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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
In The New Guitarscape, Kevin Dawe argues for a re-assessment of guitar studies in the light of more recent musical, social, cultural and technological developments that have taken place around the instrument. The author considers that a detailed study of the guitar in both contemporary and cross-cultural perspectives is now absolutely essential and that such a study must also include discussion of a wide range of theoretical issues, literature, musical cultures and technologies as they come to bear upon the instrument. Dawe presents a synthesis of previous work on the guitar, but also expands the terms by which the guitar might be studied. Moreover, in order to understand the properties and potential of the guitar as an agent of music, culture and society, the author draws from studies in science and technology, design theory, material culture, cognition, sensual culture, gender and sexuality, power and agency, ethnography (real and virtual) and globalization. Dawe presents the guitar as an instrument of scientific investigation and part of the technology of globalization, created and disseminated through corporate culture and cottage industry, held close to the body but taken away from the body in cyberspace, and involved in an enormous variety of cultural interactions and political exchanges in many different contexts around the world. In an effort to understand the significance and meaning of the guitar in the lives of those who may be seen to be closest to it, as well as providing a critically-informed discussion of various approaches to guitar performance, technologies and techniques, the book includes discussion of the work of a wide range of guitarists, including Robert Fripp, Kamala Shankar, Newton Faulkner, Lionel Loueke, Sharon Isbin, Steve Vai, Bob Brozman, Kaki King, Fred Frith, John 5, Jennifer Batten, Guthrie Govan, Dominic Frasca, I Wayan Balawan, Vicki Genfan and Hasan Cihat A-rter.
The understanding of music involves the mastery of its various layers of meaning. Sometimes this meaning can be acquired through human insight; at other times, it can be learned. The central concern of Musical Knowledge is the tension between intuitive and analytical ways of making sense of the world. Keith Swanwick examines this relationship on three levels: in considering music as a way of knowing; as the apparent predicament between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms; and as a tension in education. Keith Swanwick guides his reader from a theoretical exploration of musical knowledge, through an examination of ways of researching the musical experience to a concluding section which will be of direct practical help to teachers. He suggests ways in which music education can be a vital transaction, giving examples across a range of music teaching, including school classroom and instrumental studios. The book will be of interest to anyone who makes or responds to music.
The flourishing of religious or spiritually-inspired music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries remains largely unexplored. The engagement and tensions between modernism and tradition, and institutionalized religion and spirituality are inherent issues for many composers who have sought to invoke spirituality and Otherness through contemporary music. Contemporary Music and Spirituality provides a detailed exploration of the recent and current state of contemporary spiritual music in its religious, musical, cultural and conceptual-philosophical aspects. At the heart of the book are issues that consider the role of secularization, the claims of modernity concerning the status of art, and subjective responses such as faith and experience. The contributors provide a new critical lens through which it is possible to see the music and thought of Cage, Ligeti, Messiaen, Stockhausen as spiritual music. The book surrounds these composers with studies of and by other composers directly associated with the idea of spiritual music (Harvey, Gubaidulina, MacMillan, Part, Pott, and Tavener), and others (Adams, Birtwistle, Ton de Leeuw, Ferneyhough, Ustvolskaya, and Vivier) who have created original engagements with the idea of spirituality. Contemporary Music and Spirituality is essential reading for humanities scholars and students working in the areas of musicology, music theory, theology, religious studies, philosophy of culture, and the history of twentieth-century culture.
Time is of the essence in music because the ear can only perceive sequentially-one thing at a time-unlike the eye, which is capable of panoramic view. Silence and Slow Time proposes a way of thinking about music that is faithful to the experience of playing or listening during a real performance. Boykan argues against the common assumption that thematic relationships automatically insure musical coherence, because the repetition or the transformation of a theme is only meaningful if we consider when it occurs. This argument is developed through a close reading of passages from the full range of Western music. Analyses of dramatic narratives in Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin reveal a richness that can only be captured if thematic or voice-leading relationships are placed within a temporal context. Other kinds of narrative are explored in a Renaissance motet, and in the music of Wolf and Debussy at the end of the 19th Century. The book devotes several chapters to the great innovators of the 20th Century, and concludes with a detailed study of the Schoenberg Trio that traces its thematic and harmonic process to suggest a somewhat oblique relation to the apocalyptic moment when it was composed.
The first volume of its kind, Dislocated Memories: Jews, Music, and Postwar German Culture draws together three significant areas of inquiry: Jewish music, German culture, and the legacy of the Holocaust. Jewish music-a highly debated topic-encompasses a multiplicity of musics and cultures, reflecting an inherent and evolving hybridity and transnationalism. German culture refers to an equally diverse concept that, in this volume, includes the various cultures of prewar Germany, occupied Germany, the divided and reunified Germany, and even "German (Jewish) memory," which is not necessarily physically bound to Germany. In the context of these perspectives, the volume makes powerful arguments on about the impact of the Holocaust and its aftermath in changing contexts of musical performance and composition. In doing so, the essays in Dislocated Memories cover a wide spectrum of topics from the immediate postwar period with music in the Displaced Persons camps to the later twentieth century with compositions conceived in response to the Holocaust and the klezmer revival at the turn of this century. Dislocated Memories builds on a wide range of recent and critical scholarship in Cold War studies, cultural history, German studies, Holocaust studies, Jewish studies, and memory studies. What binds these distinct fields tightly together are the contributors' specific theoretical inquiries that reflect separate yet interrelated themes such as displacement and memory. While these concepts link the multi-faceted essays on a micro-level, they are also largely connected in their conceptual query by focus, on the macro-level, on the presence and the absence of Jewish music in Germany after 1945. Filled with original research by scholars at the forefront of music, history, and Jewish studies, Dislocated Memories will prove an essential text for scholars and students alike.
In what ways does listening to music shape everyday perception? Is music particularly effective in promoting shifts in consciousness? Is there any difference perceptually between contemplating one's surroundings and experiencing a work of art? Everyday Music Listening is the first book to focus in depth on the detailed nature of music listening episodes as lived mental experiences. Ruth Herbert uses new empirical data to explore the psychological processes involved in everyday music listening scenarios, charting interactions between music, perceiver and environment in a diverse range of real-world contexts. Findings are integrated with insights from a broad range of literature, including consciousness studies and research into altered states of consciousness, as well as ideas from ethology and evolutionary psychology, suggesting that a psychobiological capacity for trancing is linked to the origins of making and receiving of art. The term 'trance' is not generally associated with music listening outside ethnomusicological studies of strong experiences, yet 'hypnotic-like' involvements in daily life have long been recognized by hypnotherapy researchers. The author argues that multiply distributed attention - prevalent in much contemporary listening- does not necessarily indicate superficial engagement. Music emerges as a particularly effective mediator of experience. Absorption and dissociation, as manifestations of trancing, are self-regulatory processes, often operating at the level of unconscious awareness, that support individuals' perceptions of psychological health. This fascinating study brings together research and theory from a wide range of fields to provide a new framework for understanding the phenomenology of music listening in a way that will appeal to both specialist academic audiences and a broad general readership.
Partnerships among a variety of institutions - for profit, not-for-profit, and non-profit - are a relatively recent organizational development. Such partnerships link businesses, government, and social agencies. The primary reason for these relationships is to achieve goals sooner and more efficiently by building on the resources and expertise of each partner. In arts education, schools, arts organizations, cultural institutions, government agencies, and universities have engaged in joint ventures to improve the teaching and learning of the arts disciplines in their schools and in their communities. These partnerships have been particularly beneficial for teachers, many of whom have limited background in the arts but are expected to teach them in their classrooms. Arts partnerships initially focused on the goals of the participating organizations; that is, to develop artistic skills, to build future audiences, and/or to encourage young people to consider an artistic career. More recently, partnerships focus on educational goals rather than solely artistic ones. Despite the challenges and complexities of arts education partnerships, most partners believe that the benefits to students, teachers and the community outweigh the disadvantages and consequently, as the research in Working Together demonstrates, they are willing to justify the time, energy, and expense involved to improve the quality of arts education.
No band has ever been able to demonstrate the enduring power of rock and roll quite like the Rolling Stones, who continue to enthrall, provoke, and invigorate their legions of fans more than fifty years since they began. In Counting Down the Rolling Stones: Their 100 Finest Songs, rock writer Jim Beviglia dares to rank the band's finest 100 songs in descending order. Beviglia provides an insightful explanation about why each song deserves its place. Looking at the story behind the song and supplying a fresh take on the musical and lyrical content, he illuminates these unforgettable songs for new and diehard fans alike. Taken together, the individual entries in Counting Down the Rolling Stones tell a fascinating story of the unique personalities and incredible talents that made the Stones a band for the ages. Counting Down the Rolling Stones is the perfect playlist builder, whether it is for the longtime fan or the newbie just getting acquainted with the work of Mick, Keith, and the boys.
Music, Movies, Meanings, and Markets focuses on macromarketing-related aspects of film music in general and on the cinemusical role of ambi-diegetic jazz in particular. The book examines other work on music in motion pictures which has dealt primarily with the traditional distinction between nondiegetic film music (background music that comes from off-screen and is not audible to the film's characters, to further the dramatic development of plot, character, or other themes) and diegetic music (source music produced on-screen and/or that is audible to the film's characters, adding to the realism of the mise-en-scene without contributing much to other dramatic meanings). This book defines, describes, and illustrates another hitherto-neglected type of film music -ambi-diegetic film music, which appears on-screen but which contributes to the dramatic development of plot, character, and other themes. Consistent with an interest in macromarketing, such ambi-diegetic film music serves as a kind of product placement (suitable for commercialization via the cross-promotion of soundtrack albums, for example) and plays a role in product design. It also provides one type of symbolic consumer behavior that indicates choices made by film characters when playing-singing-listening-or-dancing in ways that reveal their personalities or convey other cinemusical meanings. Morris Holbrook argues that ambi-diegetic film music sheds light on various social issues -such as the age-old tension between art and entertainment as it applies to the contrast between creative integrity and commercialization. Music, Movies, Meanings, and Markets explores the ways in which ambi-diegetic jazz contributes to the development of dramatic meanings in various films, many of which address the art-versus-commerce theme as a central concern.
The author examines how new music scores with extended playing techniques call for new practice structures. YouTube access to basic instructional videos and the streaming of sound files allows musicians today to learn easily and independently. Yet, the trailblazers in new music tackled new scores without these aids; they used imagination, experimentation and tenacity. Conscious use of both learning modalities can augment ideas of practice and performance preparation; expanding new music's reach while preserving its fire. Practice is differentiated between the quick learning for an upcoming performance and the transformative learning that new music offers. Periodization theory from sport science provides a pedagogical framework for building both mental and physical stamina leading to peak performance.
What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.
This investigation of Polish, Jewish, and German sources demonstrates the roles of music in occupied Poland. Its former citizens had their access to music controlled by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. It was rationed as other goods, depending on racial (i.e. also legal) status. Official music performances served as a propagandistic tool to further divide the Nazi-segregated population. Music played clandestinely embodied resistance. It restored the sense of community and helped save musicians persecuted as Jews, like Wladyslaw Szpilman. The documents analyzed in the monograph confirm the dehumanization of prospective victims, mixed with a narcissistic self-righteous view of Nazi songs and propaganda ultimately led to the organized presence of music in the Holocaust sites.
In the 1940s and '50s, Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) was among the best known and most respected folk singers in America. Paul O. Jenkins tells, for the first time, the story of Dyer-Bennet, often referred to as the "Twentieth-Century Minstrel." Dyer-Bennet's approach to singing sounded almost foreign to many American listeners. The folk artist followed a musical tradition in danger of dying out. The Swede Sven Scholander was the last European proponent of minstrelsy and served as Dyer-Bennet's inspiration after the young singer traveled to Stockholm to meet him one year before Scholander's death. Dyer-Bennet's achievements were many. Nine years after his meeting with Scholander, he became the first solo performer of his kind to appear in Carnegie Hall. This book argues Dyer-Bennet helped pave the way for the folk boom of the mid-1950s and early 1960s, finding his influence in the work of Joan Baez, Judy Collins, and many others. It also posits strong evidence that Dyer-Bennet would certainly be much better known today had his career not been interrupted midstream by the anticommunist, Red-scare blacklist and its ban on his performances..
"Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous visit to Hamelin." When the US Navy distributed this press release, anxieties and tensions of the impending Cold War felt palpable. As President Eisenhower cast his gaze towards Russia, the American people cast their ears to the Atlantic south, infatuated with the international currents of Caribbean music. Today, steelbands have become a global phenomenon; yet, in 1957 the exotic sound and the unique image of the US Navy Steel Band was one-of-a-kind. Could calypso doom rock `n' roll? Band founder Admiral Daniel V. Gallery thought so and envisioned his steelband knocking "rock 'n' roll and Elvis Presley into the ash can." From 1957 until their disbandment in 1999, the US Navy Steel Band performed over 20,000 concerts worldwide. In 1973, the band officially moved headquarters from Puerto Rico to New Orleans and found the city and annual Mardi Gras tradition an aptmusical and cultural fit. The band brought a significant piece of Caribbean artistic capital-calypso and steelband music-to the American mainstream. Its impact on the growth and development of steelpan music in America is enormous. Steelpan Ambassadors uncovers the lost history of the US Navy Steel Band and provides an in-depth study of its role in the development of the US military's public relations, its promotion of goodwill, its recruitment efforts after the Korean and VietnamWars, its musical and technological innovations, and its percussive propulsion of the American fascination with Latin and Caribbean music over the past century.
Bessie Smith occupies a unique place in the history of American music. She was one of the first undisputed artists to come from the American vernacular tradition of the twentieth century, and as a woman, she was a figure of extraordinary power. She organized and led her own touring companies, wrote some of her repertoire, controlled her many relationships (romantic and otherwise), and even negotiated her own contracts. This type of agency was virtually unheard of in the popular music industry during the first half of the century, and Smith is often cited as a major influence on artists who sought to manage their work and reputation. Her musical output comprises a long series of recordings done between 1923 and 1933, all of which feature her vocal range, musical ability, and emotional power. Her band included some of the best black musicians of the day. In Experiencing Bessie Smith, John Clark chronicles Bessie Smith's vital contribution to and influence on music, the music industry, and the recording industry. While her recording career lasted only a decade, she toured long before setting her music to vinyl, with much of her early career amply documented. Singers from Billie Holiday to Janis Joplin were influenced by her work, and both musicians and music lovers today continue to be entranced by her unmistakable style.
Great classical orchestrator provides fundamentals of tonal resonance, progression of parts, voice and orchestra, tutti effects, much else in major document. 330pp. of musical excerpts.
Music is often defined as art for the ear, as the language of feeling, of the heart, as sound play, or as the science of composition. But music also conveys intellectual and emotional experiences, literary, religious, philosophical, social and political ideas. Countless composers encrypt contents in their music that can be deciphered by a variety of methods. This book is designed as an introduction to the basic questions of musical semantics and discusses Beethoven's committed art, the core ideas of the "Ring of the Nibelung" and of the "Symphony of a Thousand", Wagner's idea of a religion of art, the relation of music and poetry, the musico-literary conceptions of composers, the large field of program music and the history of the impact of Gustav Mahler.
This book concerns an examination of the totality of the musical experience with a view to restoring the soul within it. It starts with an analysis of the strands in the landscape of contemporary spirituality. It examines the descriptors spiritual but not religious, and spiritual and religious, looking in particular at the place of faith narratives in various spiritualities. These strands are linked with the domains of the musicking experience: Materials, Expression, Construction and Values. The book sets out a model of the spiritual experience as a negotiated relationship between the musicker and the music. It looks in detail at various models of musicking drawn from music therapy, ethnomusicology, musicology and cultural studies. It examines the relationship between Christianity and music as well as examining some practical projects showing the effect of various Value systems in musicking, particularly in intercultural dialogue. It finally proposes an ecclesiology of musical events that includes both orate and literate traditions and so is supportive of inclusive community.
This book explores the relationship between words and music in contemporary texts, examining, in particular, the way that new technologies are changing the literature-music relationship. It brings an eclectic and novel range of interdisciplinary theories to the area of musico-literary studies, drawing from the fields of semiotics, disability studies, musicology, psychoanalysis, music psychology, emotion and affect theory, new media, cosmopolitanism, globalization, ethnicity and biraciality. Chapters range from critical analyses of the representation of music and the musical profession in contemporary novels to examination of the forms and cultural meanings of contemporary intermedia and multimedia works. The book argues that conjunctions between words and music create emergent structures and meanings that can facilitate culturally transgressive and boundary- interrogating effects. In particular, it conceptualises ways in which word-music relationships can facilitate cross-cultural exchange as musico-literary miscegenation, using interracial sexual relationships as a metaphor. Smith also inspects the dynamics of improvisation and composition, and the different ways they intersect with performance. Furthermore, the book explores the huge changes that computer-based real-time algorithmic text and music generation are making to the literature-music nexus. This volume provides fascinating insight into the relationship between literature and music, and will be of interest to those fields as well as New Media and Performance Studies.
First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Presenting the latest research in the area, this volume explores the fundamental concept of qupai , melodic models upon which most traditional Chinese instrumental music (and some vocal music) is based. The greater part of the traditional instrumental repertoire has emerged from qupai models by way of well-established 'variation' techniques. These melodies and techniques are alive today and still performed in 'silk-bamboo' types of ensemble music, zheng , pipa and other solo traditions, all opera types, narrative songs, and Buddhist and Daoist ritual music. With a view toward explaining qupai as a musical system, contributors explore the concept from multiple directions, notably its historic development, patterns of structural organization, compositional usage in Kunqu classical opera, influence on the growth of traditional ensemble and solo repertoires, and indeed on 19th-century European music as well. Related essays examine the use of shan'ge folksongs as qupai models in one local opera tradition and the controversial relationship between qupai forms and the metrically-organized banqiang forms of organization in Beijing opera. The final three essays are focused upon traditional suite forms in which qupai and non-qupai tunes are mixed, examples drawn from the Minnan nanguan repertoire, Jiangnan 'silk-bamboo' tradition and the ritual music of North China.This is the first Western-language study on the nature and background of the qupai tradition, and the methods by which model melodies have been varied in creation of repertoire. The volume is essential reading for East Asian music specialists and contributes to the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory, music composition, and Chinese music and performing arts.
In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the "logic" of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience. Angela Hobart is the coordinating lecturer at Goldsmiths College on Intercultural Therapy and lectures at the British Museum on the Art and Culture of South East Asia. Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Honorary Professor at University College London. |
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