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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
Listening is a social process. Even apparently trivial acts of listening are expert performances of acquired cognitive and bodily habits. Contemporary scholars acknowledge this fact with the notion that there are "auditory cultures." In the fourth century BCE, Greek philosophers recognized a similar phenomenon in music, which they treated as a privileged site for the cultural manufacture of sensory capabilities, and proof that in a traditional culture perception could be ordered, regular, and reliable. This approachable and elegantly written book tells the story of how music became a vital topic for understanding the senses and their role in the creation of knowledge. Focussing in particular on discussions of music and sensation in Plato and Aristoxenus, Sean Gurd explores a crucial early chapter in the history of hearing and gently raises critical questions about how aesthetic traditionalism and sensory certainty can be joined together in a mutually reinforcing symbiosis.
Music theory is often seen as independent from - even antithetical to - performance. While music theory is an intellectual enterprise, performance requires an intuitive response to the music. But this binary opposition is a false one, which serves neither the theorist nor the performer. In Interpreting Chopin Alison Hood brings her experience as a performer to bear on contemporary analytical models. She combines significant aspects of current analytical approaches and applies that unique synthetic method to selected works by Chopin, casting new light on the composer's preludes, nocturnes and barcarolle. An extension of Schenkerian analysis, the specific combination of five aspects distinguishes Hood's method from previous analytical approaches. These five methods are: attention to the rhythms created by pitch events on all structural levels; a detailed accounting of the musical surface; 'strict use' of analytical notation, following guidelines offered by Steve Larson; a continual concern with what have been called 'strategies' or 'premises'; and an exploration of how recorded performances might be viewed in terms of analytical decisions, or might even shape those decisions. Building on the work of such authors as William Rothstein, Carl Schachter and John Rink, Hood's approach to Chopin's oeuvre raises interpretive questions of central interest to performers.
More than eighty years have passed since Edgard Varese s catalytic work for percussion ensemble, "Ionisation," was heard in its New York premiere. A flurry of pieces for this new medium dawned soon after, challenging the established truths and preferences of the European musical tradition while setting the stage for percussion to become one of the most significant musical advances of the twentieth century. This 'revolution', as John Cage termed it, was a quintessentially modernist movement - an exploration of previously undiscovered sounds, forms, textures, and styles. However, as percussion music has progressed and become woven into the fabric of Western musical culture, several divergent paths, comprised of various traditions and a multiplicity of aesthetic sensibilities, have since emerged for the percussionist to pursue. This edited collection highlights the progressive developments that continue to investigate uncharted musical grounds. Using historical studies, philosophical insights, analyses of performance practice, and anecdotal reflections authored by some of today's most engaged performers, composers, and scholars, this book aims to illuminate the unique destinations found in the artistic journey of the modern percussionist."
This book studies the different roles that jazz played in Poland in the course of the 20th century, from its implementation in the 1920s, through World War II to the Third Polish Republic. The author, sociologist and jazz musician, depicts how jazz was forbidden under Stalin, accepted and even supported in the Polish People's Republic and then welcomed in the open market of the Third Republic. The discussion of jazz in this work covers several levels: political, symbolic, cultural, and economic. The main point of the presented analysis are changes within jazz music itself, within the community of jazz musicians and relations between the field of jazz and the field of politics.
This gorgeously designed retelling of The Nutcracker will make the perfect Christmas present for ballet fans everywhere! In snow white covered St. Petersburg, young dancer Stana's dreams have finally come true - she has been chosen to play the lead role in Tchaikovsky's new ballet, The Nutcracker. But with all eyes looking at her, can Stana overcome her nerves and dance like she's never danced before? From the author of the bestselling The Sinclair Mysteries, Katherine Woodfine, and Waterstone's Book Prize winner, Lizzy Stewart, this sumptuous and magical retelling of The Nutcracker will transport you on a journey fay beyond the page. Praise for Katherine Woodfine's The Sinclair's Mysteries series: 'A wonderful book, with a glorious heroine and a true spirit of adventure' Katherine Rundell, award-winning author of Rooftoppers 'Dastardliness on a big scale is uncovered in this well-plotted, evocative novel' The Sunday Times 'It's a dashing plot, an atmospheric setting and an extensive and imaginative cast. Katherine Woodfine handles it all with aplomb' The Guardian Praise for Lizzy Stewart's There's a Tiger in the Garden (Winner of the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2017, Illustrated Books Category): 'A journey of discovery' The Guardian 'A stunning testament to the power of imagination' Metro
Little is known about the ways in which early modern musical cultures were integrated within their broader urban environments. Building on recent trends within urban musicology, the authors of this volume aim to transcend descriptive overviews of institutions and actors involved with music within a given city. Instead, they consider the urban environment as the constitutive context for the making of music as a significant aspect of urban society and identity. Through selected case studies and by focusing on three musical circuits opera and theater music, sacred music, and secular songs this book contributes to a more effective understanding of music in late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century urban societies in the southern Netherlands and beyond. Musicological and historical research perspectives are fruitfully integrated, as well as insights from theater scholarship and literary criticism. With attention to the musical life behind the traditional institutions, the circulation of repertoires, and musical cultures in peripheral urban environments or in cities in decay, Music and the City reveals the societal dimension of music in urban life."
Perspectives on the Performance of French Piano Music offers a range of approaches central to the performance of French piano music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contributors include scholars and active performers who see performance not as an independent activity but as a practice enriched by a wealth of historical and analytical approaches. To underline the usefulness of contextual understanding for performance, each author highlights the choices performers must confront with examples drawn from particular repertoires and composers. Topics explored include editorial practice, the use of early recordings, emergent disciplines such as analysis-and-performance, and traditions passed down from teacher to student. Themes that emerge demonstrate the importance of editions as a form of communication, the challenges of notation, the significance of detail and of deeper continuity, the importance of performing and teaching traditions, and the influence of cross disciplinary frameworks. A link to a set of performed examples on the Brigham Young University-Hawai'i website allows readers to hear and compare performances and interpretations of the music discussed. The volume will appeal to musicologists and analysts interested in performance, performers, students, and piano teachers.
The work of composer Manuel de Falla (1876-1946) ranges from
late-romantic salon pieces to evocations of flamenco to stark
neoclassicism. Yet his music has met with conflicting reactions,
depending on the audience. In his native Spain, Falla is considered
the most innovative composer of the first half of the twentieth
century. Likewise, in the United States, Falla enjoyed a strong
following in the concert hall. But many of his works, especially
some of the "colorful" or "exotic" dances from The Three-Cornered
Hat and El Amor Brujo, were taken up during the Latin music craze
of the 1930s and 40s and appeared in everything from jazz and pop
arrangements to MGM musicals. Similarly enigmatic are the details
of Falla's life. He never sustained a lasting, intimate
relationship with a woman, yet he created compelling female roles
for the lyric stage. Although he became incensed when publishers
altered his music, he more than once tinkered with Chopin and
Debussy. Despite insisting that he was apolitical, Falla ultimately
took sides in the Spanish Civil War, initially allying himself
rather half-heartedly with Franco's Nationalists but later
rejecting the honors they proffered. All his life, his rigorous
brand of Roman Catholicism brought him both solace and agony in his
quest for spiritual and artistic perfection.
There is a need for historical studies in music education that focuses on the common person. Historians in general have been doing this for years, but music education history has yet to catch up to the field. Although there have been many biographies and biographical studies about the more well-known music educators, little has been done investigating what teaching was like for the average teacher, and even less is known about teaching music in the early years of music education in the United States. A Musician and Teacher in Nineteenth Century New England: Irving Emerson, 1843-1903 argues that understanding history requires knowledge of the people who lived during the time. This book focuses on what Irving Emerson's life was like as a musician and music teacher during this early and critical period of music education. During this time in history, the growth of music as a curricular study in the United States, from singing schools to classroom singing and note-reading, paralleled Emerson's teaching career. It was because of the groundwork established by music teachers like Irving Emerson that the music curriculum developed in the twentieth century to include music appreciation, instrumental music ensembles and marching band, along with general music classes and choral music education. This is an invaluable resource to music educators, musicians, and historians alike in understanding the beginnings and formation of what is today music appreciation in the education system.
Occult traditions have inspired considerable musical ingenuity over the centuries, as well as some undeniable masterpieces. From the Pythagorean concept of a music of the spheres to the occult subculture of 20th-century pop and rock, music has often attempted to express mystical states of mind, cosmic harmony, the demonic and the divine--nowhere more so, perhaps, than in the music for occult and science fiction films such as The Mephisto Waltz, The Devil Rides Out, Star Trek, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Omen and The Exorcist. This wide-ranging survey explores how such film music works and uncovers its origins in Pythagorean and Platonic ideas about the divine order of the universe and its essentially numerical/musical nature. Chapters trace the influence of esoteric Freemasonry on Mozart and Beethoven, the birth of ""demonic"" music in the 19th century with composers such as Weber, Berlioz and Liszt, Wagner's racial mysticism, Schoenberg's numerical superstition, the impact of synesthesia on art music and film, the effect of theosophical ideas on composers such as Scriabin and Holst, supernatural opera and ballet, fairy music and, finally, popular music in the 1960s and '70s.
Performing in musical ensembles provides a remarkable opportunity for interaction between people. When playing a piece of music together, musicians contribute to the creation of an artistic work that is shaped through their individual performances. However, even though ensembles are a large part of musical activity, questions remain as to how they function. In Embodied Knowledge in Ensemble Performance, Murphy McCaleb explores the processes by which musicians interact with each other through performance. McCaleb begins by breaking down current models of ensemble interaction, particularly those that rely on the same kind of communication found in conversation. In order to find a new way of describing this interaction, McCaleb considers the nature of the information being shared between musicians during performance. Using examples from postgraduate ensembles at Birmingham Conservatoire as well as his own reflective practice, he examines how an understanding of the relationship between musicians and their instruments may affect the way performers infer information within an ensemble. Drawing upon research from musicology, occupational psychology, and philosophy, and including downloadable resources of excerpts from rehearsals and performances, Embodied Knowledge provides an holistic approach to ensemble research in a manner accessible to performers, researchers and teachers.
More than forty years after the composer's death, the music of Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) continues to be recorded and performed and to attract international scholarly interest. The Roberto Gerhard Companion is the first full length scholarly work on this composer noted for his sharp intellect and original, exploring mind. This book builds on the outcomes of two recent international conferences and includes contributions by scholars from Spain, the USA and UK. The essays collected here explore themes and trends within Gerhard's work, using individual or groups of works as case studies. Among the themes presented are the way Gerhard's work was shaped by his Catalan heritage, his education under Pedrell and Schoenberg, and his very individual reaction to the latter's teaching and methods, notably Gerhard's very distinctive approach to serialism. The influence of these and other cultural and literary figures is an important underlying theme that ties essays together. Exiled from Catalonia from 1939, Gerhard spent the remainder of his life in Cambridge, England, composing a string of often ground-breaking compositions, notably the symphonies and concertos composed in the 1950s and 1960s. A particular focus in this book is Gerhard's electronic music. He was a pioneer in this genre and the book will contain the first rigorous studies of this music as well as the first accurate catalogue of this electronic output. His ground-breaking output of incidental music for radio and the stage is also given detailed consideration.
'Leonard Cohen taught us that even in the midst of darkness there is light, in the midst of hatred there is love, with our dying breath we can still sing Hallelujah.' - The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 'Among the finest volumes on Cohen's life and lyrics ... An exploration which would have intrigued and engaged Leonard himself.' - John McKenna, writer and friend of Leonard Cohen Harry Freedman uncovers the spiritual traditions that lie behind Leonard Cohen's profound and unmistakable lyrics. The singer and poet Leonard Cohen was deeply learned in Judaism and Christianity, the spiritual traditions that underpinned his self-identity and the way he made sense of the world. In this book Harry Freedman, a leading author of cultural and religious history, explores the mystical and spiritual sources Cohen drew upon, discusses their original context and the stories and ideas behind them. Cohen's music is studded with allusions to Jewish and Christian tradition, to stories and ideas drawn from the Bible, Talmud and Kabbalah. From his 1967 classic 'Suzanne', through masterpieces like 'Hallelujah' and 'Who by Fire', to his final challenge to the divinity, 'You Want It Darker' he drew on spirituality for inspiration and as a tool to create understanding, clarity and beauty. Born into a prominent and scholarly Jewish family in Montreal, Canada, Cohen originally aspired to become a poet, before turning to song writing and eventually recording his own compositions. Later, he became immersed in Zen Buddhism, moving in 1990 to a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy, California where he remained for some years. He died, with immaculate timing, on the day before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, leaving behind him a legacy that will be felt for generations to come. Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius looks deeply into the imagination of one of the greatest singers and lyricists of our time, providing a window on the landscape of his soul. Departing from traditional biographical approaches, Freedman explores song by song how Cohen reworked myths and prayers, legends and allegories with an index of songs at the end of the book for readers to search by their favourites. By the end the reader will be left with a powerful understanding of Cohen's story, together with a far broader insight into the mystical origins of his inimitable work.
Today we think of Heinrich Schenker, who lived in Vienna from 1884
until his death in 1935, as the most influential music theorist of
the twentieth century. But he saw his theoretical writings as part
of a comprehensive project for the reform of musical composition,
performance, criticism, and
A memoir by an American who almost single-handedly introduced Soviet rock to the free world, [...] Stingray, who wrote this memoir with her daughter, Madison, nicely captures her daring amid an atmosphere of liberation and fear, and she's a study in moxie and enthusiasm. -Kirkus Reviews As one of the first American musicians to break through the Soviet scene, and one of the few women to be seen as an equal amongst Leningrad's pantheon of rock superstars, Stingray's perspective on the development of late Soviet rock is probably the single most important source for those who want a birds-eye view of late Soviet youth culture, and Stingray's stories are as entertaining as they are relevant and illuminating. -Alexander Herbert, author of What About Tomorrow?: An Oral History of Russian Punk from the Soviet Era to Pussy Riot Wild and vivid - a rollicking memoir of romance and rock 'n' roll in an era of upheaval and transition. From Los Angeles to Leningrad and back again, Joanna's story is borne along by her infectious, headlong enthusiasm. It's quite a ride. -Patrick Radden Keefe, creator of the Wind of Change podcast and author of Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland The history of Russian rock music could have been very different without Joanna Stingray. Joanna was friends with rock musicians, recorded songs with them, shot their videos and brought them clothes and instruments from the West. Her video footage, capturing young icons of Russian rock like Viktor Tsoi, Sergei Kuryokhin, Timur Novikov and Boris Grebenshchikov, is rare evidence of the golden era of the Soviet underground. -The Moscow Times Red Wave is a warm and conversational autobiography about a lost world, peopled with courageous artists risking their freedom for the ideas of expression, art, and rock 'n' roll. [...] We root for her and her friends to overcome bureaucracy, oppression, isolation, deprivation, and the heavy footsteps of the KGB. [...] In a readable and personable way, Red Wave helps shine some light into this remarkable corner of rock history. -Tim Sommer, Guernica Joanna Stingray's appearance in St. Petersburg in the early 1980s must have been God's response to our unconscious prayers. Her naive bravery, curiosity and generosity created a kind of a lifeline for us rockers: she brought in things we needed to play our music, and took out not only our recordings but the very message of our existence. Had it not been for her and her Red Wave, it would have taken Aquarium many more years to have official records on Melodiya and Kino to start touring Europe. This fearless maiden broke through the siege that looked hopelessly unbreakable. She threw a life-saver into our waters and she changed everything. No matter how many times we thank her - it's never enough. -Boris Grebenshchikov (Aquarium), 2018
General Music: Dimensions of Practice is a practical guide for music teachers and teaching artists who strive to teach music holistically. The book begins by framing general music as a holistic music education that is comprehensive, meaningful, and relevant to diverse learners in school and community settings. It is followed by chapters that are organized into one of four dimensions of music practice: performing, connecting, creating, and responding. Chapter authors share creative and innovative teaching ideas, for both elementary and secondary school students, that focus on a wide range of topics, including: songwriting, composing, improvising, singing, moving, playing, listening, analyzing, contextualizing, and connecting. Each chapter provides (a) a rationale for a given area of music study, establishing its importance and relevance; (b) a research or theoretical background, to inform and guide practice; and (c) a pedagogical model or framework illustrated through lesson ideas, curriculum units, or vignettes. The ideas in this book seek to inspire and guide teachers as they build comprehensive music programs that are informed by students and communities.
Taking a cue from Erving Goffman's classic work, Asylums, Tia DeNora develops a novel interdisciplinary framework for music, health and wellbeing. Considering health and illness both in medical contexts and in the often-overlooked realm of everyday life, DeNora argues that these identities are by no means mutually exclusive. Moreover, she suggests that the promotion of health and more specifically, mental health, involves a great deal more than a concern with medication, genetic predispositions, clinical and neuro-scientific procedures. Adopting a holistic, interactionist focus, Music Asylums reconnects states of wellness and wellbeing to encounters with others and - critically - to opportunities for aesthetic experience. Building on DeNora's earlier work on music as a technology of self in everyday life, the book presents music as an active ingredient of action, identity, capacity and consciousness. From there, it suggests that access to, and evaluation of, music is an important ethical matter. Intended for scholars and practitioners in psychiatry and psychology, palliative care, socio-music studies, music psychology and the allied health professions, Music Asylums showcases music's role in the existential project of being and staying well, mentally and physically, from moment-to-moment and across all realms of social life.
Creating Global Music in Turkey looks at the rise of "world music" in Turkey by analyzing this country's various "traditional" or ethnic music forms. The book focuses on the uniquely Turkish musical forms exemplified by Gypsy, Sufi, and Folk music, and explores how these have been incorporated into the global discourses of world music. In doing so, the book also shows how the place-making strategies of globalization are embodied through the construction of an "authentic" Istanbul sound under the label of world music. The reader is invited to consider each musical tradition as being a unique realm in its incorporation into world music. The process of incorporation and appropriation is explained by examination of the specificities of each realm. This book is unique within the relevant literature, focusing on the production of a global cultural form outside of the Western world. It uses the findings of comprehensive ethnographic research to reveal to the reader the strategies of actors, the discursive mechanisms in the field, and how the world music markets operate.
Winner : 2022-2023 New York City Book Awards! Unearths the queer aesthetic origins of NYC hip hop Hip Hop Heresies centers New York City as a space where vibrant queer, Black, and hip hop worlds collide and bond in dance clubs, schools, roller rinks, basketball courts, subways, and movie houses. Using this cultural nexus as the stage, Shanté Paradigm Smalls attends to the ways that hip hop cultural production in New York City from the 1970s through the early twenty-first century produced film, visual art, and music that offer queer articulations of race, gender, and sexuality. To illustrate New York City as a place of experimental aesthetic collaboration, Smalls brings four cultural moments to the forefront: the life and work of the gay Chinese American visual and graffiti artist Martin Wong, who brokered the relationship between New York City graffiti artists and gallery and museum spaces; the Brooklyn-based rapper-singer-writer-producer Jean Grae, one of the most prolific and underrated emcees of the last two decades; the iconic 1980s film The Last Dragon, which exemplifies the experimental and queer Black masculinity possible in early formal hip hop culture; and finally queer- and trans-identified hip hop artists and groups like BQE, Deepdickollective, and Hanifah Walidah, and the documentary Pick Up the Mic. Hip Hop Heresies transforms the landscape of hip hop scholarship, Black studies, and queer studies by bringing together these fields through the hermeneutic of aesthetics. Providing a guidepost for future scholarship on queer, trans, and feminist hip hop studies, Hip Hop Heresies takes seriously the work that New York City hip hop cultural production has done and will do, and advocates a form of hip hop that eschews authenticity in favor of performativity, bricolage, and pastiche.
La musica napoletana conosce uno straordinario successo europeo fin dai primi decenni del Settecento. I contributi raccolti in questo volume presentano le fonti e la fortuna dei Napoletani, e di Pergolesi in particolare, a Dresda, in Boemia e in Slesia. Le fonti pergolesiane vengono esaminate fin nei dettagli di scrittura, tanto in vista della nuova edizione critica quanto nella prospettiva della prassi esecutiva storicamente informata. La corrispondenza diplomatica tra Dresda e Napoli si rivela un canale ricchissimo di scambi di informazioni e di partiture. Lontano dalla corte sassone, per la diffusione della musica napoletana giocano un ruolo essenziale alcune famiglie nobiliari boeme. Le case di ordini religiosi (cistercensi, gesuiti) si scambiano tra Boemia e Slesia moltissime composizioni sacre, variamente adattate secondo i bisogni locali. Le opere napoletane sono popolarizzate dalle compagnie girovaghe di cantanti, che solitamente provengono dall'Italia settentrionale. Nuovi elementi biografici e analisi di opere arricchiscono la nostra conoscenza di conterranei o contemporanei di Pergolesi come Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco e Leonardo Leo. Neapolitan music enjoyed an extraordinary European success starting with the first decades of the 18th century. The contributions to the present volume illustrate the sources and the reception of the Neapolitans, and foremost of Pergolesi, in Dresden, in Bohemia and in Silesia. Pergolesi sources are described down to details of writing, with an eye both to the new critical edition and to historically informed performing practice. Diplomatical correspondence between Dresden and Naples was widely used as a source of musical information and a means of exchanging scores. Far from the Saxon court, the Neapolitan music is encouraged by some prominent Bohemian aristocrats. Different religious houses (cistercians, jesuits) exchange sacred music, variously adapted to local needs. Neapolitan opera is popularised through wandering troupes, coming mostly from Northern Italy. New biographical data and work analyses enrich our knowledge of contemporaries or fellow countrymen of Pergolesi's such as Giovanni Alberto Ristori, Nicola Porpora, Domenico de Micco and Leonardo Leo.
A pioneering study of how American composer Aaron Copland helped shape the sound of the Hollywood film industry and introduced the moviegoing public to modern musical styles. One of the most influential and beloved American composers, Aaron Copland played a critical role in shaping what is often recognized as the "American sound." He is best known for achieving this through his works for the concert hall and ballet. Yet his film scores, though less familiar nowadays, were equally influential. Between 1939 and 1949, Copland composed the music for five major Hollywood films: Lewis Milestone's Of Mice and Men (1939), Sam Wood's Our Town (1940), Lewis Milestone's The North Star (1943) and The Red Pony (1949), and William Wyler's The Heiress (1949). These were high-prestige projects, based on literary works by such respected figures as Henry James, Lillian Hellman, and John Steinbeck. Using the film medium to introduce the moviegoing public to modern musical styles, Copland challenged Hollywood's traditional uses of music in film. His innovative approaches enhanced important national themes running through these films while also contributing to Hollywood's transformation as the Great Depression gave way to wartime tribulation and, eventually, postwar prosperity and Red Scare paranoia. Aaron Copland's Hollywood Film Scores explores Copland's scores, interviews, and lectures, tracing his legacy and lasting influence on Hollywood's sound.
This text provides the first comprehensive examination of pictographic notation. Pictographic musical notation represents the relevant instruments themselves rendered visually rather than verbally. Used most extensively in contemporary publications between the 1950s and 1980s, its popularity has waned in recent years. This expertly researched work displays the resourcefulness and inventiveness of 20th century orchestrators. Providing a detailed examination of pictographic score notation, this unique book passes over 60 years of contemporary composition and score publications. Divided into three sections, this work describes instrumental pictographs, stage diagrams, and pictographic performance directives. In addition to the thoroughly researched information and extensive technique illustrations, commentary on individual examples and frequent cross-referencing of related examples, differentiate this work from other journal articles and notation texts.
"(This book) is the first extensive study of the works of Antoni Szalowski, which provide a clear example of the adaptation of the principles of Neoclassicism and the norms of Nadia Boulanger. The heritage of the emigre composers - generally speaking not well known, scattered, or absent from national musical life for many years - requires a comprehensive research approach in order to restore it to its rightful place within Polish music. This is the direction taken in this work, where the monographic form is a fitting framework for the presentation of the characteristics, the context and the significance of Szalowski's achievement - a subject never undertaken before." (Prof. Dr. D. Jasinska, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, Poland) "The structure of the book as a whole is logical and cohesive. The uniform approach to constructing chapters and subchapters is undoubtedly of great value. Each new section begins with a theoretical or historical introduction, depending on the topic discussed, and is then followed by the discussion of the issues raised. The reader gains the impression that the author is firmly grounded in the literature of the subject in its widest sense." (Prof. Dr. T. Malecka, Academy of Music in Krakow, Poland)
This book studies the working efficacy of Leonard Cohen's song Hallelujah in the context of today's network culture. Especially as recorded on YouTube, k.d. lang's interpretation(s) of Cohen's Hallelujah, embody acoustically and visually/viscerally, what Nietzsche named the 'spirit of music'. Today, the working of music is magnified and transformed by recording dynamics and mediated via Facebook exchanges, blog postings and video sites. Given the sexual/religious core of Cohen's Hallelujah, this study poses a phenomenological reading of the objectification of both men and women, raising the question of desire, including gender issues and both homosexual and heterosexual desire. A review of critical thinking about musical performance as 'currency' and consumed commodity takes up Adorno's reading of Benjamin's analysis of the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction as applied to music/radio/sound and the persistent role of 'recording consciousness'. Ultimately, the question of what Nietzsche called the becoming-human-of-dissonance is explored in terms of both ancient tragedy and Beethoven's striking deployment of dissonance as Nietzsche analyses both as playing with suffering, discontent, and pain itself, a playing for the sake not of language or sense but musically, as joy.
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