country’s best, then sold it to Metromedia in 1982 for the highest price ever paid up to that time for a broadcast station. “One central lesson I’ve learned is the value of risk-taking and of moving on when risks turn into busts or odds look better elsewhere,” Beranek writes. Riding the Waves is a testament to the boldness, diligence, and intelligence behind Beranek’s lifetime of extraordinary achievement.
Publisher MIT Press, 2008
Volume 30 of Current studies in linguistics
ISBN 0262026295, 9780262026291
Length 235 pages
Rasmus Fleischer: Det Postdigitala Manifestet. Hur musik äger rum (2009) [Swedish]
Filed under pamphlet | Tags: · copyleft, copyright, file-sharing, music, p2p, postdigital, postdigital culture
Upptäckandet av ny musik går idag oändligt mycket snabbare än före internet. Vi känner till mycket mer musik, fyller fickorna med mängder musik som för inte länge sedan vore ofattbara. Men hur är det möjligt att välja? Hur är det med vår förmåga att sättas i rörelse av musik?
Det senaste decenniets digitalisering har skapat helt nya villkor för vårt förhållande till musik. Fram till i slutet av 1990-talet kunde skivbolagen och etermedierna fortfarande reglera utbudet. Sedan sprack cd-bubblan och musiklandskapet svämmade över. Idag är musikutbudet oöverblickbart.
I Det postdigitala manifestet sonderar Rasmus Fleischer överflödets terräng. Den utmaning som vi ställs inför i den postdigitala kulturen är inte att producera ännu fler låtar, utan att gallra i överflödet. Någon måste välja. Detta ofrånkomliga urval aktualiserar frågor om makt och ansvar. Musik är inte ljudfiler på en hårddisk eller noter på ett blad, utan en form av samvaro och gemenskap.
Kopimi ^^ Rasmus Fleischer 2009
Publisher Ink bokförlag, Stockholm
ISBN: 978-91-973-586-9-9
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Steve J. Wurtzler: Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media (2007)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, audience, film, listening, mass media, music, sound, wireless networks
Electric Sounds brings to vivid life an era when innovations in the production, recording, and transmission of sound revolutionized a number of different media, especially the radio, the phonograph, and the cinema.
The 1920s and 1930s marked some of the most important developments in the history of the American mass media: the film industry’s conversion to synchronous sound, the rise of radio networks and advertising-supported broadcasting, the establishment of a federal regulatory framework on which U.S. communications policy continues to be based, the development of several powerful media conglomerates, and the birth of a new acoustic commodity in which a single story, song, or other product was made available to consumers in multiple media forms and formats.
But what role would this new media play in society? Celebrants saw an opportunity for educational and cultural uplift; critics feared the degradation of the standards of public taste. Some believed acoustic media would fulfill the promise of participatory democracy by better informing the public, while others saw an opportunity for manipulation. The innovations of this period prompted not only a restructuring and consolidation of corporate mass media interests and a shift in the conventions and patterns of media consumption but also a renegotiation of the social functions assigned to mass media forms.
Steve J. Wurtzler’s impeccably researched history adds a new dimension to the study of sound media, proving that the ultimate form technology takes is never predetermined. Rather, it is shaped by conflicting visions of technological possibility in economic, cultural, and political realms. Electric Sounds also illustrates the process through which technologies become media and the ways in which media are integrated into American life.
Publisher Columbia University Press, 2007
Series: Film and Culture Series
ISBN 0231136773, 9780231136778
Length 393 pages
Veit Erlmann (ed.): Hearing Cultures. Essays on Sound, Listening and Modernity (2004)
Filed under book | Tags: · acoustics, ethnomusicology, listening, modernity, music, sound
Vision is typically treated as the defining sense of the modern era and a powerful vehicle for colonial and postcolonial domination. This is in marked contrast to the almost total absence of accounts of hearing in larger cultural processes.
Hearing Cultures is a timely examination of the elusive, often evocative, and sometimes cacophonous auditory sense – from the intersection of sound and modernity, through to the relationship between audio-technological advances and issues of personal and urban space. As cultures and communities grapple with the massive changes wrought by modernization and globalization, Hearing Cultures presents an important new approach to understanding our world. It answers such intriguing questions as:
· Did people in Shakespeare’s time hear differently from us?
· In what way does technology affect our ears?
· Why do people in Egypt increasingly listen to taped religious sermons?
· Why did Enlightenment doctors believe that music was an essential cure?
· What happens acoustically in cross-cultural first encounters?
· Why do Runa Indians in the Amazon basin now consider onomatopoetic speech child’s talk?
The ear, as much as the eye, nose, mouth and hand, offers a way into experience. All five senses are instruments that record, interpret and engage with the world. This book shows how sound offers a refreshing new lens through which to examine culture and complex social issues.
Series: Sensory formations series
Publisher Berg Publishers, 2004
ISBN 1859738281, 9781859738283
Length 239 pages
Gerd Leonhard: Music 2.0 (2008)
Filed under book | Tags: · business, file-sharing, music, p2p, web 2.0
Music2.0 is a hard-hitting, provocative and inspiring collection of essays and blog posts on the future of the music industry. The book continues and expands on the ideas and models presented in the book “The Future of Music”, which has become a must-read work within the music industry.
Music2.0 describes what the next generation of music companies will look like and the new principles that will define the next iteration of the music business.
Music2.0 presents the best of Gerd’s writings from the past four years. As you move from 2003 to 2007 in the book, the evolution of various ideas and expressions can clearly be observed.
cc Gerd Leonhard, 2008
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-NoDerivate Works 3.0 license
The Wire Magazine #313 (March)
Filed under magazine | Tags: · contemporary music, music, music writing, sound art
On the cover: Caledonia dreaming: How Glasgow has become the UK’s experimental free folk capital, with Alasdair Roberts, Trembling Bells, The Family Elan and more. By Rob Young. Plus Marina Rosenfeld, The Thirteenth Assembly, The Moodies, Dylan Nyoukis’s Invisible Jukebox, Geiom, Sebastian Lexer, Yabby You, Céleste Boursier-Mougenot in Cross Platform, Alan Moore on John Clare, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard on Adam And The Ants and more…
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